Tag Archives for cdc.
In April 2022 a federal district judge struck down the Biden administration’s transportation mask mandate. Did you realize that litigation over the mandate, though, was still ongoing?
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has issued a ruling dismissing the case as moot.
The restrictions imposed by the U.S. were performative. They were not sufficient to influence the course of the virus, and thus did not on their own make sense when instituted. Now that the government no longer even considers this a public health emergency it’s absurd that restrictions remain in place.
In the first 72 hours since the announcement that the U.S. requirement for a negative Covid-19 test to fly to the country would end United Airlines reported 2.4 million searches for international travel on its website.
To be clear, people still should not travel if they’re sick. But the testing requirement wasn’t just keeping people from traveling when sick. It was keeping them from travel because of hassle and uncertainty.
Telling vaccinated and boosted people under 50 not to go to Europe is wasting credibility. We have failure of elites in this country, and that’s a shame, because we wind up with people who see themselves as sticking it to those elites when it really matters, on issues like vaccines.
This opinion’s key passage makes the exact argument I’ve offered on this site for why CDC authority – on which the TSA mask rule relies – isn’t as broad as the administration claims and upon the mask rule rests.
Covid-19 self-tests, to be allowed for travel back to the U.S., must be overseen by a foreign call center employee. But wait times for call center employees may stretch into the hours. Be prepared, and consider a work-around.
The CDC is announcing today that fully vaccinated people should wear masks again in indoor public settings, because of spread of the Delta variant. People aren’t going to comply. However this change makes an extension of the federal transportation mask mandate more likely.
Testing is no longer needed for people entering the U.S., if it was ever helpful at all. The current testing rules do little to assure people entering the U.S. are negative, and it doesn’t prevent spread of variants. Now that vaccines are available there’s little reason to impose the requirement, which has amounted largely to theater – whether it’s people shopping for a negative test after testing positive, or receiving tests that don’t actually collect or analyze a sample.
In April the U.S. State Department issued ‘Do Not Travel’ warnings for 80% of the world’s countries due to coronavirus risk. They suddenly discovered the pandemic more than three months into 2021.
They updated their guidance to conform to CDC recommendations. But now the CDC has suddenly discovered vaccines – and is updating their guidance, too. The State Department will follow. And a new working group has been formed to talk about lifting travel restrictions where those restrictions are absurd based on the data.
A passenger has filed a lawsuit to strike down the federal mask mandate and the CDC requirement for a negative Covid-19 test when entering the country by air in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
