Transportation providers endanger health of traveling public in rush to abandon masking

With­in min­utes of hav­ing learned that a Trump-appoint­ed judge in Flori­da had issued a rul­ing yes­ter­day strik­ing down the Cen­ters For Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion’s fed­er­al reg­u­la­tion requir­ing face cov­er­ings on pub­lic trans­port, air­lines and many oth­er trans­porta­tion providers through­out the coun­try rushed to announce that masks were no longer required on board — includ­ing in some cas­es through irre­spon­si­ble mid-flight announce­ments made by jubi­lant pilots.

Post­ing again because Twit­ter deleted (?)

The end of the #maskman­date has this plane singing 

🎶 Throw away your masks 🎶 pic.twitter.com/BvvCNLE6Ts

— Guy P. Foot­ball (@Guy_P_Football) April 19, 2022

The sud­den pol­i­cy shift, made with absolute­ly no regard for the poten­tial adverse impacts on immuno­com­pro­mised pas­sen­gers, chil­dren, or those not wish­ing to trav­el in mask option­al envi­ron­ments, is yet anoth­er devel­op­ment that will like­ly help pro­long the pan­dem­ic — with dead­ly and omi­nous consequences.

“Let’s be real­ly clear about what is hap­pen­ing at this stage in the pan­dem­ic: We are giv­ing up on pub­lic health and embrac­ing the pri­va­ti­za­tion of health in ways that serve the able and young and write off any­one vul­ner­a­ble,” not­ed Meghan O’Rourke, author of The Invis­i­ble King­dom: Reimag­ing Chron­ic Ill­ness.

Tran­sit providers, with the notable excep­tion of New York’s Met­ro­pol­i­tan Trans­porta­tion Author­i­ty, wast­ed lit­tle time in fol­low­ing the air­lines’ “lead.” A news release sent this morn­ing that bore the logos of every major tran­sit agency in Puget Sound declared that mask require­ments would no longer be enforced.

In accor­dance with yesterday’s state­ment from the fed­er­al Trans­porta­tion Secu­ri­ty Admin­is­tra­tion (TSA), agen­cies pro­vid­ing tran­sit to rid­ers through­out the Puget Sound region announced that face cov­er­ings will no longer be required on tran­sit, at tran­sit facil­i­ties or in tran­sit hubs effec­tive today.

Par­tic­i­pat­ing in this announce­ment are the fol­low­ing agencies:

• Com­mu­ni­ty Transit
• Everett Tran­sit
• King Coun­ty Metro
• Kit­sap Transit
• Pierce Tran­sit
• Seat­tle Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (Seat­tle Streetcar)
• Seat­tle Cen­ter Monorail
• Sound Tran­sit

TSA’s ini­tial face mask require­ment went into effect on Feb­ru­ary 1, 2021. Pre­vi­ous to the TSA require­ment, Wash­ing­ton state and local health author­i­ties had issued man­dates for face cov­er­ings in pub­lic spaces.

While masks are no longer required on tran­sit, rid­ers are wel­come to con­tin­ue wear­ing face cov­er­ings if they wish. Please under­stand it will take time to update all of the announce­ments, signs, and oth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions relat­ed to the fed­er­al mask mandate.

The glib we’re done with COVID atti­tude under­pin­ning these and oth­er recent pol­i­cy changes is iron­i­cal­ly hav­ing the effect of ensur­ing that we will not be “done with COVID” any­time this year, or in the indef­i­nite future, for that mat­ter. The demise of mask­ing require­ments will also set the stage for an uptick in the trans­mis­sion of oth­er air­borne virus­es, includ­ing the flu and var­i­ous cold viruses.

A sto­ry pub­lished just last week by CBS spells out what is like­ly going to hap­pen next, espe­cial­ly to the coun­try’s avi­a­tion indus­try:

Air­lines that dropped mask require­ments are now suf­fer­ing staff short­ages due to COVID-19

By Megan Cerullo

April 11, 2022 | 5:15 PM | MoneyWatch

Over­seas air­lines are hav­ing to can­cel hun­dreds of flights as they grap­ple with coro­n­avirus-relat­ed staffing short­ages weeks after they ditched rules requir­ing pas­sen­gers and staff to mask up in the air.

Epi­demi­ol­o­gist and health econ­o­mist Eric Fei­gl-Ding not­ed on Twit­ter two weeks ago that what hap­pened in Europe was entire­ly predictable:

Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed King­dom drops restric­tions, air­lines like easy­Jet drops masks… and less than 2 weeks lat­er… huge spike in pilots and flight atten­dants out sick with COVID-19 unable to work, and 120 flights can­celled! Air­line CEOs asked for this.

The same thing is now like­ly to hap­pen here in the Unit­ed States.

“Wear­ing a mask when exposed to a car­ri­er with no mask: upper bound risk of infec­tion is 30%,” tweet­ed health jus­tice advo­cate Michael Gra­novet­ter, cit­ing a study in PNAS. “When every­one is masked: upper bound risk of infec­tion is 0.4%. Pub­lic health breaks down when one makes it about per­son­al choice.”

Air­line CEOs and oth­ers now par­rot­ing the par­ty line of the we want to go back to nor­mal crowd seem rather des­per­ate to move on from the pandemic.

But a return to the past is not pos­si­ble. There is no going back. The only direc­tion we can go is onward. In their eager­ness to declare the glob­al pub­lic health emer­gency known as the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic over, they are ensur­ing that ill­ness and death will con­tin­ue… and alien­at­ing even more peo­ple in the process.

“Delta, your flight atten­dants greet­ing us ‘would you like cham­pagne? Let’s cel­e­brate no more masks’ is not what I paid for,” tweet­ed Ify Ike. “It’s not only child­ish but also cre­ates an uncom­fort­able, and poten­tial­ly hos­tile envi­ron­ment for those of us still masked. COVID is also not seasonal.”

Delta is already backtracking.

The air­line put out a state­ment that read, in part: “We are relieved to see the U.S. mask man­date lift to facil­i­tate glob­al trav­el as COVID-19 has tran­si­tioned to an ordi­nary sea­son­al virus.” After get­ting roast­ed online for absurd­ly call­ing COVID-19 an “ordi­nary sea­son­al virus,” Delta’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions team changed the state­ment to read: “We are relieved to see the U.S. mask man­date lift to facil­i­tate glob­al trav­el as COVID-19 tran­si­tions to a more man­age­able res­pi­ra­to­ry virus.”

Staff short­ages, can­cel­la­tions, and lots of upset trav­el­ers are like­ly going to be a fre­quent occur­rence this sum­mer as air­lines strug­gle to man­age COVID-19, hav­ing giv­en up on the most effec­tive tools for pre­vent­ing the virus’ spread.