Analysis by WorldTribune Staff, December 11, 2025 Real World News
In September 2021, United Airlines pilot Jim Zietlow was placed on unpaid leave for refusing the Covid injection.
“From March of 2020 to September of 2021 we were all unvaccinated. And we operated airplanes fine. But on the next day, I was unqualified or unable to operate,” Zietlow said in an interview with BrokenTruth.TV’s John Davidson.
But Zietlow is not some crackpot “anti-vaxxer” as the Left would say. In fact, he is probably more of an authority on pandemic responses than anyone in the Biden Administration who called for the Covid shots to be mandated.
Zietlow, a U.S. Air Force colonel, in 2007 led the team that wrote then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s first global pandemic plan — a 400-page document designed to keep the military fully operational through multiple waves of a novel virus.
In that plan, forced vaccination was never an option, Zietlow said:
“We couldn’t wait for a vaccine. We went with antiviral medications… we needed to keep our weapon systems and our military operating across the globe.”
What about mask mandates?
”Masks fared no better in the original planning sessions,” Zietlow told Davidson. “N95 masks were like nine or ten percent effective. All other masks, it was in the single digits. So it was not a practical solution.”
What was the key to pandemic response?
“Simple measures — hand washing, cough etiquette, targeted isolation, and early treatment — were the cornerstone,” Zietlow said. “There are plenty of other solutions to try to prevent virus transmission. You can just simply wash your hands… just simple things.”
Zietlow had seen the consequences of mandatory vaccination before. In the late 1990s, many of his fellow pilots at Dover Air Force Base developed severe autoimmune diseases after the mandatory anthrax vaccine. Some were forced out of the service entirely, he said.
BrokenTruth.TV noted: “After two years on unpaid leave and while part of an ongoing lawsuit against United, Zietlow eventually returned to the cockpit. Today he continues to speak out, urging policymakers to return to comprehensive preparedness rather than vaccine-only strategies.”
Zietlow’s full account will appear in the forthcoming book “Urban Legends” by investigative journalist Christine Dolan.
(Watch Zietlow’s interview with BrokenTruth.TV here.)
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