Tag Archives for masks.
An American Airlines pilot, who identifies as Caucasian, received an indefinite suspension for violating the federal mask mandate in December 2021. He is suing for… racial discrimination.
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.
You want to watch your shows, you don’t want to hear babies crying on the plane, and you… don’t want to get Covid-19 again. Who knew there was one product to address all of these needs – at once?
Serial entrepreneur Steve Kirsch, who co-invented the optical computer mouse in 1980, has developed a real hatred for mask-wearing. It isn’t just that he doesn’t want to wear one. He doesn’t want anyone else to, either. When he flies, he offers other passengers money to take theirs off.
And he has a lot of money. He founded an internet search company in the 90s that he sold to Disney, and built several other companies including a anti-spam provider. So he thinks nothing of starting out with an offer of $100, and going up from there.
Throughout the pandemic I was a proponent of the individual choice to mask. I favored airlines imposing their own mask requirements in spring 2020, long before the federal government made existing airline rules a legal requirement. I liked, though, that some airlines handled their exception policies differently, for instance Delta was more flexible with young children and so wasn’t kicking two and three year olds off of planes.
I’ve been a fan of properly wearing a high quality mask. These are no longer necessary as a Covid-19 precaution as such, but remain helpful against airborne spread of viruses generally.
Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R-CO) is being called out for opposing masks in public, while choosing to wear one on a plane when she travels. This photograph has been viewed on Twitter more than 1.5 million times. However, this narrative is a fraud.
The World Health Organization is recommending that countries re-institute masking on long haul flights, tying the policy to the XBB.1.5 subvariant of Covid-19 and should apply to “passengers arriving from anywhere where there is widespread COVID-19 transmission”.
WHO does not, however, indiscriminately recommend pre-departure testing for Covid-19.
We’re entering another Covid wave. Peak will probably come in mid-January. In the meantime there’s a lot more Covid in the U.S. We can see that in case numbers, but most cases go undetected. Perhaps the best data source is wastewater measures. Flu and RSV are rising at the same time!
Brazil is bringing back its air travel mask mandate. They say a surge in Covid-19 cases makes this urgent, but the rule isn’t going into effect right away. It starts Friday, November 25. Paper masks will be permitted as long as they are two-ply in airports and inflight, and there will be no limits placed on inflight service.
They won’t be limiting indoor gather at bars to watch the World Cup.
The Biden administration declared that they would stop enforcing the mask mandate. They said they’d appeal… if the CDC said it was important to do so. They swung at a pitch in the dirt, because the CDC then said it was necessary to defend a broad scope for their authority. This put the Biden administration in the position of having to pursue a mandate in court that they themselves no longer wanted to enforce. But they were in no rush. Oral arguments have been scheduled for… next year.
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 »
