There is currently a major outage at a major part of the infrastructure of our nation, and nobody believes anybody about why.
The airline is saying it's something to do with weather, but somehow they're the only airline effected.
Everybody online seems to the think it's some sort of labor strike, but the union denies this and nobody can find anywhere where people are planning this.
And yet thousands of people are stuck in airports all over the country right now.
It just seems like something is going on, and that everybody is lying about it. Can't say I've ever really seen anything like this, and it genuinely freaks me out.
If it's a strike then it 9 times out of 10 means the airline will have to payout for delayed and cancelled flights. I would imagine they are trying to spin this every which way possible to eliminate the inevitable bill that will need to be paid. Financials are probably out of whack too since covid so this situation could really cripple/break them.
The most likely explanation is here [1]. Pilots (and apparently some air traffic controllers) are doing a sickout to protest vaccine mandates, presumably to make the powers that be understand just how difficult they can make things for the country if they proceed with intended mass firings. But the sickout is technically illegal, so nobody will acknowledge it. That is why you won't see a clear explanation of this incident - probably ever. You've never seen anything like it because we have never been in a situation where a significant percentage of the population is being threatened with the loss of their livelihood unless they take something that many consider to be quite dangerous.
It's such a nonsense idea that Finland and Sweden recently halted Moderna vaccination for under-30s males due to, in the views of their health authorities, the risks outweighing the benefits? https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/finland-pauses-use-mode...
For a healthy person under 35, the odds of dying or having to be hospitalized shortly after receiving the vaccine are slightly higher than the odds of dying from COVID [1]. While the odds of any of these events, including dying from COVID, are low, there are certainly risks. We are faced with only bad choices in this pandemic - take a vaccine that has a high death/hospitalization rate relative to other vaccines, or roll the dice with COVID.
It’s the best data we have on this. The CDC officially denies any causal link between the vaccine and death [1]:
”A review of available clinical information, including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records, has not established a causal link to COVID-19 vaccines”
I can find 10 credible news reports of healthy individuals that died within 48 hours of receiving the vaccine in a minute of searching, so we know that the number 0 is complete nonsense.
Since the CDC numbers are comically wrong, we have to go to the next best source. The CDC itself is creating vaccine hesitancy by lying and misrepresenting statistics, which leads people to wonder what else they are lying about. Just the idea that they report adverse reaction rates based on number of doses administered, and not the number of vaccinated people, intentionally cuts the effective incident rate per person in half since two doses are required. That calls into question everything else they do. Nobody cares if it’s the first or second dose that kills or injures them. So the next best source is VAERS.
The former. But saying it this way is just like the GOP saying that "many people are concerned about election integrity" after they spent months lying to the public that it was a giant fraud.
OHSA, for employers subject to it. Medicare puts a lot of hospitals under their jurisdiction standards-wise, as well. Same for airlines. You'll note they've limited the mandate quite a bit to areas where there's wide court agreement the Feds have jurisdiction.
> Experts said that legal challenges to the rule were all but assured, but precedent is most likely on Mr. Biden’s side. In the past 20 years, “every standard that has been challenged in court has been upheld by federal judges,” David Michaels, a professor at the George Washington University School of Public Health who was a head of OSHA during the Obama administration, said in an interview.
> OSHA also has the authority to quickly issue a rule, known as an emergency temporary standard, if it can show that workers are exposed to grave danger and that the rule is necessary to address it. The rule must also be feasible for employers to enforce.
Exactly this. I wasn't rendering any opinion on the vaccine, I was simply stating that many people consider it to be dangerous and/or unnecessary, which is why some are pushing back. Others are simply against the mandates and not the vaccines. Regardless, some people are apparently very upset, given that a big chunk of our nation's transportation infrastructure is currently not operating.
I deleted a tweet in the comment that was an afterthought, not the comment itself. The comment itself still holds true. I am not an anti-vaxxer, and you couldn't have drawn that conclusion if you had actually read the comment. I was simply stating why this happened. I don't like that it's happening anymore than you apparently do, nor did I render any opinion on whether or not I agreed with the pilots and ATCs that are doing this.
Where did I say that I was surprised? I knew that most people wouldn't read the comment. Both vaccine zealots and anti-vaxxers tend to fly off the handle after reading a word or two that they disagree with and make the rest up in their head. I didn't make anything up, I was merely posting what someone else said and which is the only reasonable explanation for what is happening.
Since you're deriding mine, you seem to have a better explanation for why a huge part of our transportation infrastructure went dark a day after the Southwest pilot's union went to court to try to stop the vaccine mandate. Would you care to share it? I'm certain we would all love to hear it.
