On Monday, April 18, 2022, a federal judge struck down Biden’s cloth mask mandate for public transportation. That includes trains and other forms of public transportation, but I’m going to focus specifically on airplanes.  

Prior to the vaccines being widely available to anyone who wants them, and prior to the Omicron variant, I was a big supporter of wearing masks as much as possible. I still value masks to this day, but I’m just more selective about when and where I believe that they’re effective, and definitely more selective about when we should mandate them. Prior to vaccines/Omicron, wearing masks was one of the single biggest things we could do when we needed to be near one another to try to reduce the spread of the virus. But vaccines have changed everything and so has Omicron. 

At this point (April 2022) it has been almost a year that any adult in America who wants to get a vaccine can get one. If one is concerned about COVID in any way, the vaccine is the single best answer. Omicron has also changed everything because although it’s less dangerous, it’s much, much more contagious than the prior variants. Some winter 2021 estimates show it up to 400% more contagious as previous variants. In the winter of 2021-2022, this lead to an explosion of cases, regardless of if someone is vaccinated or not, and regardless of wearing a cloth facemask. 

One thing I’ve noticed is that much of our discourse around COVID is of mentalities that are pre-vaccine and pre-Omicron. I think people should be careful using a mentality from a couple of years ago, because what we understand (and the variants themselves) changes so dramatically over time. One example is that in the beginning we sanitized and wiped every surface down, some people leaving their mail or groceries outside for days, etc. In time, we learned that 99% of COVID is spread through the air, not physical touch of a surface or an item, so most sensible places stopped obsessing over that wiping down process. It doesn’t mean someone doesn’t care about COVID to stop wiping things down, it just means the science and what we know has changed. 

Another thing we’ve learned is how powerful ventilation is. As we look forward to the future (and living with COVID for the rest of humankind’s existence) one area of focus in addition to boosters and medical therapeutics is ventilation. It’s one of the most powerful tools we have to reduce the spread. And fortunately for us, airplanes are very well ventilated. 

We also have learned that Zero-COVID (also known as COVID Zero) which is the idea that we can get to 0 total cases and kill COVID completely, is never going to happen. It’s a fantasy. Some of us may have thought it was possible in the past with harsh enough lockdowns, quarantining and restrictions, but as China is currently showing us (most of the far East is being ravaged by Omicron to a degree they’ve never seen through two years of COVID) it just isn’t possible. If it was possible, then there’s logic in restricting air travel to and from certain countries or significant masking policy to stop a variant from coming from one country to another. But, because this isn’t possible, we have to accept the fact that whatever variant is in any other part of the world, we’ll surely get it. It’s not a matter of if, but when. Because of this, we need to look at airplanes as any other room or building that has 500-1000 people in it. And as of right now, we do not have a mandate for masks in a room of 1000 people, so why would we on airplanes, especially when the ventilation is stronger than most buildings?

Regardless of the facemask mandate, people still need to eat and drink, so people are rightfully allowed to do so. They can do this as long as physically possible to justify their mask being down, and no one is going to implement any limit on eating or drinking. Just imagine a flight that’s a few hours long, half the flight could have had their mask off half the time.  Stopping this isn’t anything someone would or could enforce, so people will do what they want (and need) to do to eat and drink as they see fit. Some have abused this for dragging out the time they’ve taken to eat something, and who’s to stop them?

Speaking of not wearing their mask during the entire ride, people often wear their mask wrong, either intentionally or unintentionally, too. It’ll be down beneath their nose or under their chin. Either way, it’s offering no support. This is another thing that is rarely enforced (although, undoubtedly a bit more frequently than people abusing eating over a long time) so the result is again, you’ve got less people actually offering the reduction in spread. When people talk about mandating a rule or law, we can’t forget that enforcement of that rule is equally as important. When you propose a law, if you’re not prepared to enforce it, then maybe you should reconsider the mandate in the first place.

