< What The End Of The Mask Mandate Means For The Pandemic — And High-Risk Travelers

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Well, that didn't take long.

(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: Good morning, America. The major mask reversal...

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: The federal mask mandate for travelers is over after a judge strikes it down.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #3: ...As masks come off on planes, trains, airports...

CHANG: By Tuesday morning, less than 24 hours after a federal judge struck down the CDC's mask mandate for public transportation, videos like this one appeared on social media.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: ...That the Transportation Security Administration will no longer enforce the federal mandate requiring masks in all U.S. airports and on foreign aircraft.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CHANG: That's a crew member on a flight announcing the change to applause.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #4: The nation's largest airlines all dropped their mask requirements just hours after a federal judge ruled the CDC had overstepped its legal authority.

CHANG: That judge was appointed by former President Trump. Her decision cleared the way for masks to come off elsewhere too.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #5: Rideshare company Uber announcing overnight it is dropping mask mandates for drivers and riders.

CHANG: Airlines and ride-hailing companies seem pretty happy to dispense with the mandates as quickly as possible. After all, the FAA received nearly 6,000 reports of unruly airline passenger incidents last year, an all-time high. And more than 70% of those incidents were caused by mask conflicts.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

JEN PSAKI: So this is obviously a disappointing decision.

CHANG: That was White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Monday reminding everyone that the mask mandate had been set to expire this week anyway. That was, of course, before the CDC sought to extend the mandate by two weeks in the face of the BA.2 subvariant.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PSAKI: The CDC continues recommending wearing a mask in public transit. As you know...

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

CHANG: CONSIDER THIS - there is still debate over the sooner-than-expected end of the CDC's mask mandate on public transit, and it's raising questions over how and if the Biden administration can enforce public health policies as this pandemic endures.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

CHANG: From NPR, I'm Ailsa Chang. It's Tuesday, April 19.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

CHANG: It's CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. Now, we should be clear. Masks are not coming off on all public transportation everywhere. Many transit agencies around the country, including those in New York and Chicago, say they will still require masks. But major airlines, along with Uber, Lyft and Amtrak, well, they say masks are no longer mandated. So what will this change mean for travelers, especially those vulnerable to infection or very young children who still can't be vaccinated? I talked about that with two colleagues from NPR's science desk - correspondents Maria Godoy and Selena Simmons-Duffin.

All right, Selena, let's start with you. Can you just talk about this federal district court decision that came down yesterday? Like, tell us a little bit about the case and what the specific ruling is.

SELENA SIMMONS-DUFFIN, BYLINE: Right. So this challenge was filed last July, and it came from an organization called the Health Freedom Defense Fund, which is based in Idaho. But other than that, there's very little public information about it. Also in the complaint were two women who have anxiety when they fly. And so they argued that the masks made their anxiety worse, and that's not one of the conditions that's exempted from the requirement.

So these plaintiffs attacked the mask rules on all sorts of different fronts in the complaint. And the district court judge, Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, basically agreed with all of their objections. She found it was unlawful and vacated the rule for the whole country.

CHANG: For the whole country - OK. Maria, as we heard earlier, airlines, you know, like even in the middle of flights, made announcements to people saying they no longer had to wear masks. And I'll be getting on a plane this week. I'm just wondering - what is the risk right now of being exposed for those of us who are traveling on public transportation?

MARIA GODOY, BYLINE: Well, let's start by talking about air travel because airplanes themselves have really good air filtration systems when they're in flight, but the ventilation isn't so great on those tightly packed tunnels you use to get on the plane. And the same goes for when you're sitting on the tarmac. I've seen aerosols experts post photos on Twitter of their own air travels. They're using carbon dioxide monitors to show just how poor the ventilation can be on a plane just before takeoff. The good news is that once you're in the air, that filtration system is on.

Dr. Edward Nardell is an expert in airborne disease transmission at Harvard. He says the air on airplanes is compartmentalized in such a way that you're really just sharing air with people in the few rows around you, not the whole plane.

EDWARD NARDELL: If you're immediately next to somebody who is highly infectious, your best protection is a mask - and a tight-fitting one at that - rather than depending on the ventilation.

GODOY: In other words, airplane air can be good, but he's going to keep wearing a tight-fitting mask when he travels. That means a respirator mask, like an N95, KN95 or KF94.

CHANG: OK. Well, what about travel on, say, like, buses or ride-sharing services like Uber or Lyft?

GODOY: Well, Nardell says research prior to the pandemic found ventilation on buses can be pretty bad in some cases. That's not always true. It depends on the bus. But certainly, crowding doesn't help. Opening windows can help, but that's not always possible on a bus. So he strongly suggests you keep wearing a mask in that situation. As for ride-sharing services, as you mentioned earlier, Uber said today it will no longer require drivers or passengers to mask up on rides.

CHANG: Right. OK, well, you know, one argument among people who wanted this requirement to be gone is that, you know, they were saying, people who are vulnerable or worried can just wear their own mask themselves. Can you just explain for us why that is not equivalent to everyone wearing masks on public transit?

