News reports: • Southwest Airlines cancels hundreds of flights because of work action by pilots and others who refuse vaccine mandate. • Lewis County NY Health System closes delivery suite because it fired many obstetrics nurses who were unvacccinated. • Portland OR faces severe police shortage as city fires unvaccinated officers, can no longer patrol schools or answer non-life-threatening 911 calls.

No problem. I received both injections of the Pfizer vaccine. I’m a good boy. My vaccine card is in my wallet. My QR code is on my phone. Papieren in ordnung. I stand ready to fill any personnel gaps immediately.

Oh wait. I don’t have a pilot’s license, much less a commercial, multi-engine, instrument-rated license. I am not a registered nurse, much less an obstetrics-qualified one. I am not a police officer, much less one trained to the standards of the State of Oregon.

That’s where bureaucrats go wrong, including health-care bureaucrats. They don’t see individual human beings, each with their own hopes, their own abilities, and their own skills and training. They see only a homogeneous mass of people who resemble auto parts – interchangeable and replaceable at the bureaucrats’ whim.

Too few airline pilots? Hire private Cessna pilots. Too few obstetrics nurses? Send in the National Guard. Too few police officers? No matter, we defunded them anyhow – fewer cops mean less crime, right? Who wants self-reliant, independent-minded pilots, nurses, or cops? The only qualifications for those positions is that the applicant be totally subservient to our pronouncements today. Tomorrow we may say just the opposite. So what’s your problem?