Because legislators think they are smarter than Americans and their physicians, there is a new bill in the House. Representative Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y) wants to ground the unvaccinated permanently. He introduced H.R. 4980, and the title reads, “To direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to ensure that any individual traveling on a flight that departs from or arrives to an airport inside the United States or a territory of the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and for other purposes.”
Even more interesting, Americans cannot access the text of the bill on congress.gov. When you attempt to read it, there is a message:
As of 08/14/2021 text has not been received for H.R.4980 – To direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to ensure that any individual traveling on a flight that departs from or arrives to an airport inside the United States or a territory of the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and for other purposes.
Bills are generally sent to the Library of Congress from GPO, the Government Publishing Office, a day or two after they are introduced on the floor of the House or Senate. Delays can occur when there are a large number of bills to prepare or when a very large bill has to be printed.
Perhaps we can blame the nearly 3,000-page “infrastructure” bill for the delay. In any case, there is no indication what the “for other purposes” portion of the bill contains. What is clear is that Torres does not want you to get on a plane if you are unvaccinated. This demand is a pure power play. To date, even at full capacity, COVID-19 outbreaks due to air travel are rarely reported.
Airplane cabins are pressurized, and they have sophisticated air filtration systems. In October of 2020, when everyone was unvaccinated, the Department of Defense and American Airlines studied how effective these systems were against SARS-CoV-2. Forbes reported:
- The study results showed that the aggressive air filtration and circulation systems on planes lead to the near-immediate dispersal of particles carrying the infection.
- Per these results, it would take a minimum of 54 hours sitting next to someone with Covid-19 to be exposed to an infectious dose.
- Simulating a packed plane, researchers placed mannequins—both with and without masks—around the cabin and released 280 million particles into the air, the amount that would be produced by around 1,000 coughs, to mimic the infection.
- “99.99% of those particles left the interior of the aircraft within six minutes,” said United Airlines Chief Communication Officer Josh Earnest.
Our feckless leaders also persist in ignoring well-documented natural immunity. The health bureaucracy instructs recovered patients to get vaccinated anyway. That is not a consensus view in the medical community. The right to a second opinion, especially from a physician who knows you and your medical history, is a pillar of American healthcare.
There are also some recovered Americans for whom vaccination presents a significant risk. The drummer for the band Offspring, Pete Parada, told his story in a Twitter thread. He has a history of Guillain-Barré Syndrome in childhood and has suffered flare-ups for years. Parada recovered from COVID-19 earlier in the pandemic. He and his doctor have concluded the vaccine is much more dangerous for him than SARS-CoV-2. Does Torres believe airlines should blacklist someone like Parada?
Related: GOP Governors Must Stand Up to the Medical Authoritarianism of Biden Administration
Democrats, the media, and the people they have convinced we can eliminate SARS-CoV-2 intend to create two classes of Americans. One, they are signing up for injections every 6-9 months for the foreseeable future. They want to ostracize the unvaccinated, no matter the circumstances. If the vaccines work as described in preventing severe illness and death, Torres proposed legislation to stop vaccinated Americans from basically getting a cold.
It will also be interesting to see what this would mean for the airlines. While some carriers have issued vaccine mandates for their staff, three prominent U.S. airlines have not. Following United announcing their mandate, Delta, Southwest, and American Airlines stated they would not require employees to be vaccinated. Would this proposed law apply to aircraft staff?
With studies demonstrating that vaccinated individuals can be infected and transmit the virus, the idea of a vaccine passport for any activity is purely political. And if you look at the CDC’s vaccination tracking, it is discriminatory. All of these policies will have a disparate impact on minority communities. The percentage of the African American community that is fully vaccinated is 25.7%. Watching Democrats and the media try to figure that narrative out will be a scream.
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