Delta Air Lines is now requiring employees who are not fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to wear masks in all indoor Delta settings, according to a memo sent by company CEO Ed Bastian on Wednesday. In addition, weekly COVID tests will be required for any employee who is not fully vaccinated as of Sep. 12. The memo also stated that unvaccinated employees enrolled in Delta’s healthcare plan will be subject to a $200 monthly surcharge beginning Nov. 1.
Just to be sure where I am coming from. I have been vaccinated, set up by my company, I did so willingly, without any mandate. Although I think it is a dirty, backhanded way for Delta to mandate being vaccinated, it is also hard for me to feel any sympathy for those employees who have been refusing due to the airlines insistence on passengers wearing masks. This was before the the current administration came to power. Maybe those employees at Delta (along with United) should think about what they are asking passengers (customers, although airline companies seem to forget that term these days) to do and do that themselves, instead of doing what the current political party in power is doing( do as I say, not as I do).
First off, vaccinated people can still spread the virus. Next, Paper or cloth masks do you not work at stopping the spread of a virus. Lastly, natural immunity is just as good as vaccinations.
Any supervisor who actually believes this will “work” should not be working for a public transport system.
I’m not responsible to protect someone else’s personal health. Protect yourself or don’t, I dont give a crap.
You do you. I’ll do me. Comments that others should be doing more to help the unvaccinated is horsecrap
My job is not to take care of your sorry sick ass. Take care of it yourself. I have a hard enough time taking care of my family and myself much less worrying about saving the world. Dump your guilt trip on some other sucker.
It’s reasonable for Delta or any employer to charge extra health care costs for unvaccinated employees since there are many more hospitalized COVID cases among the unvaccinated than the vaccinated. It’s fairer for an employer to charge the unvaccinated to recover a disproportionate share of their medical costs than to raise the health care premiums for all employees.
Studies and official CDC guidance show that the vaccinated as well as the unvaccinated can transmit COVID so everyone wearing masks (N95, KN95 or equivalent) makes sense until positive tests and hospitalizations drop significantly.
No matter what the airlines say, it’s still risky to spend time inside a metal tube breathing air expelled by many others who may be carrying COVID. The best air filtration system in the world will help reduce, but not eliminate, the risk and we all know that not every airliner has the best air filtration system. Even if you are vaccinated, you can still pick it up and transmit it to someone who might be more fragile or an unvaccinated child.
As far as I know, only an antibody blood test can determine if someone has a degree of immunity to COVID so people who believe that they are immune without an antibody test are fooling themselves. I know four people who thought that and caught COVID.
Many of the anti-vaxxers must be too young to remember smallpox, tuberculosis and polio. I grew up in that era and the only reason that we don’t still have them is because of vaccinations.
Every school system in the US requires its students to be vaccinated against a host of preventable illnesses. It is standard medical practice to vaccinate human infants. It is also standard medical practice to vaccinate pets and livestock against preventable illnesses.
I remember the threat of polio as a kid. Not fun. Scary. f not outright deadly, highly disabling.
I don’t understand how preventing pain and death somehow became a rallying cry for freedom of choice. It’s sort of like yelling, “I have a right to injure, disfigure, and kill myself!”. Which just seems to be so contrary to the core foundation of aviators. The basis of all aviation education is safety for self and others.
The “deal” with the corona virus is that it can only live and multiply in humans, and the more it multiplies the more likely it will mutate into more “successful” variants. Stopping the multiplication or the spread and the pandemic is arrested. It’s really the patriotic thing to do.
We’ve shifted from “Wuhan China inflicted virus” to “blame the victim.” Why should Delta employees — or any other American citizen for that matter — foot the bill for something that was arguably designed as a “gain-of-function” bio-weapon in a Chinese lab?
Shouldn’t Delta (and other companies going down this path) be requesting any payments from the US government, who in-turn should be charging the Chinese government? If our government can’t protect us, then why do we have agencies like NIH and FDA?
Is the US citizen being blamed for the inefficiencies — and possible criminality — of supremely paid bureaucrats charged with the protection of the taxpayer, while those very same bureaucrats went about capitalizing off-shore experiments in gain-of-function in Wuhan laboratories, just to circumvent US laws and restrictions?
Why is the US taxpayer being asked to foot the bill? Why aren’t these questions being asked?
I find a certain perverse humor in Delta Air Lines response to the behavior of its “Delta variants”. Seriously, since when have groups who engage in behavior known to be riskier than normal not been charged higher insurance premiums than groups who behave more safely? This is effectively what Delta Air Lines is doing, with or without the cooperation of their medical insurer. Makes perfect sense to me and I wouldn’t be surprised if other employers follow suit now that there is a fully approved Covid-19 vaccine. Of course, the simpler and likely more common approach is requiring proof of vaccination as a condition of employment.