I don't have an explanation. I don't have any insights into Southwest's infrastructure and because of that I'm willing to not post any theories - I would be making shit up. Likewise, I wouldn't repost poorly sourced explanations and potentially spread more misinformation. I think all that makes for poor discussion and are the types of comments that would get downvoted.
> that vaccine mandates are some global scheme by bill gates.
While they’re all wrong, anti-vaxxers are a whole spectrum. I do think one big of nuance is important here though: there are a lot of strongly pro-vax people, like myself, who are strongly anti-mandate. The choice to take the vaccine is the correct choice. The other choice hurts not only yourself, but others. However there is no circumstance in which I’d support the government requiring a medical procedure to be performed on someone without their consent.
The government is not mandating you get vaccinated. Other than in health care, the government is mandating that large enterprises where people work closely with the public or with each other require either vaccination or frequent testing. The same goes for crowded indoor venues: Show proof of vaccination or a recent test.
This is a very lax "mandate." Nobody is going to require vaccination to drive a long-haul truck.
>The government is not mandating you get vaccinated.
So they are conscripting others to mandate you get vaccinated on their behalf.
Gee, that sounds an awful lot like they are conscripting companies to be state actors on their behalf. Good luck with any company trying to hide behind that. It hasn't yet sunk into corporate America the liability plank they are about to walk off of but they better wake up fast or it's going to get expensive very quickly.
How many of the thousands of other ways the workplace is regulated for safety amounting to totalitarianism? Nearly all those regulations pertain to low probability events, which you can tell by the relative scarcity of severed limbs and poisonings etc. Why is this different?
>However there is no circumstance in which I’d support the government requiring a medical procedure to be performed on someone without their consent.
You do realize vaccine mandates aren’t new? The chicken pox vaccine has been mandates for all children attending public schools for over 20 years now. It has been enormously successful in eradicated what used to be a very common disease.
Come back to me when you have a mandate for new vaccine with less than a decade safety record required for adults to simply exist in society
The child vaccine requirement analogy is flawed for at-least 3 reasons
1. We have all kinds of things we apply to children we do not to adults. They are children after all. For example kids are banned from smoking, but adults can.
2. It only applies if attend a public school, parents can opt out by sending their child to a religious school, private school, or home school.
3. You assume people that oppose government mandates for COVID support government mandates for children. Many of us do not, I think parents should vaccinate their children, I do not believe it is the role of government to mandate that no more than I believe it is the role of government to mandate the COVID vaccination
That is basically what it is comes down to is do you believe the government is your master, your parent, or king. Or do you believe in personal freedom and autonomy
> Rates of events that resulted in seeking medical advice or taking time off work were 7.9% after the first dose; 5.1% after the second dose; 3.0% after the third dose; and 3.1% after the fourth dose.
A decade of monitoring wasn't necessary to spot them; they were deemed fairly normal, and the vaccination program restarted.
I'm looking for an example of a vaccine where a year is not enough time for side effects to surface, that would justify the claimed need for a ten year study before being mandated.
> Although many individuals have expressed health concerns after receiving anthrax vaccine, a congressionally directed study by the Institute of Medicine (part of the National Academy of Sciences) concluded that this anthrax vaccine is as safe as other vaccines. The Academy considered more than a dozen studies using various scientific designs, and heard personally from many concerned US military service members.
>1. We have all kinds of things we apply to children we do not to adults. They are children after all. For example kids are banned from smoking, but adults can.
So the government is allowed to be "your master, your parent, or king" of children but not for adults? Be consistent.
>2. It only applies if attend a public school, parents can opt out by sending their child to a religious school, private school, or home school.
What's the argument here? If you don't want to get vaxxed, then don't use public resources. Not sure how this is a flawed argument.
>3. You assume people that oppose government mandates for COVID support government mandates for children.
Anyone who is 100% ok with mandating vaccines for children but not for adults is simply not being logically consistent. This is the same "point" as (1).
>do you believe the government is your master, your parent, or king. Or do you believe in personal freedom and autonomy
I'm sorry, you are right. I forgot that America was anarchist state. I hope you will join me in fighting for me rights to operate my vehicle whenever I want. Why should the government tell me I'm not allowed to drive when I've had a couple beers? Is the government my parent? I know I can drive well when drunk and the other guys who have killed others were just idiots. Why does the government infringe on my autonomy to drive by forcing me to get a license? Why do I have to be put into a government database? I paid for my car after all. What's next? Will Biden require me to get a license to operate my toaster?
