Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian announced yesterday that his company will not be moving forward with their threat of a vaccine mandate for their employees. On the surface, this seems like great news for proponents of medical freedom, but the reasons behind Bastian’s reversal tell us it’s not time to celebrate. In fact, it brings up a couple of grave concerns.
First, the main reason Bastion pulled back on mandating the Covid-19 “vaccines” is because he didn’t have to follow through. The threat alone combined with internal company pressure techniques brought the company to over 90% “vaccinated,” far above the 55% national average. Bastion gets to play the good guy and his company gets heralded for embracing medical choice, but the remnant who are not vaccinated account for a small portion of the company’s workforce. The damage has already been done.
Second, whatever Delta Airlines did differently from other companies, including other airlines, will certainly be examined and mimicked. It worked. The threat of a mandate that would force people out of the jobs combined with the company’s internal indoctrination campaign to coax employees into getting vaccinated yielded one of the highest jab rates among major corporations in the nation.
With Southwest Airlines and other competitors facing employee “sickouts” and poor press, everyone will be looking to Delta to try to copy their playbook. While many who support medical freedom will see this as a very positive development since it means companies can achieve high vaccination rates without mandates, the “freedom” to choose appears to have been subverted in other ways. It’s inconceivable that Delta could have hired such a high percentage of people who were willfully compliant. There must be more to it for them to have be 82% more successful than everyone else at getting their team to take the jabs.
According to Fox Business:
The Delta head revealed on “The Claman Countdown” that the company has reached a more than 90% vaccination rate and expects it to rise another 5% within the next month without a mandate in place.
“The reason the mandate was put in by president, I believe, was because they wanted to make sure companies had a plan to get their employees vaccinated,” he said. “A month before the president came out with the mandate, we had already announced our plan to get all of our people vaccinated. And the good news is the plan is working.”
Bastian acknowledged that there will need to be religious and medical accommodations made for those who wish to remain unvaccinated while avoiding having to threaten employment status.
“By the time we’re done, we’ll be pretty close to fully vaccinated as a company without going through all the divisiveness of a mandate,” he said. “We’re proving that you can work collaboratively with your people, trusting your people to make the right decisions, respecting their decisions and not forcing them over the loss of their jobs.”
Despite a “very choppy” coronavirus recovery for the air travel industry, Bastian celebrated Delta’s low cancelation rate and overall operational balance. The CEO shared that the company has recorded 116 “perfect days” this year without cancelations which is right on par with pre-pandemic 2019 numbers.
“Delta’s done a great job all year long with making certain that we’re managing supply and demand in equilibrium,” he said. “Our people are doing a great job.”
“I can’t give enough thanks to the Delta team, providing a great product for our customers and it’s one of the reasons we were profitable this quarter.”
Those opposed to medical tyranny have been working side-by-side with those who are adamantly against the Covid-19 injections altogether. The combined groups are having a hard time getting companies and government entities to abandon mandates. Our best tool is to hit them in their bottom line, and to do that we need both activist groups working together. But if companies like Delta Airlines are able to avoid mandates and still accomplish their mission of high vaccination percentages, we will lose those who are not against the shots but who only advocate for choice.
The appetite for fighting mandates is much greater than the appetite for exposing the experimental drugs as dangerous and ineffective. It’s a bridge too far for many patriots, particularly politicians and journalists who need to stay aligned with the mainstream. If vaxx-nannies are able to accomplish their goals without mandates, it will serve to decrease vaccine hesitancy.
This is very concerning because the massive amount of disinformation regarding the “safe and effective” injections is compelling millions who do not need the jabs to take unnecessary risks with them. Kids are being targeted despite having a 99.993% recovery rate. Young, healthy adults are not educating themselves about the risks associated with the drugs nor the lack of effectiveness. Less than half of the country is even aware of the scientific consensus that natural immunity is far superior to protections that may or may not be offered by the injections.
Then, there’s this from Tom Pappert at National File:
The plan Bastian refers to involves fining employees who partake in the company’s health insurance plan $200 per month if they do not receive one of the controversial vaccines, and ostensibly the following booster shots.
While some pundits have declared victory, in reality Bastian sent a memo to employees in August describing this new surcharge for any employee participating in the airline’s insurance plan as far back as August, according to CBS News.
“The average hospital stay for COVID-19 has cost Delta $50,000 per person. This surcharge will be necessary to address the financial risk the decision to not vaccinate is creating for our company,” Bastian said in the memo. Despite this not being true in the country, CBS notes Bastion indicated all of those who were hospitalized did not receive the vaccine.
Ultimately, explained Bastian in his recent appearance on Fox Business, charging people to work at the airline unless they consent to become vaccinated has resulted in a 90% vaccination rate. He expects this to rise to 95% in the next month, and seemed to leave the remaining 5% for potential religious and medical exemptions.
I am extremely happy for Delta Airlines employees who are not being put through medical oppression, but I also feel very badly for those who got injected based on either the threat of the mandate or the disinformation they were clearly fed in order for the company to achieve such a high jab rate.
This is a pyrrhic victory for those of us who have concerns beyond mere medical tyranny. Mandates are bad enough, but if they’ve figured out how to manipulate people to “willingly” get jabbed, that’s a different beast we now have to battle.