A photo of a Delta Airlines Boeing 747 on the ground. Delta was one of the airlines who dropped their mask mandate after Monday's decision.
A Delta Airlines Boeing 747 on the tarmac at an airport. Delta Airlines was one of the commercial carriers who dropped their mask mandate after Judge Kimball's ruling on Monday. Credit: cxjuanalvarez / pixabay.com Credit: cxjuanalvarez / pixabay.com

This past Monday a U.S. district court judge in Florida, Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, threw out the U.S. federal government’s mask mandate for all passengers and crew on commercial aircraft, and other types of passenger transport, including buses and trains.

The Biden administration immediately responded by declaring the mask mandate to be no longer in effect. Airlines could decide for themselves if they wanted to require masking. A number of companies said they would maintain the mandate; many said they would drop it.

For thousands of airline passengers and crew, the abrupt and unexpected ruling meant the need to wear a mask disappeared in mid-flight.

The Canadian federal government quickly responded. It would maintain its masking requirement for all federally-regulated transport, including air travel.

But for Canadian travellers the U.S. court decision complicates their lives.

Many trips from Canada require transiting through the U.S. or transferring from a Canadian to a U.S. airline. Canadians who want to stay safe, and who had come to see air travel as a relatively low-risk prospect, now have to re-evaluate that risk.

Ventilation in contemporary airplanes while they are in flight is excellent. But airplanes loaded with passengers and crew have to spend considerable time on the ground, before and after take-off.

Even under ideal circumstances one can easily spend forty minutes to an hour all told not flying, at both ends of a flight. And circumstances are not always ideal. That forty minutes to an hour – in a closed, not-well-ventilated environment – could easily expand to two hours or more.

Changed travel plans

In the wake of the U.S. masking decision some Canadians immediately changed their travel plans.

Dr Nili Kaplan-Myrth, an Ottawa family physician who has become known for her mass vaccination events, tweeted:

Dr. Kaplan-Myrth has been a fierce advocate for maintaining mask mandates until we get the COVID virus more fully under control. She has criticized the Ontario and other provincial governments for too-hastily lifting what she sees as no-cost and common-sense health measures.

In this view, Kaplan-Myrth is joined by other prominent heath practitioners. Among those is Dr. Robert Cushman the Medical Officer of Health for Renfrew County and District, west of Ottawa.

On CBC Radio Cushman commented he was seeing a “lot of social Darwinism out there.” What he means is that a lot of people have grown so weary of COVID and its attendant behavioural restrictions they’re ready to take a let-the-weak-and-vulnerable-fend-for-themselves attitude.

In another Tweet, Dr Kaplan-Myrth captured something of that phenomenon:

A young person this writer knows reports on the Sturm und Drang at her elementary school since the Ontario government forced school boards to drop their masking requirements.

Only one school board, the Ottawa District Public School Board, has defied the Ontario Conservative government and reinstated the mask rule. This child attends a school within the jurisdiction of another board.

The student reports that almost all her classmates have abandoned their masks, with the result that there are always a handful absent with COVID.

More troubling is the number of teachers who stopped wearing masks. This student’s home-room teacher is in that group, and he came down with a bad case of COVID that kept him home for more than 10 days.

When he returned to class, the teacher wore a mask. But the student reports he now coughs constantly and every time he yells (which he does rather more frequently than necessary) he gives himself a coughing fit and must take a long pause to catch his breath.

School was a lot more pleasurable and peaceful environment for this child when the mask mandate was still in force.

Psychologically the Ontario government’s decision to declare victory over COVID before the battle has been won has been difficult on this student, and on tens of thousands of others. Psychologists who deal with children tell us that clear rules, such as a universal indoor mask mandate, reduce the risk of anxiety for young people.

Crowded hospitals, delayed procedures

In Canada, we have taken the view that because we have a fully public health system, we can afford to let down our guard with regard to COVID. Many of us, including our political leaders, reason that we need not worry too much about a spike in the virus because everyone who gets sick is entitled to treatment.

Dr. Kaplan-Myrth and her medical colleagues do not agree. They can point to the massive number of COVID cases in Ontario revealed by waste water testing as evidence. That number is well over 120,000 province-wide per day.

Of more concern, is the impact of the current sixth wave of COVID-19 on the health system. As of April 19, there were well over 30,000 active cases of COVID in Ontario, with close to 1,500 in hospitals. Over 200 of those were in intensive care units (ICUs), the highest number in ICUs since mid-March of this year.

At the end of last week, the Montfort Hospital in Ottawa reported 89 staff off sick due to COVID. Those absences have forced the hospital to delay some supposedly non-urgent procedures.  Cancer treatment and orthopedic surgery are among the procedures that could be classified as non-urgent.

Other hospitals throughout Ontario have been reporting a similar rate of COVID-caused absenteeism.

A week ago, before the onset of Easter, Ramadan and Passover which doctors fear will act as virus super-spreaders, Anthony Dale, head of the Ontario Hospital Association, warned that hospitalizations were accelerating during the sixth wave, and health worker infections were having an impact on hospitals capacity to cope.

“Widespread illness among health care workers due to community spread of COVID-19 is directly impeding the ability of hospitals to operate normally at this time,” Dale said in an emailed statement to media.

The definition of sanitation

The U.S. judge’s decision to throw out the federal mask mandate had nothing to do with health considerations.

Rather, Judge Kimball Mizelle ruled on narrow, jurisdictional grounds.

The Centers for Disease Control, the federal agency that put the mandate in force, did so on the basis of the need to ensure proper sanitation, a matter for which it has legal responsibility. The judge ruled, however, that the word sanitation could be defined in various ways, and she chose to accept only one narrow definition of the word.

Judge Kimball Mizell would not accept a definition of sanitation that included keeping the air as free as possible of a highly-infectious virus. U.S. legal experts say the judge’s choice was capricious and arbitrary.

In Canada, the mask mandate was implemented through a federal cabinet-level order-in-council, based on legislated federal health regulations. Currently, there are no challenges to that mandate before Canadian courts.

The virus does not respect borders, however. A ruling by an obscure 35-year-old judge in Florida, who was appointed by Donald Trump in the dying days of his presidency, after he had been defeated at the polls, could have an effect on Canadians’ health.

What are the potential dimensions of that effect? Dr. Kaplan-Myrth, who has seen the virus both as a physician and as a victim, describes the long-term impact of COVID on her this way:

“What’s it like to be back at work after two weeks off sick with COVID-19? It isn’t yet 4 p.m. and I’ve had enough. That’s a problem. Headache is a big issue. I’m no longer contagious, but you won’t see me working my usual hours. How’s the pandemic ‘let ‘er rip’ phase going for you?”

On Wednesday evening, April 20, the U.S Justice Department announced it would appeal Judge Kimball Mizell’s ruling if the Centres for Disease Control deem it necessary to maintain the mask mandate.

Karl Nerenberg

Karl Nerenberg joined rabble in 2011 to cover Canadian politics. He has worked as a journalist and filmmaker for many decades, including two and a half decades at CBC/Radio-Canada. Among his career highlights...