>>Why should the government tell me I'm not allowed to drive when I've had a couple beers?
You use this also has hyperbolic statement as if there is not arguments to abolish drunk driving laws[1], which often are abused by the police as a pretext for other actions they are barred from performing..
>>What's the argument here? If you don't want to get vaxxed, then don't use public resources. Not sure how this is a flawed argument
What are you considering public resources here? I am fine with an employer on their own requiring a mandate as a condition of employment, I am even fine with a business requiring vaccine before they provide services. I am not fine with government requiring these businesses to do this
Do you see the difference? I am not talking about "public resources" I am talking about the government interfering with private business transactions.
>>I'm sorry, you are right. I forgot that America was anarchist state.
Ohh I can only dream of that...
>>What's next? Will Biden require me to get a license to operate my toaster?
> anti-vaxxers have now adopted a near cult-like delusion
I think you’re right, but I also think that anti-anti-vaxxers are at least as cult-like - disparaging Ivermectin as “horse dewormer” is as disconcerting as insisting that their healthy 20-year-old cousins friend dropped dead after getting the vaccine.
I find it hilarious that you are echoing made up statistics about black New Yorkers to claim that I, a black man who grew up in New York, is living in an ivory tower.
Only when black people are tool to prove a political point is when you start caring about healthcare for black New Yorkers.
> Young Black New Yorkers are especially reluctant to get vaccinated, even as the Delta variant is rapidly spreading among their ranks. City data shows that only 28 percent of Black New Yorkers ages 18 to 44 years are fully vaccinated, compared with 48 percent of Latino residents and 52 percent of white residents in that age group.
(I do share the skepticism that the stat was brought up out of genuine concern for the health and safety of that population, though.)
That is probably misleading because it only addresses one tiny portion of the tirade the other poster went on.
Are many folks hesitant to get it? Yes. Is it for the reasons mentioned? Who knows.
One thing is clear - lots of people are doing things that are getting them in deep, deep pain because of BS, rumor mongering, and fear. It’s pretty terrible.
Sounds like someone is losing their mind, and it probably has little to do with any facts or what is going on with the vaccine.
Vaccine mandates have existed since shortly after vaccines existed, and for good reason. Because otherwise thousands or millions of people end up dead that didn’t need to, often completely innocent folks who never even had a choice in the matter, and often horribly to boot.
Huge numbers of folks have had these vaccines and the fatality rates and serious hospitalizations have plummeted because of it.
I had the vaccine, everyone I know has had the vaccine - zero serious problems whatsoever. And for me personally, when I had to take care of my 2 year old because he caught covid, so I had a highly infectious toddler screaming in my face for hours sometimes? It probably saved my life. It definitely saved my father in laws life.
Read what happened at Nuremberg, the world has been through this before, forcing experimental medical procedures against people's informed consent is not just, fair or anything other than monstrous.
You don't know what saved your life, you're guessing based on propaganda you've been fed. It could be true, but nobody really knows.
Also, adverse reactions to the COVID shots are far more common and more serious than you're willing to admit.
How do you figure this is not informed, not consensual (you can and apparently are opting out), or propaganda - since you know, I’ve actually experienced it, read the material, found the research and actually read it with a cynical eye and found it sufficiently sound to do it.
If you have actual data that adverse reactions are more common, please do share. Having had the worse reaction of the 20+ people I’ve talked to that had it (weakness for a day or two, 103+ fever, brain fog for a week), and being a bit pissed about it, in hindsight it was just because I hadn’t been sick for so long I’d lost all context. That’s literally less bad than getting the flu.
This is what I mean by losing ones mind - there is no rational basis for comparing this to the Nazi’s literally throwing people in prison camps based on their various racist and eugenic minded shitty ideals and experimenting on them randomly until they were dead. Literally zero. But if there is an unresolved anxiety or other issue going on? That
makes perfect sense. And if the anxiety is due to not being willing to face something difficult or not being able to address underlying problems - one natural reaction is to pretend the other thing is actually bad, point fingers, etc.
The problem is? That causes more pain later, because this stuff isn’t going away.
I’ve personally had someone in my life have a severe mental health breakdown over their own inability to face a real danger with Covid and prepare for it (instead opting for the comfortable feeling that ‘it couldn’t happen to us’), resulting in their child getting severely hurt - because they didn’t do the basic diligence it would take to prevent it (with Covid), and the problems it has caused, including the guilt that they also can’t face and end up projecting onto others, and the ongoing behavior issues and blowback has ruined their life. It took something that could have been a nothingburger and instead turned it into a traumatic event with consequences that will echo through generations.