GODOY: Well, look, we know one-way masking is highly protective. But I can't stress this enough - you need to be wearing a respirator. I'm not talking about cloth masks, which really don't do much against omicron. Surgical masks are a step up. But really, if you want to be protected, you need a respirator. Respirators can't completely eliminate the risk of getting infected, but they make a big difference. And you protect yourself further by getting vaccinated and boosted. With omicron, the evidence shows you really need that third shot. But yeah, I mean, protection...

CHANG: Absolutely.

GODOY: ...Would be more if everyone were wearing a mask.

CHANG: Well, Selena, I know that you have been talking to some public health and legal experts who are looking at this ruling, and they're saying this ruling's kind of just sort of pretty out there. Why is that?

SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Well, as you mentioned, the judge in this case was confirmed and nominated by President Trump. This was all very recent. And she was given a rating of unqualified by the American Bar Association when she was nominated because of, quote, "the short time she has actually practiced law and her lack of meaningful trial experience."

So the health law experts I've talked with say her opinion in this case is just very poorly reasoned. Erin Fuse Brown, who teaches law at Georgia State University, told me it reads like one of her first-year law students' final exam.

ERIN FUSE BROWN: It reads like someone who had decided the case and then tried to dress it up as legal reasoning without actually doing the legal reasoning.

SIMMONS-DUFFIN: So as an example, Fuse Brown told me sanitation is a public health term that broadly means taking steps to prevent the spread of a disease. But in this opinion, Judge Kimball Mizelle interpreted the word sanitation to just mean physically cleaning.

FUSE BROWN: She says, given that sanitation means to clean something, to destroy disease particles, then CDC can't just ask people to wear masks because it doesn't literally destroy the virus, to pass it through a mask. It just seemed crazy to me to read the statute that way.

CHANG: So where does all of this leave the CDC in future outbreaks, like the ongoing BA.2?

SIMMONS-DUFFIN: In the short term, Fuse Brown told me this really ties the agency's hands. And she says it raises its own questions of who should have power over public health rules.

FUSE BROWN: Even if we're skeptical about agencies or even about Congress' ability to make good judgments in this time, we certainly do not want these decisions to be in the hands of a single unelected judge.

SIMMONS-DUFFIN: She says the judge didn't open any doors for CDC to come back and change the mask requirement, she just declared it vacated and unlawful, period.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

CHANG: All right, that is NPR's Selena Simmons-Duffin and Maria Godoy. Thank you to both of you so much.

SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Thank you.

GODOY: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

CHANG: And now we're going to bring in NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith to talk through the political stakes here. Hey, Tam.

TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Hey.

CHANG: All right. So White House press secretary Jen Psaki called this federal court decision disappointing. What do you think the administration's next move is going to be?

KEITH: We don't know yet. Psaki told reporters on Air Force One today that the Department of Justice is taking its time to figure out next steps. But she made clear that no decision had been made yet. The president was asked today whether people should continue to wear masks on planes, and he said, quote, "that's up to them."

For the administration, there is a concern about letting this stand as a legal precedent. There's also a concern about being seen as rolling over on something that public health experts say could be really problematic down the line.

And politically, you know, the White House has been trying to move into the next phase of the pandemic. And President Biden has been taking a lot of heat from progressives who are concerned that he's now putting politics ahead of public health.

CHANG: Well, what about the politics here? Because, I mean, there were videos of people celebrating on planes. There was cheering and clapping. How much would you say that reflects actual public opinion? 'Cause aren't there a lot of people out there who wanted these mask mandates in place?

KEITH: Like everything with the pandemic, it's polarized. Democrats are overwhelmingly in favor of the mandate continuing, and Republicans are overwhelmingly opposed. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll found earlier this month that 51% - so a narrow majority - thought the mandate should be allowed to expire, and 48% said it should continue.

And this makes the politics for the White House sort of a no-win situation. Liberals are upset, and the White House doesn't get credit from independents or from conservatives for lifting the mandate because it came from a judicial ruling. Psaki insisted that - as she often does - this is not being driven by politics at the White House.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PSAKI: Well, I've seen those videos. Anecdotes are not data, right? And certainly that does tell a part of the story. But we don't make these decisions based on politics or based on the political whims on a plane or even in a poll. But I would note in polls, they - and data, lengthier data - there are still a lot of people in this country who still want to have masks.

KEITH: And she was speaking on the one airplane where the administration still has total control, Air Force One. The White House had asked that everyone today continue to mask up.

CHANG: Right. Air Force One quite possibly now the only plane in America where everyone will be wearing masks. OK. So I guess the question here is, even if the Justice Department does appeal this lower court decision, do you think that there's any going back to universal masking at this point? What do you think?

KEITH: The mask requirement had been hanging on by a thread, with many passengers on public transportation and planes barely complying. And this is just the latest example of the pandemic moving into a new phase, where community sacrifice in the name of public health is being replaced by individual choices.

Zeke Emanuel, a professor of public health management who consults regularly with the White House, told me that this is a problematic time. It's two years into the pandemic, and it seems as though we have hit the wall, where people are no longer willing to make those sacrifices. And he's really discouraged by that.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

CHANG: All right. That is NPR's Tamara Keith at the White House. Thank you, Tam.

KEITH: You're welcome.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

CHANG: It's CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. I'm Ailsa Chang.

Copyright © 2022 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.