Tag Archives for masks.
Early in the pandemic you might pay $7 or even $10 per N95 mask, and there’s been a tremendous amount of fraud and scammy masks (especially scammy KN95 masks, made in China ostensibly to the Chinese standard) and KF94 South Korean masks that strangely have all Chinese language writing on the packaging.
But the truth is that masks just aren’t that hard to come by anymore.
Politicians will want to claim credit for victory over the pandemic. And once the Secretary of HHS declares this, the way the CDC’s mask rule is written that triggers a sunset. Let’s look at the actual rule’s language for how long it lasts,
In the latest Airlines Confidential podcast former Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza questions whether the CDC mask order actually applies to the time passengers spend on aircraft.
Let’s look at the order and its legal authority to see.
On April 1 the Harvey family was flying from Denver to Austin on Southwest Airlines. They had practiced for days with their two year old wearing a mask. Boarding went fine, but once seated the child took the mask off and the family was booted from the flight.
Father Erik Harvey went to Facebook and posted an 18 minute discourse on the events. A pilot named James Peck saw the video.
On a Spirit Airlines flight on Monday from Orlando to New York, a family was kicked off when their two year old, who was eating yogurt, removed their mask. The mother of the two year old girl is seven months’ pregnant, and their other child – traveling with them – is special needs.
Eventually everyone returned to the aircraft – except for the crewmember who made an issue of the mask in the first place.
Numerous passengers cheered as the woman and her travel companion were booted off the plane. And at the end of the video, once the departing passengers had cleared the aircraft, a flight attendant comes forward and does a dance of joy.
The holdings in two recent court rulings against the CDC’s eviction moratorium have caused questions about the legality of the Biden administration’s transportation mask mandate. The mask mandate goes beyond the specified example powers in the statute cited by CDC for its authority, and Congress may not have been able to delegate broader unspecified powers to the CDC even if it had wanted to.
Masks made sense on planes when, together with HEPA air filtration and downward air flow, they reduced the risk of catching Covid-19 on a plane.
Now vaccines are available. We’re going to have challenges keeping people masked up once they’ve been vaccinated. The rule needs to stay in place now, when most Americans haven’t had a chance to become vaccinated yet. It’s tough to know who has been vaccinated and who hasn’t been.
Two women were removed from an American Airlines flight from Fort Lauderdale to Chicago. You can see them walking away from the gate, with masks covering their mouths but not their noses. They’re escorted by an officer. Despite the presence of law enforcement, one of the women has words with a passenger waiting in the gate area – and it turns into a brawl, with the officer trying to stop the fight by grabbing at the shirt of one of the women.
John Kerry is a former U.S. Senator, former Secretary of State and former Democratic Presidential candidate. He is currently serving as United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate.
And he was photographed in American Airlines first class on a Boston – D.C. shuttle flight not wearing a mask in apparent violation of the President’s – and the CDC’s – mask mandate. He wasn’t eating or drinking. He was reading a book.
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 »
