It only took the government two years and one court decision to come up with a masking policy that makes sense.
On Tuesday, Joe Biden said that wearing a mask should be a matter of personal choice. Masking is “up to them,” Biden told reporters while promoting his infrastructure bill in New Hampshire.
Now, while every airline, every bus company, and all public transportation services are ending their mask policies or modifying them, we’re exactly where we started two years ago. Masking should be a personal choice, not a government mandate.
Related: The Mask Mandate Is Over, and Some Leftists Are Sure We’re All Gonna Die
This is welcome news, of course. Think how much national angst we would have saved ourselves if this had been the government’s policy from the start.
Unfortunately, our cognitively addled president sorta forgot that he had ordered the Justice Department to appeal the ruling by a federal judge in Florida that ended the mask mandate on transportation. The DoJ has the CDC’s back as the public health agency attempts to maintain the mask mandate.
Several airlines dropped their mask mandates Monday night, hours after a federal judge struck down the mask mandate. The mask mandate had been set to expire May 3 after the Biden administration extended the requirement last week, noting it was contingent on the CDC’s assessment of current transmission rates attributed to the BA.2 omicron subvariant.
“Before the district court’s decision, CDC explained that the order would remain in effect while it assessed current health conditions, and that the Transportation Security Administration would extend its directive implementing the order until May 3 to facilitate CDC’s assessment,” the DOJ said Tuesday night. “If CDC concludes that a mandatory order remains necessary for the public’s health after that assessment, the Department of Justice will appeal the district court’s decision.”
Why Biden doesn’t just throw in the towel on mandating masks on planes, buses, and trains is a mystery. The government has lost the argument. Mandating masks at this point — and for only two weeks — is futile and unnecessary.
The DOJ said Tuesday that it “continues to believe that the order requiring masking in the transportation corridor is a valid exercise of the authority Congress has given CDC to protect the public health.”
“That is an important authority the Department will continue the work to preserve,” the agency’s statement said.
Mizelle’s ruling came days after the CDC decided it would keep its mask mandate in place until at least May 3 while it assessed the current threat of Covid infections on hospital capacity.
Spectator USA calls masking “performative safetyism.” And mid-flight announcements of the mandate’s end on commercial flights was a cause for joy.
After receiving instructions from the ground, the pilot on their plane emerged from the cockpit and announced that masks were no longer required. He then invited the passengers to “go ahead and throw them in the trash.” There was a swell of cheers as the passengers and crew were overcome by a euphoria of deliverance from the tyranny of overzealous Washington. For nearly two years, they had demanded compliance, despite “the science,” which had shown again and again that masks are of little to no use in stopping the spread of Covid and can cause serious psychological harm.
Washington never understood the objection to masks. They chalked it up to typical right-wing ignorance and conspiracy-mongering. They imposed the mandate and enforced it without a clue about why so many of us found masking an intolerable intrusion on our liberty and happiness.
Now they know.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member