Please, seek help. This is a legitimate problem you appear to be having, and avoiding addressing it will only harm you and everyone around you.
You aren't informed because most information is being carefully censored. You can't possibly be scientifically well informed. Censorship of science by definition destroys science, and you're only parroting all the SV-approved narratives.
There are many people have died and had severe reactions to the vaccine shortly after getting them. Look at VAERS, look at claims that even VAERS is greatly under reported. look at how many more people are dying, despite the vaccine. The vast majority of American's have some form of natural immunity. Forced vaccinations or tying them to ones ability to feed their family is unconscionably evil. You'll see in 2022.
If the choice is between 3.5 million dead, and the rise of authoritarianism and censorship, then yes the former is much less tragic than the latter and therefore the more acceptable option. And that's before taking into account that the survival rate is quite a bit higher than 99%, so it won't be 3.5 million dead. And also before taking into account that the vast majority of the dead will be the very old, and people who took extraordinarily poor care of their health.
Of course the choice isn't that simple or binary in the real world, but there's elements of that choice at play and I stand by the point I'm making.
What about people who can't get medical care like cancer treatments, because hospitals are firing people with natural immunity who don't need (and thus refuse) the vaccine?
Vaccine mandates aren't new. You weren't protesting them 3 years ago, but now you are willing to take the side of 3.5 million members of the community slowly dying so you don't have to get a shot. Your persecution complex is out of control.
The absurdity of peoples' accusations of world-ending authoritarianism and censorship is baffling.
No. But mandating a brand new vaccine is new. We don’t know what the long term effects are. Nothing about COVID or the way in which tyrants around the world are using it to seize new powers is normal.
People at the FDA are resigning left and right [1]. Nobody wants their name on this thing.
Your comment has been flagged, but beyond that, I said nothing about being hesitant about the vaccine. I am vaccinated. I believe the mandates are flawed, largely because they don't take natural immunity into account. I have said none of the things you're accusing me of saying.
I flagged that comment for wishing me and my children dead, and this one for calling me a "dumbfuck". And nothing I have posted is FUD, nor is it anti-vaccine.
How many years, and how many people have to die while going from 99% to 99.9% sure of a vaccine's safety, before you would say it's safe? In your professional opinion as an epidemiologist?
You're willing to sacrifice people that you consider "expendable", because you think vaccination and masks are more dangerous than a highly infectious disease with long-lasting detrimental health consequences even for survivors.
Such a severe lack of empathy is disturbing.
> the vast majority of the dead will be the very old, and people who took extraordinarily poor care of their health.
This is incorrect, the Delta variant is hitting young people hard, including children.
Scandinavians countries just suspended Moderna for kids.
But keep ranting how the science is _settled_ and everyone just needs to fall in line. Give me a break.
As for your lame "lack of empathy" argument - the only way for an unvaccinated person to be a risk to anyone else with COVID is if they are symptomaic - i.e. if they have a fever. However, as a vaccinated person not only can you have COVID, you can be shedding (spreading) it without any way of anyone around you knowing unless you have been
recently tested.
That's what's beyond crazy - the vaccinated represent a bigger threat for covert spreading than the unvaccinated! An utter 180 from the popular narrative.
So yeah, keep on your high horse about empathy, denial, etc. At this point there is very little science in these discussions - you are espousing dogma and propaganda.
Age, obesity and health conditions play a massive role in the hospitalizations and deaths. When the vaccine isn’t preventing catching and spreading the virus, it makes absolutely zero sense to have mandates. And based on Israel and Australia, the mandate doesn’t stop at 2 shots.
Additionally, the Delta variant (currently the most prevalent by far) hits young people and children hard.
Even if you consider the elderly, the obese and the chronically sick to be "expendable" (which is an absolutely abhorrent worldview), your claims simply are not correct.
Edit: your CDC link is outdated. It uses data from December 13, 2020 to April 10, 2021. That’s ancient and even before delta was around. The second link also doesn’t use delta data.
Look at more newer data or just look at Singapore, Israel, Iceland. That proves my point.
Your last statement shows you aren’t interested in this honestly because you are more interested in virtue signalling and claiming moral superiority. How you came to the conclusion from my statement about me be young fit and healthy (and thus very low risk) to somehow mean I consider elderly, obese and sick to be expendable is beyond me.
I looked at the data for my age group and found that there’s 5-7x more deaths and a lot more serious injuries from car accidents than Covid.