If masks work so well, then why were nurses/doctors getting sick with / dying of covid last/this year? Weren’t they wearing masks?
If anyone actually believes they can eradicate covid, I have a bridge for sale. It’s a flu variant and if we’re to believe the stories, came from bats. Even if we vaccinate every single human on the planet, how do you eradicate it in the wild? It will be with us forever and just like the common flu, we’ll build up herd immunity/develop a series of rotating vaccines for it over time.
The Spanish flu didn’t disappear. It simply mutated over time and the population on the planet became “normalized” to it. Covid will do the same. Stop believing all the crap from the media and money-mongers pushing huge profits for the drug companies. Take the vaccine (new mRNA or traditional J&J) or not. It really is your choice.
There are millions of people who’ve had covid (last year and this year) that no one knows about because they’re not testing for antibodies. I wonder why that is…
corona virus can only live and multiply in humans? So, you’re not of the opinion (since no one can get the facts) that it came from bats originally? I.e., it is a lab-developed virus that leaked (or intentionally released)? I would love to believe that. But lacking evidence to the contrary, if we’re to believe what the media and China told us last year, this jumped from bats to humans. So, your theory we can eradicate it by stopping the spread in humans is misplaced.
If you have evidence the virus only exists in the human population, not the animal kingdom, by all means, share with the rest of the world. You will be the first to present such information. It would be fantastic news (and any media organization pushing a narrative is not to be trusted - only looking for hard science here).
Masks - the CDC itself recently told people that a mask is ineffective in blocking smoke particles from the raging fires in the Western US. They said the only protection is to stay indoors. Compare the smoke particle to a virus - smoke is many times larger.
COVID cases - upwards of 70% of current COVID variant cases are in fully vaccinated people.
Vaccine - it took 33 years to develop the polio vaccine. 20 yrs for smallpox. Are we to believe that science has made such phenomenal gains that we developed one in six months? Not to mention that the test animals all died, so testing was halted? The FDA just recently approved the Pfizer vax for basically testing in humans. That’s correct - the human equivalent of guinea pigs, lab rats.
Testing - once again, the CDC itself has stated that the COVID tests are highly inaccurate. So how are we to believe any numbers, large or small?
And lastly, money - look into the financial end of this entire illness. Do the research yourself. See how many have become millionaires (and billionaires) over this. And this is “for the good of humanity”? I dare state it is more for the “good of those reaping the profits”.
Brian, it’s NOT risk mitigation (since paper masks do not prevent you getting the virus and vaccinated people should not be getting infected).
The policy actually makes no sense based on actual transmission statistics of the past year and basic biology. All this does if fine you for not sharing in the popular junk science delusion present in an irrational society.
IF Delta were actually responding to the insurer’s increased premiums for individuals who have not been vaccinated, that would be fine. The company gets to decide what it pays for/shares cost with/or passes fees on to the employee. But, that’s not what’s happening here. This is a fine. A penalty. The insurer is not being paid this extra fee, Delta is. Delta’s statement that the average covid hospital stay has cost Delta $50,000 implies Delta has no health insurance - they’re self-insuring. Is that true? Or, are they saying each person that goes into the hospital costs the airline lost revenue equivalent to $50,000? With around 80,000 people working for Delta, They’re going to reap a windfall if up to 1/3 of their employees are not vaccinated. Sounds suspiciously like a way to regain lost revenue.
Better be careful here. Delta may decide anyone engaged in risky activity will need to be penalized with higher premiums next. Or, out on sick leave. Or, having a baby. Or … you get the picture.
And… and… and… when I wear my mask, it’s like needles sticking in my face, and… and… and… that vaccine to got made me sick for a month and I grew a third arm, and I am so depressed that my freedom to infect some innocent person is being squashed… it’s as bad as London during the blitz, or Batan.
Sure glad you AWOGs didn’t try to be MOGGs during WW-II, or we’d have never made it out. One good thing about the virus, probably fewer trumpkins when all is said and done.
No, the patriotic thing to do is to demand answers for the US government who engineered this disease and had it patented, and not give in to their ridiculous mandate that we become their lab rats. They only want to control us… today, COVID; tomorrow every other aspect of our lives!
Thru mid July VAERS reported 12,313 deaths associated with the cv19 poke. On an annualized basis this vaccine death rate is slightly less than violent deaths by guns in the USA. We also know that guns wound people. How many of those that received the poke were wounded but didn’t die?
Secondly to compare the covid bug to Polio is akin to comparing a Cub to a 747.
Lastly, if Delta Airlines wants to use medical figures to justify their position of intrusion then they should also share what the costs of hospitalization were for the flu an pneumonia in the years prior to Covid.
Supporting diversity of thought, and of choice, is patriotic. Lining up, for the sake of following the others, is not patriotic. Thank God for the Minutemen! Many of their friends and family were encouraging them to fall in line with the Brits.