stupidhead

They probably surveyed 1000 employees of the CDC mask cult who fly once every decade or so. Washington's so completely out of touch with the rest of the country that it's not even funny. I haven't needed to go read the Onion because this administration satirizes itself.

I thought there was a bill in the Senate repealing the mandate.

t325

I want to see that survey repeated with people actually in airports. The results will be much different.

js1993

It passed the Senate, but Pelosi won't bring it to the floor in the House. Gee, wonder why.

stupidhead

We don't even need a survey.

Just count the number of people wearing masks vs. not, and do a random sampling of airports where it is optional. The most accurate indicator of what people actually want is the action(s) that people choose to take when given a choice.

ORDtoMEM

It was a political poll from Morning Consult, and a couple others I think, that they determine things like Bidens approval rating so it goes without saying that the poll isnt a bunch of Biden lovers as he was underwater. However the people that fly with any regularity are a very small minority of Americans as most people never fly or fly once or twice a year and are probably less likely to care.

LETTERBOY

Not only that, but the judge drew heavily from the Supreme Court ruling striking down vaccine mandates. The Supremes will pay attention to that.

Agreed. I don't see how this ends well for them. They're just wasting time (& my tax money).

jimlad48

Given the very positive response to its ending, the fact that most people seem to want the choice and not be mandatory, it feels like a PR disaster by CDC to keep insisting on mandatory masking right now.

Look at wider picture and the risk is you burn political capital and public goodwill on an issue where currently the risk isn't that great, and for what?

This feels like a disaster in making - the airlines and public are done with mandatory masking - keeping this going will be a political gift to opponents as it becomes a 'we trust you yo do right thing while Biden tells you what you must do and controls you' issue. The optics are terrible.

mtofell

Something stinks about the poll showing "Most Americans Favor Continued Masking on Planes". The explanation a few posts up doesn't convince me. Sure, FTers are not your average citizen but entire planes of people were "burning" masks like bras when the announcement came out yesterday. Biden admin. would be crazy to fight this but as of right now it appears they are going to. Is there really a world in which we are forced back into mask wearing immediately due to some legal challenge? Are the Dems (and more specifically Biden) really that tone-deaf?

GrayAnderson

I mean, lower courts do "odd" things all the time. It wasn't called the "Ninth Circus Court of Appeals" for no reason. It's why we have an appeals process: Otherwise, lower-tier judges might not feel constrained to act within the law in one direction or another. The only real exception is the double jeopardy rule (which mostly just stops the government from appealing against an acquittal). In a good part of the world, the prosecution can appeal just like the defense can.

As someone else said, I'm fairly certain that this is about the power to impose the mandate in the abstract. Absent pursuing a stay (which I think they've implicitly conceded would be I suspect that if the CDC could walk away with a ruling that said "This was nominally within your power but you can't evade standard rulemaking powers indefinitely under the guise of an emergency" they might be just as happy to do so as long as they retain the power to react in an emergency.

That is, of course, probably the biggest risk to their position: That the court doesn't just curtail their ability to do things (either ripping up the good cause exception or greatly constraining it...which is where things went with the eviction moratorium in particular.

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So, there's an easy way to square this circle: A lot of Americans support the mandate, but they're also not traveling a lot. Those who are traveling are less in favor. The difference is that, if I had to guess, there are a lot of folks who either (1) want the mandate there because either they or someone in their circle is immunocompromised or otherwise at risk, but because of said risks they're also not traveling; or (2) support the mandate in the abstract because it doesn't really affect them. Put differently, a question comparing support/opposition WRT the mandate with travel frequency would have produced interesting crosstabs. A third explanation is that you have folks abstractly supporting insert-policy-here...but also not shedding tears if it gets changed.

As to the other bit, I don't think it would be happening immediately. "Eventually", perhaps. But not in the short term. The government didn't seek a stay, and the longer this goes on the less likely it is that the government tries to "pop" it back into place (not that I'm convinced that such an effort would go terribly well, particularly if it came out of the blue).

One thing I'm wondering right now is how well the process is (or isn't) going at JFK, etc., with New York trying to reimpose mask rules. I figure it's not much of an issue elsewhere in the state, but at JFK/LGA if the TSA isn't "putting stick about" with the rules, I *really* don't want to think about how folks transiting with a connection between two...less masky...areas (say, Ohio and Florida) due to a clumsy connection is likely to take such an "ask" right now.

mtofell

Ah, I missed this part of it. Yeah, I think as traveling life gets back to normal and assuming there isn't some big uptick in cases, I just can't imagine anyone really pursuing something to move backwards. Especially as we draw closer to the mid-terms. I can now see the strategy from an optics standpoint. Fighting to "help keep everyone safe" until the bitter end. IMO, this will get slogged down in the courts for a while and then quietly go away. It's actually a pretty good hedge against future Covid variants. If there is an uptick, the Biden administration can claim they tried. If there isn't they just let it go away and no one will ever remember. With the modern day news cycle will anyone even remember this a week from now? (assuming it's not really carried out).

CyBeR

Depends on the question.

I too want other people to continue masking for the foreseeable future. However, I don't want to do it myself.

jimlad48

I don't think the opinion polls bear out reality - here in the UK we were told that the opinion polls were sharply divided or had pro mask majority - yet on ground masks have all but vanished. In London over last few months I'd say that its down to one or two in every 20 people. Its become a total non issue for people, who have quickly gotten rid of them. Polls exist to give answers to authors who need stories!

GrayAnderson

I believe that Tom Lehrer once hit this nail on the head:

In the alternative, Yes, Prime Minister also got to the point with polls:

Howmuch

I just flew out of AGP this morning to LPA, masks were compulsory here until yesterday and the Spanish are good rule followers, I expected the airport to have mainly masked people walking about given how recent the change was and how long the mandates have been in force.

We strode in unmasked and it felt very strange and was constantly waiting to be told to mask up even though I have been looking forward to this for the last 699 days, I would say 60-70 % of people were unmasked in the airport which after such a long time having to wear them and being a very busy place I was surprised.

Like others have said here, these polls have become very politically motivated and reality on the ground is very different.

We still had to mask up on the flight unfortunately.

Scifience

Exactly — there's also likely a high degree of overlap between people who are pro-mask mandate in this survey and are also too terrified of Covid to travel at all.