Also you are wrong. Even in asymptomatic or mild cases, the viral loads is the same and you can spread the virus. The virus grows in your nose and pathways and can spread even if you are vaccinated and within the 3 month period after which the effectiveness drastically declines.
How people expect every young person to keep getting injected every 6 months is beyond me.
In Ontario, 36.6% of the cases on October 8 were fully vaccinated and 34.5% of deaths in Canada in the week of September 4-11 were fully vaxxed. We had under 10% fully vaxxed till June 10, so vast majority of our vaccinations occurred in last 3 months. The vaccine effectiveness decline is clearly visible as the weeks go by.
In Iceland, their recent outbreak started from fully vaxxed individuals even when they had around 60% of population vaxxed.
These vaccines are only a potential symptom mitigator. That doesn’t mean it should get mandated.
What’s wrong with people getting vaccinations every 6 months until Covid isn’t an issue? It only takes a few minutes, it’s hardly a big deal. I’m not sure what your Ontario stats have to do with anything.
Have you been looking at the VAERS database and the spike since the emergency authorized vaccines were issued? You want to keep those spikes going every six months?
And what makes you think it will only be every six months. COVID viruses are the family that contains the common cold. Why have we never tried to vaccinate for the common cold? It mutates too fast and too often!
You aren't going to shelter in place or vaccine away this virus. It's here, it's a permanent part of our existence and we better figure out more sane ways to deal with it that don't also destroy the economies of the world.
Sweden never locked down - their curves match pretty much everyone else. New Zealand finally gave up on their extreme quarantine policy and admitted that the virus is there too. So much for being the darling for how to handle the virus and the rest of the world being idiots.
Luckily 1% IFR is an over-estimate by around 10x, may 5x if you use pessimistic assumptions, especially now with the vaccines. UK govt admitted in Parliament a few weeks ago that IFR is now <0.1%
Moreover that number assumes everyone will get infected, but there's nothing deep driving that belief. Scientists don't understand to what extent the immune system can recognize and fight viruses based on prior exposure to other similar viruses, so they just ignore the possibility and assume no such ability exists at all. Yet it's been nearly two years now and I never got infected even after I spent 10 days self-isolating with someone who had it and had symptoms. Most of the population hasn't tested positive despite saturation levels of testing. The assumption of 100% infection doesn't seem to be a very good one.
Dunno why you are getting downvoted - I've been on dozens of flights from coast to coast in the US during COVID and never contracted it. I'm a routine blood donor and have come up negative for COVID every time. I'm not claiming some sort of special invulnerability, just pointing out that I'm either VERY lucky or this thing isn't nearly as transmissible as our darling media is flogging it to be.
Great upheaval brings great opportunity, if you are ruthless enough to exploit it.
There are unfortunately many actors around the world who - for various reasons - desire to create instability, because they see it as a way to profit or to gain political power.
I think it's less about people being against the vaccine and more about people being against the mandates. One giant issue with them is that they completely ignore natural immunity, which over 30% of the country now has and studies show is drastically better than the vaccine, but without the dangerous side effects.
If the mandates were rational, they would be centered around antibody tests.
Just a small correction: natural immunity is not without side effects - it is just that the side effect price of the natural infection is already sunk cost for those who had the disease.
Yes, I should have said “without the additional” side effects of the vaccine, but I assumed everyone would understand that part of it. But you are right that I should have been more specific, because someone else responded saying that I was overlooking the effects of COVID itself. So apparently not everyone did understand that. People in these debates tend to assume that anyone questioning mandates is automatically a COVID denier because the issue has become political. Two things can be true at once: COVID can be dangerous, and the mandates can be flawed.
Of course COVID itself is dangerous. But once you have had it and survived it, the science shows that you have far better immunity than the vaccine delivers. The mandates do not take this into account. That is all I was trying to say.
> Among Kentucky residents infected with SARS-CoV-2 in 2020, vaccination status of those reinfected during May–June 2021 was compared with that of residents who were not reinfected. In this case-control study, being unvaccinated was associated with 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with being fully vaccinated.
That is a very small and seemingly cherry picked (by the CDC) study that does not correlate with much larger studies. The study I was referring to came out of Israel, where the vaccination rate is very high and involved far more people. In fact, natural immunity delivered 27x the protection that the vaccine does.
>That is a very small and seemingly cherry picked (by the CDC)
And this is also a very significant factor to resistance to the mandates - it's beyond obvious this whole issue is more political than scientific at this point.
