Yahoo Finance journalist Adam Shapiro reports that Delta CEO Ed Bastian told the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a letter (below) to reduce quarantine time during the deadly COVID pandemic on Dec. 21, as the Omicron variant ripped through the nation at record rate.
CDC director Rochelle Walensky reportedly complied with the airline’s demands (Delta then cut its sick pay), according to Shapiro:
Well, there’s the kerfuffle over the letter that Ed Bastian, the CEO at Delta, sent to the CDC. We should point out that it was also signed, this letter, by Henry Ting, who is a doctor and the chief health officer at Delta, and Carlos Del Rio, who’s also a doctor and a medical advisor at Delta. And what they said in this letter dated December 21 to the CDC director Rochelle Walensky was, quote, “to address the potential impact of the current isolation policy safely, we propose a five-day isolation from symptom onset for those who experience a breakthrough infection.”
OK, so does this sound familiar? Before the CDC announced they were changing the quarantine guidelines to five days, they got the push from Delta saying, look, this is what we need. And now we know that the CDC– Rochelle Walensky has actually said that their consideration in going to the five-day protocol was what they thought– forget the science but what they thought Americans could tolerate.
Step into this fray the president of the airline Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO Sara Nelson, who’s very upset with all of this, that they’re pushing flight attendants to move too fast if they should become ill.
Nelson noted on Dec. 29 that Delta immediately cut its sick pay from ten days to five days, saving the corporation money.
Shocking! Delta has its protocol out. Doesn’t even meet CDC abysmal guidance. And immediately cuts sick leave pay. pic.twitter.com/Y8enyAxvhG
— Sara Nelson (@FlyingWithSara) December 29, 2021
(Sources: Yahoo Finance, The New York Times, The New York Times, Sara Nelson/Twitter, Photo Credit: Deltanet Photos/Flickr)