Tag Archives for masks.
A passenger at an airport gate in 2026 wore a helmet and mask, and the internet reacted like someone had proposed bringing back federal mandates. But if nobody else is being forced to wear one, the outrage says less about PPE than about what the mask fight was really about.
Sean Duffy and Gavin Newsom are suddenly relitigating pandemic mask mandates and arguing over how people should dress on airplanes — a bizarre clash years after the rules ended. The exchange isn’t really about masks or manners at all, but about positioning for 2028 and appealing to their respective bases.
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!
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 »