Think I'm exaggerating? Good luck finding the actual "approved" vaccine. The only ones that I can find within three states of me are all the emergency use versions - so more games being played. Why would anyone be suspicious when stuff like this is still going on? Yet the suspicious people who would like more information are the irrational ones?
Good grief.
Here's a very rational question. This technology has been in development since the late 80's. If it is unquestionably safe, then why haven't any of these manufacturers completed formal FDA approval before now?
There have been ~180 million vaccinations in the US and approximately 16,000 deaths shortly after receiving it, along with over 75,000 hospitalizations [1]. That implies the odds of dying from the vaccine are 1 in 11,250, and odds of serious complications requiring hospitalization are 1 in 2,400. The odds of a healthy 35 year old dying from COVID are 1 in 2,700.
So the odds of serious, possibly permanent injury, or death, from the vaccine are slightly higher than the odds of dying from COVID for those 35 and younger. I realize that you will now dispute VAERS numbers, but they are the closest thing we have to accurate data on this.
Yes, I am aware. However, this is the best data we have. Otherwise healthy people dying or being hospitalized shortly after receiving the vaccine, of internal causes, does not necessarily prove causality but it is certainly an indicator of it. We don’t understand the vaccine well enough to know all of the ways in which it injures people, so we have to go by the numbers. This is why we normally test these things for a decade before approving them.
Yes, but the odds of hospitalization after vaccination (which might include permanent, life-altering injury from it) or death is 1 in 2,400. Which is precisely what my comment said.
I don't find pilots refusing vaccines in significant numbers plausible in the slightest. Airline pilots have to comply with plenty of regulations and they're continuously trained to comply with safety regulations. Thus you don't become a pilot or don't remain one for long if you're allergic to safety regulations. If there's one occupation where expert recommendations are respected, it's aviation, and for good reasons -- the safety record of the industry speaks for itself.
Pilots in the US are an extremely conservative bunch. On my pilot group's FB page, the number of times I've read "Let's go Brandon!" in response to this supposed sickout are numerous. Every trip I hear the far-right Breitbart, Newsmax media narrative, and links from similar pseudo news blog sites are posted all the time. It's impossible to fly to SFO or LAX without a comment on homelessness, taxes, liberals, etc. Once, when I happened to be alone on my way to the hotel, a van driver in Trinidad asked my why the pilots are always talking about guns. Many US airline pilots are full-on anti-vax and claim that they'll be fired before being forced to get the vaccine.
Social media has optimized the process of finding groups of people that think just exactly like you do. The fact that you are listening to one specific echo chamber that feels this way does not tell you that the entire industry feels this way.
Consider the following counter-example: United Airlines also has a vaccine mandate, and got well over 99% compliance.
Well united airlines employees also once beat a man unconscious and dragged him out of an airplane to make room for more united employees. Maybe they hire a different sort of person there.
I’ve been an airline pilot for a long time and work for a large airline. In the US, pilots tend to be quite culturally conservative. It’s not my naive generalization. Yes, if the mandate happens most will get vaccinated, but there will be plenty of kicking and screams leading up to it.
Literally heard “Let’s go Brandon” on the emergency frequency today in airspace too far from land for it to not be an airliner or other commercial craft (in contrast to the usual meowing).
I have a lot of friends in ATC, and it's similar there. It's anecdotal, but I talked to two of them things morning. One said the sickout is indeed real, while the other says it absolute isn't. They are literally on other sides of the country from each other, so idk if it's regional or just bullshit.
Not sure why you are getting downvoted - if you purge the unvaccinated of course the percentage of the remaining employees who are vaccinated is going to go up.
Hell the president was bragging that was exactly how they got to those percentages over the weekend.
Not only that, but pilots must go through extensive medical examination in order to get their medical certificates, and for Airline Transport Pilots (ATP) they need to get them renewed every 6 or 12 months, depending on their age. They are entirely used to their medical status gating their employment!
Just make COVID-19 vaccination a requirement to pass your medical, and be done with all this hand-wringing.
The tweet you linked is an account that's linked to at least one disinformation farm.
Think about it for two seconds, if that really happened, there would be hundreds of witnesses, everybody would be talking about the flight number, there would be cell phone videos and corporate social media responses. None of those things exist, so either everybody on the plane, the airport, and all their friends and relatives are in on the conspiracy except this one bot account, or they're making shit up to stir up conservatives, which is what they've done all day every day since joining the site in January 2017.
