When United Airlines placed hundreds of pilots on indefinite unpaid leave in September 2021 for declining the COVID-19 vaccine, one of them was retired Air Force Colonel Jim Zietlow — a man who had already spent years planning exactly how the U.S. military should respond to a global pandemic.
In a new interview on BrokenTruth.TV with host John Davidson, Col Zietlow explains why he refused the shot, how the airline operated safely for the first 18 months of the pandemic with an entirely unvaccinated pilot group, and what America’s actual pandemic playbook looked like before everything changed.
“From March of 2020 to September of 2021 we were all unvaccinated,” Zietlow says. “And we operated airplanes fine. But on the next day, I was unqualified or unable to operate.”Zietlow is no stranger to high-stakes preparedness. In 2007 he led the team that wrote Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ 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.“We couldn’t wait for a vaccine,” he explains. “We went with antiviral medications… we needed to keep our weapon systems and our military operating across the globe.
”Masks fared no better in the original planning sessions. “N95 masks were like nine or ten percent effective,” Zietlow recalls. “All other masks, it was in the single digits. So it was not a practical solution.
”Simple measures — hand washing, cough etiquette, targeted isolation, and early treatment — were the cornerstone. “There are plenty of other solutions to try to prevent virus transmission,” he says. “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.
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.
His full account will appear in the forthcoming book Urban Legends by investigative journalist Christine Dolan.
Watch the complete interview on BrokenTruth.TV above and follow Col Jim Zietlow on X.
(2024) Epidemic of Fraud explores the bizarre media, medical, and partisan political attacks levied against a class of ancient medications, told from the perspective of a former CNN journalist and Hollywood industry veteran. Why were the people who allowed the fentanyl disaster to go unchecked so eager to discredit a drug that is safer than tonic water? Director John Davidson takes you into an audio/visual time machine back to 2020 to reveal the forbidden knowledge that our medical, academic, and political officials are desperate to hide from you.
