The COVID Mask Slips

So what’s the real story with Southwest Airlines cancelling over 2,000 flights the last few days? The airline said it was weather and air traffic control related, but somehow these conditions didn’t seem to affect any other airlines very much, and in any case there was not much weather to speak of in the southeast where most of the cancelations occurred.

Southwest’s labor union was quick to deny that there was any kind of slowdown going on as a part of difficult contract negotiations, but the real puzzle here is the incuriosity of the media to get at the real story, whatever it is. Actually, I’m not curious at all: the media is covering for the Biden Administration party line on COVID.

Widespread rumor has it that Southwest pilots and crews, and some air traffic controllers, are refusing to work to protest the vaccine mandates. And no wonder the media doesn’t want to report this. The media party line is that only ill-educated Trump rubes are against mandated jabs, not airline pilots and federal air traffic personnel.

Couple this with the huge backups of shipping at American ports right now, with dockworkers resisting working overtime, extra shifts or working weekends (not to mention shortages of truck drivers). Now ask yourself this question: when COVID hit, Trump’s critics demanded that he invoke the Defense Production Act to get industry moving to produce masks, ventilators, and other things thought necessary to cope with the pandemic. Why isn’t Biden invoking the Defense Production Act, or other executive powers, to help alleviate the supply chain problems industry is facing? For the same reason Gov. Gavin Newsom will mandate that all schoolchildren get vaccinated—but not teachers. Democrats can’t bear to cross their labor union bosses.

And that’s one fact that can’t be covered by a mask, but won’t be covered by the media either.

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