I just looked at the account...you are correct, it does seem to be a very right-leaning account, so I deleted the link. The tweet seemed credible, but given the mass-downvoting in this thread, I'll err on the side of caution. Regardless, the tweet was an afterthought, not the main point of the comment.
This kind of subverts union leadership though. How can the union leadership negotiate in good faith when there's no evidence that they are in a position to control or act on behalf of members?
Then again, I think it's technically illegal for members of the airline industry to actively strike. So maybe this is how it's done for plausible deniability sake.
I think that's the reason for the wildcat strike - the union won't abide by it so a group of pilots who don't want the vaccine are not working to make their point to management. It's all hearsay though.
> The nationwide cancellations came as the airline announced Monday that the company will now require employees to get the COVID-19 vaccinated by Dec. 8.
> Some customers said they were told the cancellations are a direct result of the vaccine mandate.
> “I asked them specifically 'is this about weather' – because if it’s about weather, they can deny compensation. They said 'no, it’s not about weather.' I said 'is this about maintenance?' They said 'no, it’s not about maintenance.' I said then 'what is the problem?'" passenger Ron Frank said. “They said this is all because of the vaccine mandate. They said we had a massive walkout. They also said that air traffic control had a massive walkout because of the vaccine mandate. But to couch 1,000 cancelations because of a thunderstorm somewhere is not believable.”
I was, at first, very skeptical that so many people would walk out of the their jobs in a seemingly organized way, until I heard about the PTO angle of the story.
I work at a company with “unlimited PTO” (because business leaders learned that they pay less with “unlimited” than they do with accrued). But in previous jobs, it was very common to accrue PTO (up to 2 to 3 weeks worth). Most employees would find it hard to get coverage or approval for taking time off, so their PTO would accrue until it maxed out. Anytime I was going to leave a job where I had banked PTO, I would take my time off, and then resign when I came back because if you leave with accrued PTO, they would pay it out, taxed as supplemental income, which is at a higher rate.
3 weeks is a common max accrual for folks that have worked somewhere longer than a year or two, and looking at the calendar, we’re almost exactly 3 weeks from November.
These workers are getting (PTO) paid to strike, plus they’re not breaking any rules, or committing to resigning (or being terminated due to COVID policy), yet. Three weeks to take a much needed break, speak their values, and not miss a check? Now that sounds more like human behavior.
PTO usage generally needs to be approved, I can't imagine Southwest approving enough time off to shut down their operations.
If employees are using PTO by claiming they're sick (assuming there's no separate "sick days" they would normally use), Southwest might have recourse to deny paying PTO but whether or not they will is another question.
Not necessarily, because it depends which city your hub is in. Other airlines might have issues connecting to that city, but if their hub is in a city that doesn't have heavy anti-vax presence, then they are only slightly impacted.
Jacksonville FL, for example is a major SW hub, and was completely shut down. Similar issues exist in two other major SW hubs - Houston and Phoenix.
Also, not all other airlines have mandated vaccinations. ...and those that have aren't in heavily anti-vax cities.
There's also public statements from the JAX ATC saying that their absentee rate was normal and that most of the employees that were out that day were out because of mandatory time off for _getting the vaccine_.
It's a cluster of factors - the primary one being a lack of a bench of backup pilots - compounded by layoffs during COVID and now an inability to ramp up training to get pilots re-certified and re-hired: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO39nIcuPhQ
COVID vaccine shenanigans with a large chunk of the workforce near retirement age and just saying "fuck your mandate, I'll retire early" is just the cherry on top.
Well, the specific question that the government is answering is "should these people be employed if they make choices I disagree with". It is more borderline than it might appear at first blush.
I'm not sure I can think of a precedent for being so willing to eject that many people from the workforce in such a way.
This hyperbole doesn't help anyone. I'm vaccinated, and I encourage vaccination, but with the moving goal posts of the last 2 years and the fact that the vaccinations (while helping to prevent hospitalizations and severe illness) don't seem to have as drastic effect on spread, it's hard to blame people for re-evaluating the risk/reward.
These mandates will only cause people to dig in their position to become martyrs. It's bad policy, and its not helpful. We need more carrots than sticks here.
>People have a right to be unvaccinated, and the rest of us have a right to protect ourselves from them.
If your vaccinated and have the protection, what's the real issue?
If you want to go down the whole "protection" rabbit hole - and ostensibly I'm going to assume you mean protection from exposure to the virus, then the vaccinated are far more of a problem. An unvaccinated person can not shed (spread) the virus unless they are symptomatic - ie. have a fever. Checking for a fever is trivial to do in a non-invasive way.
