There have been something like 2,000 or more flights cancelled over the last three days, primarily with Southwest Airlines. Southwest stated that it was due to weather and some unidentified air traffic control issues.
A lot of the cancellations were occurring with flights to and from Florida. I live in Florida, and I can tell you that there were no severe weather issues over the weekend. There may have been a few very scattered thunderstorms, but less than what would be typical on a summer afternoon in Florida.
At this time, all indications point to what is being called a “sick out”. It is a protest against coming vaccine mandates. A sizeable enough portion of the Southwest workforce decided to temporarily go on strike. It was a mini Atlas Shrugged.
It just shows that a rather small percentage of the people can disrupt everything. It doesn’t have to be anywhere close to half the employees walking out.
A few places can get away with the vaccine mandates. In New York, it’s likely that somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of those eligible are vaccinated. If you go down to 60 to 70 percent in another location, then things get dicey quickly. If half of those people are willing to strike (or willing to get fired), it can mean just about the complete shutdown of a company.
With how hard the vaccines have been pushed, most unvaccinated people have made a very conscious choice to not get jabbed at this point. Some could get bullied into it with a threat of being fired, but the 30% or so are pretty firm in their conviction at this stage.
The government (in this case, the FAA), the corporate media, and Southwest are not really being honest. They may be technically factual in what they say, but they are not being truthful. They are either ignoring the vaccine mandates entirely as it relates to this story, or they are not willing to attribute the staffing shortage over the weekend with the mandates.
The media is also gaslighting the public by tying these company mandates to Joe Biden’s executive order. They will say that Southwest is trying to meet the deadlines to require employee vaccination from Biden’s executive order, but there is no such thing. There is no executive order with a deadline, and OSHA has not released anything.
If there were a deadline, then why aren’t some other airlines like Delta imposing absolute mandates? Is the “mandate” optional then? Maybe Biden will go through with his executive order and OSHA will issue detailed instructions, but that hasn’t happened at this time. There is no legal obligation for any of these airlines to impose any vaccine mandates.
I have had decent experiences before flying with Southwest. But in this case, I believe the executives there are essentially lying to the public. They don’t want to admit that it was their own stupid policies that caused this disaster to happen.
It’s hard to say how the tens of thousands of stranded passengers will feel about this. Some will blame the selfish unvaccinated employees. But I think a larger percentage will blame the Southwest executives for putting in place a stupid policy that caused a significant portion of their employees to show how important they are.
This would be hard for a nurse to do in a hospital. If half the nurses walk out in protest, then it literally could kill people. But the hospital administrators have no problem risking the lives of their patients by firing nurses for not getting jabbed.
I think there must have been some kind of coordination of Southwest employees for this to happen. I’m guessing someone came up with the idea and the word spread fast. There is safety in numbers to a degree. If a couple of people called in sick to protest the mandates, Southwest could just fire these people if they know that was the intent. If it is hundreds of people or more calling in sick to protest, it’s rather hard to fire these people without destroying the entire business. The people who didn’t show up at work in protest just showed how powerful they are.
We’ll have to see if this starts happening in other industries. With flights, it has a rather immediate and dramatic effect, as flights just can’t go anywhere. It is a bit more subtle if you are talking about a company that sells insurance or paints houses.
It is also understandable that pilots and flight attendants would be especially concerned, as flying increases your chance of blood clots. Developing blood clots is one of the primary concerns of the COVID vaccine side effects. They don’t call it the clot shot for nothing.
While the protest itself seems promising, this whole story is just another example of gaslighting. I have been hearing lately that the COVID deaths in the United States have now passed those of the flu of 1918 (misnamed the Spanish flu). Even if you accept the phony COVID death count, this is still dishonest reporting, as the population at that time was less than one-third of what it is today. Again, it is technically factually correct, but it isn’t truthful.
Most media outlets will not outright lie on a regular basis. They are sneaky with their words so that most of what they say is not technically wrong. “An anonymous CIA source has confirmed that Russia stole the elections.” “The CDC has officially declared that this is the deadliest pandemic on record.”
Joe Biden is a different story. He just outright lies now. He is still going around saying that if you are vaccinated, then you won’t die. This is all while he is pushing his fake executive order that hasn’t even done anything yet except to scare people and give cover to employers.
I have one thing to say to that. Let’s go Brandon.