Another thing that contributes to a lack of mask effectiveness is the lack of N95s being used. Although N95s do offer some modest reduction in spread, the cloth masks are borderline useless. And the reality is, most people wear cloth masks most of the time (including me for the past couple years.) There are plenty of reputable epidemiologists such as Michael Olsterholm who have argued that we have been doing masks all wrong the entire past 2 years by not making a huge distinction between cloth masks and N95s. Even the CDC themselves discuss a study where they say “Wearing a cloth mask was associated with lower adjusted odds of a positive test compared with never wearing a face covering but was not statistically significant.” (And that’s not even factoring in allowing people to eat, drink, wear it off their nose, etc!) In the beginning of the pandemic N95s were in short supply, but for months now there has been a large surplus as we overproduced. There’s no excuse for not wearing N95s if you believe in mask’s ability to reduce spread. If you’re passionate about masks but wear cloths, I’d encourage you to reconsider. 

If we’re going to mandate masks at any future date, whether it’s on airplanes or not, we really need to mandate N95 or it’s a big waste of time and simply theater to make people feel better and make it seem like we’re doing something. To do this, however, we need to collectively acknowledge that cloth masks offer little to no protection, and actually elevate the quality of the masks to N95s everywhere we can. I don’t know if the scientific community has the courage and collective agreement to do that, so I worry we’ll implement another theater-esque cloth mask mandate.

COVID is not done. No matter how much we’re all hoping, wishing and praying for it to be over, it’s not over. We need to be prepared to implement new safety and health measures in the future, including re-implementing certain mandates. A true, legitimate N95 mask mandate could certainly be one of those. If we do, we need to make sure that there isn’t extreme fatigue by the population at wearing masks. This is a real problem to be worried about. If we need to wear masks at pretty much every single point in the pandemic, regardless of lower hospitalizations and deaths, when will we be able to stop? There will always be immunocompromised or vulnerable people to protect, so will we wear masks forever?  And at what point will people get fed up and become 100% desensitized, because we always have to wear them? I think it’s important to loosen the rules when possible, to then put ourselves in the position to be able to re-implement when necessary. 

“When will we be able to stop?” is a really important question. That’s a part of the problem with most mandates. The CDC has made recommendations for implementing mandates, not even based in science. I know it sounds funny, but it’s true. Not only is it against the advice of the WHO, but there are almost no worldwide studies showing the effectiveness of masking in airplanes, this is especially true for post-vaccine, post-Omicron world. Because we implemented policy without studies to scientifically justify it, that begs the question, what study or updated numbers would justify ending the mandate? What is our off-ramp for when we think it’s safe to not mandate the masks? I have never heard one good answer.

If you’re going to require something to be done, I think the responsibility is on you to show sufficient evidence at why it’s effective, but equally as important, provide realistic targets for when it’ll end. It reminds me of America’s foreign wars, such as Afghanistan. It’s easy to complain about a withdrawal process or the harm that can come from withdrawing, but unless you’re able to articulately explain what victory looks like (and when we’ll be able to achieve it and leave) then we can’t stay there forever and we should come home. It’s the same concept with any sort of public health mandate. 

All that said, I am very happy that the mandate was struck down. However, I do have two major problems with ending this mandate.

I don’t like how this mandate was struck down. One individual judge (yes, appointed by Trump, but this is mostly irrelevant) having this much power is a problem. However, the mandate shouldn’t have ever been implemented from the DOJ and in this manner in the first place, I think it should have been done through better means, such as Congress. If it wasn’t implemented in this manner in the first place, then there wouldn’t be an opportunity for a single judge to strike it down. Biden chose to go around that process. You reap what you sow, as they say. I would also remind everyone on the left who is mad about a single judge making this ruling, I can bet that you weren’t mad (I sure wasn’t) when a single judge ruled against Trump’s Muslim travel ban or other areas where a single person ruled in your favor.

I also don’t like the fact that many (if not damn near all) of the airlines announced this update mid-flight. I’m sure it felt wonderful for those dying to rip off their mask (and it did create some happy, joyous videos) but it’s completely unfair to those who are on the planes and are more cautious about COVID, partially only on the plane because they felt safer due to the masks. Now, in my opinion, they aren’t actually much safer (for all the reasons listed above) they just feel safer, but it’s still unfair to change the rules in the middle of the flight. That should have been handled more respectfully. 

I don’t know what the future holds for future variants, future surges or future mandates. Mandates could very well be justified in the future based on the landscape of COVID. However, for where we are today, I am happy that they’re no longer required. 

-James