Vaccinated people can not only be carrying but shedding (spreading) the virus while showing zero symptoms. So the only way to tell if a vaccinated person is a potential super spreader is through testing - that is neither as quick or easy as just taking someone's fever.
An utter 180 from your position. If anyone is concerned about protection from exposure, you would be looking at protection from the vaccinated - not the unvaccinated!
>People have a right to be unvaccinated, and the rest of us have a right to protect ourselves from them.
No you don t. You took a vaccine that s supposed to protect you. You don t have any right to impose it through mandates on others. This is hiding malicious intent behind "what about the children" argument. You got your shot, you re protected
and under no threat, move on with your life and leave people and their rights alone.
That isn't true. There are a lot of unvaccinated people - notably any that have recovered from COVID - who pose less danger to their coworkers than someone who has only been vaccinated.
This isn't based on risk assessment, this is based on ideology. There are situations developing where someone who is less likely to transmit COVID is being fired while someone more likely to transmit the disease is kept on - and everyone involved in the process knows it.
So would you be happy if in addition to vaccination and regular testing, regular antibody tests were also an alternative? And do you agree that this would also increase complexity (in my mind to questionable benefit)?
No, I wouldn't accept that approach either. But at least it would be focusing on the risk instead of being a status play. At the moment you're accepting a risk without knowing anyone's antibody titer at all. It says a lot about the situation that nobody is measuring it and nobody minds that it isn't being measured. People's susceptibility to COVID is barely in the conversation. A risk-based strategy is not being employed.
Despite all these measures you are still going to be exposed to the coronavirus. Just like the every flu that we've dealt with for the last however many thousand years. This rigmarole is just upsetting people for no real gain to you.
Of course everyone around you being vaccinated is safer and less risky for you (and for them as well). And sure there are other approaches that might be even more effective at reducing risk (like measuring antibodies), but that would also be much more complicated.
What is "less risk"? If you mean being exposed to someone who can shed the virus, vaccinated people can shed the virus asymptomatically. You are far more likely to unknowingly be exposed to the virus from a vaccinated person than from an unvaccinated person.
Our media and so-called health leaders have dramatically oversold the value of these vaccines. Yes, they can help with the severity of reaction when you are exposed but they aren't some defensive bubble.
And I think that's the real issue here - being exposed to the virus and each persons reaction and risks carried in that reaction to the exposure are two different things, but they are lumped together - which shouldn't be.
Nothing is, but my risk from COVID post vaccination is less than other society risks we accept as normal risks of living in a free society, for example my risk of dying in an auto accident is many times greater than my risk from COVID post vaccination
>> Vaccinated people do still spread the infection, albeit to a smaller degree
I am not sure how this statement is relative to question on if an unvaccinated person poses a risk to me to the point where we must violate their body autonomy for forcibly inject them with a medication against their will
>>Some people cannot be vaccinated, and for others it's less effective
While true, this means those people should take additional risk mitigation, this however is NOT a justification for vaccine mandates, not in my view. These people should wear N95 Masks, take extra pro cations and be extra vigilant about social distancing and/or going to large public events.
>>For the above reasons, it's beneficial to me and society at large if as many people as possible are vaccinated.
Sure, but that is not what is being debated. The question is do those reasons justify the use of force,threats, and ultimately government violence to forcibly inject people.
No one has suggested forcibly injecting anyone. But sure, not allowing people who aren’t vaccinated to participate in all facets of society can be construed as a type of force. Unlike you I see that as reasonable.
All government action and regulations are back by the threat of violence. This is an irrefutable fact, since the is the way government enforces their actions. Sure the first stage maybe masked in the guise of non-violence in the form of fine or other punishments but underlying all of that is the fact that if you resist a person with a gun will show up to force your compliance
Your are correct that I do not find the small risk vaccinated person's have from an unvaccinated person to be at a level to justify mandates as reasonable
Yes, there’s force backing those prohibitions (I literally mention that in the sentence you quoted), but what I wrote was that no one is talking about forcefully injecting anyone. You can decline the vaccine, parts of the rest of society just won’t allow you to interact with them. But if you’re the type to value your negative liberty that much, I’m sure you can manage without?
The airline is saying it's something to do with weather, but somehow they're the only airline effected.
Everybody online seems to the think it's some sort of labor strike, but the union denies this and nobody can find anywhere where people are planning this.
And yet thousands of people are stuck in airports all over the country right now.
It just seems like something is going on, and that everybody is lying about it. Can't say I've ever really seen anything like this, and it genuinely freaks me out.