So would you be happy if in addition to vaccination and regular testing, regular antibody tests were also an alternative? And do you agree that this would also increase complexity (in my mind to questionable benefit)?
No, I wouldn't accept that approach either. But at least it would be focusing on the risk instead of being a status play. At the moment you're accepting a risk without knowing anyone's antibody titer at all. It says a lot about the situation that nobody is measuring it and nobody minds that it isn't being measured. People's susceptibility to COVID is barely in the conversation. A risk-based strategy is not being empl…
It's telling that this is downvoted, even though it presents actual evidence from an actual SWA employee vs the random speculation found elsewhere in the thread. The cause isn't leanness or MBAs, its pilots protesting against vaccine mandates, by the testimony of an actual pilot who works there.
That is because it goes agaist the narrative that the only people that oppose mandates are backwater rednecks that have no education. It can not be that high skilled professionals oppose having their body autonomy revoked... it can not be that "my body my choice" should extend to more medical choices than 1... no no. this can not be allowed
If fetuses were infectious - if you could stand by a pregnant person at the bus stop or grocery store or school, and suddenly find yourself pregnant by breathing the same air - "my body, my choice" would not be the reproductive rights slogan.
So would you be happy if in addition to vaccination and regular testing, regular antibody tests were also an alternative? And do you agree that this would also increase complexity (in my mind to questionable benefit)?
No, my vaccination protect me. They are not threat to me once I have been vaccinated, the data and science show this fact. There is no reason for a vaccinated person to view an unvaccinated person as a threat.
* Vaccination is not 100% effective
* Vaccinated people do still spread the infection, albeit to a smaller degree
* Some people cannot be vaccinated, and for others it's less effective
For the above reasons, it's beneficial to me and society at large if as many people as possible are vaccinated.
The root cause is because "anti price gouging" laws are being enforced. Previously, if there was a shortage of say plane brake discs, the wholesaler would jack the price up 10x for the last 3 sets. That would lead to one of the 4 customers who wanted to buy them to say "nah, it's too expensive, we don't need it that badly". The person who wouldn't get a set was probably the guy restocking the spare parts shelf, while…
Careful: you're letting ideology get in the way of the facts. Price gouging laws are exclusively a local and state matter, and only apply at the retail level. Although there have been proposals for price-gouging laws at the federal level, none have been enacted. State laws don't generally apply to B2B interactions.
I'm not sure it matters...
Any goods wholesaler I know of goes straight from "in stock, the price is X" to "out of stock, even if you offer a million $ you can't have any". Nobody auto-increases prices as stock runs low.
Perhaps it isn't illegal to do so, but nobody does it, probably because businesses believe it's illegal to do so.
Some financial facts that help explain the situation: over the past 10 years US airlines have spent about 95% of their free cash flows on stock buybacks. This is the money they could have used to have a buffer to deal with these situations or to improve their systems. Why do they care so much about their stock price over long term sustainability? In 2020, Southwest lost 3.1 billion dollars and took 6 billions of gove…
> This is the money they could have used to have a buffer to deal with these situations or to improve their systems. Matt Levine covered this last year [1]. The basic gist of it was that the CEO is focused on the shareholders, and the best use of the money was on stock buybacks. Spending money on improving customer or labor relationships wouldn't have helped during the start of the pandemic when all the airlines were…
Thanks, I like Levine and remember reading that. He basically argues that airlines financial strategy was optimal for shareholders, given covid and guaranteed government support. But firstly, he only considers the two uses of money proposed in the NYT, improving customer service or reducing the debt burden. Secondly, his whole argument is predicated on airlines being bailed out by government - which is true, but I believe shouldn't. I personally believe a lot of value is being destroyed by lack of long term investment and short term incentives, leading to problems such as these ones. And finally, even Levine admits that buybacks might be suboptimal for other stakeholders (eg employees, clients).
> I assume the current administration could direct the Dept of Defense to make military pilots available to Southwest in the event of an extended availability issue with their union pilots. No, they could not, not without a wholesale reworking of the entire FAA. Pilots are trained and certified on individual airplanes; even highly experienced pilots need retraining in order to safely fly a new aircraft. Shoving a bun…
I mean, how many P-8 pilots does the navy have? A P-8 is a 737NG.
They might have enough, there are 122 P-8s in service, and surely the Navy has > 1 pilot per P-8.
I can’t speak to any material differences between the P-8 and the civilian 737, but legally this still seems problematic. The DoD isn’t required to type certify their aircraft, and it doesn’t look like the P-8 or the C-40 (also a 737) are type certified as a 737, which means their pilots probably can’t legally fly a 737 civilian model. I could be wrong though, the FAA’s website is hard to navigate.
Full vaccination greatly reduces the risk of infection and thus also the risk of transmission. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/p0607-mrna-reduce-ri... https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/09/covid-va... Additionally, the Delta variant (currently the most prevalent by far) hits young people and children hard. Even if you consider the elderly, the obese and the chronically sick to be "expendable" (w…
Edit: your CDC link is outdated. It uses data from December 13, 2020 to April 10, 2021. That’s ancient and even before delta was around. The second link also doesn’t use delta data. Look at more newer data or just look at Singapore, Israel, Iceland. That proves my point. Your last statement shows you aren’t interested in this honestly because you are more interested in virtue signalling and claiming moral superiority…
What’s wrong with people getting vaccinations every 6 months until Covid isn’t an issue? It only takes a few minutes, it’s hardly a big deal. I’m not sure what your Ontario stats have to do with anything.
Pilots in the US are an extremely conservative bunch. On my pilot group's FB page, the number of times I've read "Let's go Brandon!" in response to this supposed sickout are numerous. Every trip I hear the far-right Breitbart, Newsmax media narrative, and links from similar pseudo news blog sites are posted all the time. It's impossible to fly to SFO or LAX without a comment on homelessness, taxes, liberals, etc. Onc…
> On my pilot group's FB page Social media has optimized the process of finding groups of people that think just exactly like you do. The fact that you are listening to one specific echo chamber that feels this way does not tell you that the entire industry feels this way. Consider the following counter-example: United Airlines also has a vaccine mandate, and got well over 99% compliance.
I’ve been an airline pilot for a long time and work for a large airline. In the US, pilots tend to be quite culturally conservative. It’s not my naive generalization. Yes, if the mandate happens most will get vaccinated, but there will be plenty of kicking and screams leading up to it.
> our operation has become brittle and subject to massive failures under the slightest pressure I somehow notice a lot of this lately, in many different areas. I wonder if there isn't a common cause behind those. Is it just covid or something bigger?
It is large due to corporations taking on lean-business models from MBAs over the last decade+. When a business runs lean, it becomes more fragile to disruptions. Unfortunately due to our economic system, there is a semi-regular boon-bust cycle, so if it wasn't COVID, it would have been something else that kicks the stool out from under the legs of these corporations. In the past this wasn't as big as an issue becaus…
"Lean" is an idea that worked so well at first that it transitioned from being a brilliant insight into finding "stale" capital hiding in in-process inventory and parts to being a management fad, applied to things that do not actually benefit from the approach. It's not the only thing that went that way.