The Official COVID Panic Descends Into Absurdity

After four days, Philadelphia rescinded the indoor mask mandate it had suddenly reimposed. None of the corporate news outlets speculates on why the city reimposed it. but it's likely the authorities there expected it to kick off a domino effect where other blue jurisdictions would follow suit. Instead, the next day, a Florida federal judge ruled the airline and transit mask mandate unconstitutional.

In the case of Philadephia reimposing an indoor mask mamdate, there at least is a minmimal consistency: if your business is within city limits, the mandate applies; if not, it doesn't, although there's little other justification -- what changes if Joe's Bar, 50 feet outside the city, doesn't require masks, but Bill's Bar, inside the city, does? Will there be any difference in the medical risks, which must be at the same minimal level in either case?

The response of "Dr" Barbara Ferrer, the Los Angeles County health director in the image above, is even crazier. In response to the judge's order, which has led airlines, Amtrak, and some transit agencies to rescind their mask requirements, she's said not so fast.

Public Health is issuing Health Officer Order to note that masking in all public transit within LA County and in LA County indoor transportation hubs continues to be required.

Per the revised Order, masking continues to be required to be worn by everyone, 2 years of age and older, regardless of their COVID-19 vaccination status, on public transit within the County. This includes wearing masks on commuter trains, subways, buses, taxis, and ride-shares. Masking continues to be also required in indoor transportation hubs including airport and bus terminals, train and subway stations, seaport or other indoor port terminals, or any other indoor area that serves as a transportation hub.

Public Health will reassess the indoor masking requirement when COVID-19 community transmission in Los Angeles County drops to the Moderate level, OR the CDC’s assessment is that an order requiring masking in the transportation corridor is no longer necessary for protection of the public’s health, OR within 30 days of this Order, whichever occurs first.

As far as anyone can tell, this exempts airlines, Greyhound buses, and Amtrak trains themselves, although you must wear a mask inside airports and railroad terminals. But here's the problem, just starting with taxis, Uber, and Lyft: the LA metropolitan area is big; lots of it is outside LA County. If I call a cab in Pomona, which is in LA County, to take me to Ontario Airport, which is six miles away but in San Bernardino County, at worst I'll need to mask up for just a few minutes until we cross the county line, when I can rip it off without penalty (and presumably without any added medical risk).

Indeed, Ontario Airport is a major regional hub but outside "Dr" Ferrer's jurisdiction, and neither the airlines nor the TSA has any interest in enforcing mask rules there. Her order is a futile gesture and largely unenforceable even inside the county -- how many Uber drivers will follow it?

The absurdity applies as well to trains on the Metrolink LA area rail transit agency, which serves Ventura, San Bernardino, Riverside, and Orange Counties as well as LA County. Although Amtrak trains, which cover several of the same routes, are completely exempt even within LA County, the county health order does cover Metrolink trains on the same routes -- except that those routes also leave the county to reach their own destinations. So a Metrolink train to Ventura, say, will require masks until it leaves Northridge, the last station in LA County on that route, but no masks will be required for the remainder of the run to Ventura in Ventura County.

For that matter, if I ride a Metrolink train from downtown LA to Van Nuys, both stations within LA County, I must mask up -- but if I ride an Amtrak train between the same two stations, I don't need a mask. (Indeed, Amtrak will honor my Metrolink ticket on that route.) The distinction is purely political with no public health jusification.

Except that, from what I see on Facebook, Metrolink staff had informally ceased enforcement of any mask rule weeks previous even to the Florida judge's order. But in theory, if Metrolink were to reverse itself, there would be no public health reason to enforce masking on on half of a train's route, although the train would have the same people breathing the same air on both parts of the route.

But let's go a little farther. In recent months, the CDC has been extending the airline and transit mask rule piecemeal. Just a week ago, it extended that rule only until May 3 as it puzzled over the latest subvariant of COVID.

When the Transportation Security Administration, which enforces the rule for planes, buses, trains and transit hubs, extended the requirement last month, it said the CDC had been hoping to roll out a more flexible masking strategy that would have replaced the nationwide requirement.

The mask mandate is the most visible vestige of government restrictions to control the pandemic, and possibly the most controversial. A surge of abusive and sometimes violent incidents on airplanes has been attributed mostly to disputes over mask-wearing.

In the wake of the Florida judge's order, the CDC now appears to want to order the Justice Department to appeal the order simply to preserve the CDC's ability to reimpose masking in the future. But whether the airlines, Amtrak, the TSA, or anyone else will actually resume enforcement is an open question, given the cheers and applause that followed the airlines' lifting of enforcement earlier this week. Any resumption would clearly result in renewed "abusive and sometimes violent incidents on airplanes", which do nothing but damage the airlines' public image, and those would take place in an environment that was supposed to end on May 3 in any case (if, that is, you can believe the CDC).

The bottom line is that even if, on May 4, a new, even more contagious and even more fatal variant of COVID were to emerge, there would be no actual public health basis for the CDC to reimpose any of the controls from the past two years, since none, lockdowns, shuttered businesses, social distance, capacity restrictions, masking, vaccine mandates, ever actually worked.

"Dr" Ferrer is proving the point that the controls are based entirely on "because we say so". This isn't a winning strategy. Even Philadelphia figured this one out.