Mask rule for planes and trains still up in the air
DALLAS » The federal requirement to wear face masks on airplanes and public transportation is scheduled to expire next week, and airline executives and Republican lawmakers are urging the Biden administration to let the mandate die.
The fate of the rule — and consideration of an alternate “framework” of moves to limit the spread of COVID-19 — was under discussion Monday within the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Officials described it as a close call.
“This is a decision that the CDC Director Dr. (Rochelle) Walensky is going to make,” White House coronavirus-policy adviser Dr. Ashish Jha said Monday. “I know the CDC is working on developing a scientific framework for how to answer that. We are going to see that framework come out I think in the next few days.”
Jha said that extending mask mandate again is “on the table.”
The administration gave the rule a one-month reprieve in March so that public-health officials would have time to develop alternative methods of limiting the transmission of COVID-19 during travel.
Air rage
The mask mandate is the most visible vestige of government restrictions to control the pandemic, and possibly the most controversial. A surge of abusive and sometimes violent incidents on airplanes has been attributed mostly to disputes over mask-wearing.
Critics have seized on the fact that states have rolled back rules requiring masks in restaurants, stores and other indoor settings, and yet COVID-19 cases have fallen sharply since the omicron variant peaked in midJanuary.
“The American people
have seen through the false logic that COVID-19 only exists on airplanes and public transportation,” Republicans on the House and Senate transportation committees said Friday in a letter to the administration.
However, a recent uptick in cases could provide reason for the CDC to keep the mask rule a bit longer.
After a steep, two-month decline, the seven-day rolling U.S. average of new reported COVID-19 cases has turned slightly higher in recent days, although from relatively low levels.
Several prominent officials have contracted the virus, including the 82-yearold House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who tested positive for the virus last week after appearing — without a mask — at a White House event with President Joe Biden. Also last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo disclosed that they had tested positive after a gathering that was quickly dubbed a super-spreader event.
Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist at the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, believes that if the mandate is dropped,
more air travelers and airline crew members will get sick. He said the CDC made a mistake by linking mask guidance to hospitalization rates because less-severe but highly transmissible variants can still kill large numbers of people.
“In public health we try to prevent crashes. Medicine is basically mechanics who try to fix cars after they have already crashed,” he said. “Do you say, ‘Oh, you don’t need to buckle your seat belt today, hospital beds are not full?’ Who does that?”
Airlines started it
Airlines began requiring masks in 2020, months before the government mandate was issued days after President Joe Biden’s inauguration. Airlines faced financial ruin because of the pandemic, and the masks and other measures such as blocking middle seats were meant to reassure frightened passengers that flying was safe from the virus.
In December, the CEO of Southwest Airlines was forced to walk back a comment that masks didn’t do much to improve health safety in the cabin because planes have strong air filters.
Travelers have returned — the number of Americans getting on planes surged past 2 million a day in March — and airlines think they can sell plenty of seats without the mask rule.
“My flight attendants are begging us to stop this,” Frontier Airlines CEO Barry Biffle said. “Every day it’s causing all of these incidents on board, and it’s frustrating and it’s dangerous. You’re asking a 24-year-old flight attendant to explain it to someone who is mad” about the rule.
Unions that represent flight attendants once supported the mask rule but are now neutral. Officials say their members are divided, which could explain why the two largest U.S. flight-attendant unions declined to comment on the issue this week.
Executives of 10 airlines including American, Delta, United and Southwest wrote to Biden last month, urging the White House to drop the mask rule and a requirement that international travelers test negative for COVID-19 before flying to the U.S. “Much has changed since these measures were imposed and they no longer make sense in the current public health context,” the executives said.