Figuring Out Mask Mandates Feels Like I'm on a First Class Flight to Hell
This is your ROUTINE CHECKUP for 4/22/22. The information included here, while accurate at publication, is subject to change.
The End of Mask Mandates: News on mask mandates has shifted a lot this week. On Monday, a federal judge in Florida struck down the CDC’s directive to wear a mask, a national rule that applied to all U.S public transit, airports, and other transportation hubs (like train stations). This initiated a windfall of terrible COVID policy decisions. Within 24 hours, all major U.S. airlines and Amtrak dropped their mask requirements—news met with mid-flight cheers. (FWIW, Delta Airlines is also taking people banned from the airline for not masking off their no-fly list.)
On Tuesday, Uber and Lyft lifted their requirement that drivers and riders wear masks while allowing masking to stay in place in jurisdictions that require it. The next day, the Department of Justice filed an appeal against the Florida judge’s decision. But, because the DOJ isn't seeking an emergency stay, the federal mask mandate will not be in place during litigation.
Some jurisdictions still require masking on public transit, like NYC and Portland. Los Angeles County is reinstating its mandate effective Friday. There are no such requirements in Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix, or Newark airports. D.C.’s Metro system has announced that masking will be optional for passengers, and Philadelphia has rescinded its indoor mask mandate as well. (Sources: BuzzFeed News, CNN, Fox 5 Atlanta, Twitter, The Washington Post, Axios, and The New York Times)
It Makes Total Sense if You Still Don’t Want to Get COVID: Right now, policymakers are playing a dangerous game by eliminating COVID precautions. And I agree with this piece that avoiding the coronavirus as much as possible is a good thing. You might catch it anyway—thanks, in part, to confusing public health guidance and the general giddiness to forgo precautions. But delaying infection through masking and boosters, if you’re eligible, allows scientists more time to develop better treatments and preventative measures. The ones highlighted in this piece include an antiviral nasal spray that works better than currently available antibody treatments and a vaccine now in human clinical trials to see if it’s effective against all COVID variants. (Source: Slate)
The Final Pandemic Betrayal: This piece is gut-wrenching, and I believe this paragraph sums up the crux of it well: “Deaths from COVID have been unexpected, untimely, particularly painful, and, in many cases, preventable. The pandemic has replaced community with isolation, empathy with judgment, and opportunities for healing with relentless triggers. Some of these features accompany other causes of death, but COVID has woven them together and inflicted them at scale. In 1 million instants, the disease has torn wounds in 9 million worlds, while creating the perfect conditions for those wounds to fester. It has opened up private grief to public scrutiny, all while depriving grievers of the collective support they need to recover. The U.S. seems intent on brushing aside its losses in its desire to move past the crisis. But the grief of millions of people is not going away.” (Source: The Atlantic)
Now’s Not The Time to Dispense with COVID-19 Precautions
“In reality, the United States has experienced a concerning rise in cases in recent weeks because of the spread of new omicron subvariants. Failing to take this seriously could put vulnerable Americans at risk. We fear that Americans don’t have a good sense of the true state of the pandemic. Some of the confusion can be traced back to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “covid-19 community level” metric introduced in February. The change was misleading, causing many in green areas to think they are at low risk of contracting the coronavirus, when in reality, the metric mainly indicates that they would have access to a hospital bed if they fell seriously ill.” (Source: The Washington Post)
‘It Doesn’t Make Sense’: Black Residents Southwest of the City Left Without an ER
“AMC South serves a majority Black population whose uninsured rate skyrockets above the national average of 8.6%. In East Point, where the hospital resides, 17% of the population under age 65 don’t have health insurance. Emergency rooms are legally required to treat uninsured patients under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. Urgent cares are not bound under this act, but Wellstar said they intend to continue to treat uninsured patients. There’s also an already stark life expectancy gap for residents south of the city compared to people who live in the northern part of Atlanta, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Residents worry Wellstar’s decision could exacerbate that.” (Source: Capital B)
Have We Already Ruined Our Next COVID Summer?
“This time around, some of the variables are a bit different. The virus, for one, has changed. In the past year, SARS-CoV-2 has only gotten better at its prime operative of infecting us. High transmissibility nudges the natural set point of the pandemic higher: When the virus moves this fast among us, it’s simply harder to keep case levels ultralow. “We have a lot less breathing room than we used to,” says Alyssa Bilinski, a health-policy researcher at Brown University.” (Source: The Atlantic)
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