As you may know, airlines are now making mask mandates optional after a federal judge from Florida struck down the Whitehouse mask mandates for travel.
Good.
But masks aren’t the issue anymore.
Since the beginning of all this, my wife and children and I have been on a lot of flights, and my wife and I have managed to not ever put a mask on our 3 year-old son. Not one single time.
We’ve seen that quite a few other parents have not been as fortunate. Some have been banned on flights for outright not complying, while others have been banned because their toddlers refused to wear one (another story here). So we don’t take it lightly that, though things sometimes got tense, we’ve been able to fly without our oldest son wearing one.
It was so incredibly odd to me though; for a society that has become so eerily permissive with children (teaching sex and sexuality to kindergartners, giving hormone blockers to 7 year-olds, etc), we all of a sudden found our collective spine and turned very hawkish toward them over face coverings. Yes, our line in the sand was face masks… that don’t work… on an age group that is extremely low risk... in airplanes that already meet very high standards of sanitation and cleanliness.
One other things to note is that the legal precedence that Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle cited for striking down the mask mandates for travel is that he CDC had improperly invoked what is known as the "good cause exception" to do away with public notice and comment on the mandate, and that it failed to adequately explain its decisions in violation of administrative law. Judge Mizelle writes that:
"Because 'our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends, the Court declares unlawful and vacates the Mask Mandate."
Which means that even if the CDC were to come out with another statement, we should all know that it is not lawful for them to dictate to other entities what to enforce. We need to remember this should this happen again, and I have a feeling it will soon.
This particular era may be over, but for those who cheered on the attacking of parents and children, and who heaped on insults of your own, we see you, and you will reap what you have sown.
For the rest of us, buckle up. Nothing has ended except this small moment in time. There will be more soon.