![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)Īn Oct. The unsubstantiated posts were flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. 8, setting off a cascade of cancellations and delays nationwide that compounded as the airline scrambled to recover from crews, aircrafts and customers that were displaced.īut the cancellations occurred shortly after the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association petitioned a court to temporarily block the company’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, prompting speculation among some social media users that the flights were dropped not because of bad weather or other issues, but because Southwest pilots staged a walkout or sickout in a protest against the mandate. The airline said that air traffic control issues and weather challenges in Florida disrupted flights on Oct. 11, the Dallas-based airline dropped more than 2,000 flights nationwide, the Dallas Morning News reported. 10, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking service, even as competing airlines called off relatively few flights. Southwest canceled more than 1,000 flights scheduled for Sunday, Oct. The vast majority of hospitalisations and deaths are now among unvaccinated people.In separate statements to the press, Southwest Airlines and the union representing its pilots denied the widespread internet rumors that claimed the airline canceled thousands of flights because crew members walked off the job or called in sick to protest the company’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. More than 713,000 people have died of Covid-19 in the US, out of a caseload of more than 44m. “The Fox News vaccine requirement is stricter than the one proposed by President Joe Biden and described as tyranny and creeping communism,” Hayes said. Lord said the company would soon implement “daily Covid testing for the small group of employees who are not vaccinated or have not provided their vaccination status”.įox News critics include Chris Hayes of MSNBC, who recently included Carlson in a group of mandate-resistant Fox News hosts he said had not “call out their own network and their own employer”.īiden announced vaccination and testing requirements for federal government employees in September, prompting fury on the right. In a memo reported last month, Fox News’ head of human resources, Kevin Lord, said that after being asked to report their status, “90% of full-time employees” said “they were fully vaccinated”. It’s real.”Ĭarlson did not mention that his company has a strict vaccinations and testing policy. They assume the people you see on Fox News must be pretending, pretending for money or prestige or ratings or something else. We can say that with authority since we work here.”Ĭlaiming to defend “civil liberties” with his opposition to vaccine mandates, he said: “To cynical authoritarians like Joe Biden and the ghouls around him … that just can’t be genuine. It does not.Ĭarlson said: “As a factual matter, what Joe Biden just said is completely untrue. In a speech in Illinois last week, Biden said he “always gets a kick” out of mentioning that “Fox News requires vaccinations for all their employees”. On Monday night, Carlson also seized on Joe Biden’s incorrect assertion that Fox News mandates vaccinations against Covid-19. Murray said Southwest’s management systems had become “brittle” and “crack under the slightest pressure”. ![]() “We are not anti-vaccination at all but our pilots are extremely worried about how their medicals are going to be handled,” the union president, Casey Murray, told the Associated Press, saying pilots had not staged a sickout because of the vaccine mandate. The union argued that Southwest must negotiate over sick leave or disability payments if pilots have a reaction to a vaccine. It is not known whether he is vaccinated himself.ĭisruptions to Southwest flights began shortly after the airline’s pilots association asked a federal court to block the airline’s own vaccine mandate – a measure of the kind praised but not ordered by Biden. Carlson has also repeated conspiracy theories about negative health effects from vaccines. Resistance to vaccines and other Covid-19 public health measures is strongest in Republican states, as politicians and media figures, Carlson prominent among them, seize on the issue. Local media has reported that the head of Jacksonville Aviation Authority rejected reports of a walkout. On his primetime Fox News show on Monday night, Carlson also said a group of Florida air traffic controllers – who are subject to federal rules – “apparently” walked out on Friday to protest against Covid-19 rules, contributing to difficulties facing Southwest passengers. Southwest is a private company, not subject to federal vaccine rules. ![]()
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