(John Ransom, Headline USA) Twenty-two countries have dropped mask mandates completely since the beginning of the year, according to a survey by the Epoch Times.
The unmasked include the UK and Ireland, along with other European nations including Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, The Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Latvia, Croatia and the Czech Republic.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson set the tone back in January when he announced the dropping of the mask mandates and encouraged people to stop working remotely, said the BBC.
In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been a bundle of contradiction when it comes to masking, first saying that it was unnecessary, then saying it was mandatory, then claiming it was necessary only for the unvaccinated, and belatedly admitting that cloth masks don’t work.
Irish authorities will not enforce Covid mask-wearing on passengers flying with international airlines whose home countries have axed the requirement. https://t.co/auyw0vt5fN
— Irish Times Business (@IrishTimesBiz) April 28, 2022
Dr. Shruti Gohil, the associate medical director of epidemiology and infection prevention at UCI Health, said that while ending the mask mandate is a complicated decision, the transition between pandemic and endemic, where the virus is everywhere, makes this a good time to end the mandates.
“You’ve got to end it sometime,” Gohil concluded, about mask mandates in the United States.
But not if you’re Joe Biden.
The Biden administration has appealed the decision by the courts to drop the mask mandate on public transportation. Doing so, the administration is trying to retain the government’s ability to take wide-ranging health measures during pandemics.
“I would say CDC is actually at the very height of its legal powers. And if it can’t do this [in requiring masks], I’m not sure what it could do to protect the public’s health,” Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University, told PBS about the Biden appeal.
But Gohil also said that the world isn’t done with mandatory masking and such measures will be brought back in the case of another pandemic or if COVID transmission rates go up, according to the Epoch Times.
“When rates go up, we should get those masks back on, and when rates go back down, we might be able to be more liberal,” she said.
