"I've been an airline pilot for 18 years, and now I am facing an ultimatum – not a choice, but an ultimatum. I've been told in order to continue my career as an airline pilot, I must be vaccinated, which really means I have to choose between putting food on the table for my family and my freedom of choice," the pilot, identified as Shawn Andrew Walker, says on a TikTok video.
Dr. Eric Nepute talks about Walker's brave stance in his show "Real Talk" on Brighteon.TV. "They're trying to coerce people into getting these experimental jabs, which still have not been proven safe and more and more have not been proven effective," Nepute says.
Case in point: Pfizer is not 97 percent effective as they originally claimed, but only 47 percent effective against the virus.
Vaccine mandate may cause sickouts
Walker cites the vaccine mandate as a cause for sickouts in an anti-vaccination rant. After the Biden administration announced that all federal employees must be vaccinated in September, most major airlines – which are technically government contractors – have followed suit and have since required their workers to get vaccinated.
It does not bode well for everyone and an emerging group of disgruntled airline employees comes forward on social media to complain about the mandatory vaccinations.
Walker's video has gone viral and amassed over 50,000 views. On Sunday, Oct. 10, Southwest Airlines announced the cancellation of more than a quarter of its flights due to an "operational meltdown."
However, rumors have circulated that the cancellation was due to sickouts, or workers using their sick leaves to stay home in a show of protest against the vaccination mandate.
Early in October, a group of United Airlines staff asked a Texas federal judge to temporarily block the airline from firing them or for placing them on leave for being unvaccinated. However, the airline's CEO does not seemed worried at all, saying that the number of employees who have quit their jobs over the mandate is negligible.
Southwest Airlines cancel over 2,000 flights
Southwest Airlines canceled more than 2,000 flights over the weekend due to bad weather and operational issues. However, rumors online have emerged that the delays were actually from a pilot protest over the company's vaccine mandate.
The mass pilot sickout claim started circulating on social media after a Texas federal judge was asked to block the airline's COVID-19 vaccine mandate until their lawsuit is resolved. (Related: Southwest Airlines "sickout" protest spreads to Amtrak, which is canceling trains due to employees refusing covid "vaccination".)
The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA), a union representing over 9,000 pilots of the airline, says that flight cancellations were unrelated to vaccination requirements.
But the public knows better.
"Southwest Airlines told their pilots and flight attendants they had until November to get jabbed. So now they have to use all their banked vacation and personal time or lose it," reads a post online. A similar version of the same text has been shared on Facebook and Twitter as well.
While the flight cancellations come as Southwest announced its workers must be fully vaccinated by December 8, an airline spokesperson insists that the flight cancellations and the mandates are unrelated.
This is not the first time that vaccine mandates have been blamed for flight delays. The same thing happened in August, with U.S. flights being backed up because airline employees refused to get COVID-19 shots.
Two days before the flight cancellations, workers at several airlines – including Southwest Airlines and American Airlines – have started protesting their companies' COVID-19 vaccination mandates. Hundreds of workers and allies have demonstrated outside the American Airlines' headquarters at Fort Worth, Texas.
The SWAPA has also filed a lawsuit against the company over its vaccine mandate and has authorized its members to demonstrate against it and other strenuous working conditions that they faced during the pandemic.
Watch the Oct. 12 episode of the "Real Talk with Dr. Eric Nepute" below:
Catch new episodes of the "Real Talk with Dr. Eric Nepute" every Tuesday at 4-5 p.m. on Brighteon.TV.
Get more vaccination mandate updates at Pandemic.news.
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