The United Kingdom’s largest airport and two major British airlines have already dropped their mask mandates, according to reporting by the BBC, but Joe Biden is keeping the travel mask mandate in place in the U.S. and continues to fight attempts to end it.
The Washington Free Beacon reports:
London’s Heathrow Airport, along with British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, will now only require passengers to wear masks if the country they travel to mandates it. Prime Minister Boris Johnson in January ended the United Kingdom’s mask requirement on public transportation.
Joe Biden promised during his presidential campaign in 2020 to “shut down the virus,” but during his time in office the CDC has prolonged most of the pandemic restrictions. The CDC recently extended its mask mandate on public transportation until April 18th.
Biden instituted the mandate via an executive order shortly after he was inaugurated. In February, Biden also extended his national emergency declaration for the COVID pandemic, citing its “significant risk to the public health and safety of the Nation.”
Last year, the White House’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, suggested that masks on planes may never go away.
“I think when you’re dealing with a close space, even though the filtration is good, that you want to go that extra step,” Fauci said.
According to reporting by the Washington Free Beacon:
Fauci was responding to a Senate hearing in December, in which top airline CEOs suggested that superior air filtration on planes precludes the need for masks. Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly said “the case is very strong that masks don’t add much, if anything, in the air cabin environment,” which is “very safe and high-quality compared to any other indoor setting.” And American Airlines CEO Doug Parker concurred that airplanes are “the safest place you can be” indoors amid the pandemic because “they all have the same HEPA filters and air flow.”
Studies have also revealed that the risk of spreading the coronavirus on airplanes is low, even among the unvaccinated.
In a study from the Department of Defense, which was conducted in 2020, researchers discovered that fellow travelers must be exposed to a COVID-infected passenger for at least 54 hours to contract the virus.
Even though they support some of the most authoritarian masking measures, Democrats have often been caught on camera maskless, even while flying. In July of 2021, Texas Democrat lawmakers chartered private flights to Washington, D.C., to prevent the Republican-led legislature in the state from passing bills on election reform and gun rights. During those flights, they were photographed maskless, sitting extremely close to one another.
