For those who operate passenger trains, the mask mandate has been extended until April 18th.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/10/us-exte ... il-18.html

Bart

I was on Auto Train a couple months ago. Not only did the announcement say that it was a LAW you wear a mask the COBS said they would stop the train and put you off. You are to pull your mask down, take a bite, then put it back up before you chew. And of course he was doing the announcement from the lounge car without his mask!

They’re working on new guidelines. See: https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/statements/2022/03/10/statement-regarding-face-mask-use-public-transportation

Update:

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/598 ... sportation



More at the link.

Still needs passed by the House and signed by the President.

Phil Mulligan

Everyone else has moved on but since we are federally regulated we get to suffer a bit longer. Oh joy. This refusal to recognize reality means that people will choose to partake in leisure time activities that do not require a mask, which is sure to negatively impact us.

The states are ending mask mandates at exactly the moment we're hearing of yet another COVID variant.
I would say this is exactly what I was telling folks would happen at such a time, but any of us could have seen this coming. I don't mean that as a "They're trying to make it tough for us just because they're the mean government."
I mean it because it's been made very clear to us long ago that this thing is morphing and would be around for quite a while. While I clearly hope it not to be the case, I fully expect this to keep going for quite some time. Pandemics can sometimes vanish overnight. The 1918-19 flu pandemic ended quite quickly, mostly because most researchers today consider that the flu then simply went through the entire population and killed everyone is was going to kill (including my great grandmother, who passed away an hour after she got the word on 11-11-18 that the war was over and that her son was going to come home from France).
After about a year of this with no end in sight, I got tired of people around me griping about wanting to get back to normal, as if there was anyone who didn't want that. The genie is out of the bottle and he's gonna be around for a while.
If this new variant (or the ones you can count on that are coming in the future) causes real issues in this country, masks are as part of your wardrobe in public as pants and shoes. It's just as it is. I don't like it anymore than any of you, but there it is...

Agreed Lee, except for the "back to normal". I'd be thrilled to see us adapt the things we have learned, like most people working from home and telecommuting, raising minimum wages, and (apart from some whiners) resilience. Mask, schmask...... it wasn't like they expected me to wear a space suit or cut off an arm.

Just for information:

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200 ... lence.aspx

Has the TSA addressed this issue yet? We’ll be posting new signs: “Flatulence within the confines of the cab is strictly prohibited. Penalties per infraction are as follows….”

Excellent points, Dave. I agree that telecommuting has been a true godsend for folks who had jobs that would allow this. I've even read that houses near light rail hubs around NYC aren't selling for nearly what they used to as many folks are working from home who previously worked from an office it took them a while to get to.
This was a very easy sell for environmentalists, too. Less cars/buses/trains moving to and fro now!
Yeah, this mask thing didn't come as a shock because Asian countries had been using them for generations.

Two things without wading too deeply into the politics of this:

1. It'll be interesting to see, come April, what the new standards/requirements are. The COVID Tsar at the White House is stepping down. News reports indicate that it's part of the current Administration's effort to move away from an emergency footing. I suspect that stance will be seen in further regulatory efforts.

2. I suggest, when discussing masks, we use a little empathy on both sides of the issue. For example, my daughter's school is mask optional now, but my daughter has a speech impediment, likely caused by her spending the entirety of her existence at school in a mask. If you are an adult, especially if you don't wear one for 8 hours a day, it probably doesn't seem like a big deal to you. Trying to find a speech therapist who will treat her, without a mask is still nearly impossible to the point it's almost Kafkaesque. One of my employees is deaf and reads lips perfectly. The last two years have been hell on her. So calling people who complain about masks "whiners" isn't a good solution. I respect anyone that wants to voluntarily wear a mask, but am confounded by a lot of people who fail to understand that such mandatory policies have different effects on different people.

I didn't. I called people who lack resiliency and didn't develop it when they needed it whiners

And it is this very lack of empathy for the many people royally screwed by mask mandates, from this severely-hearing-impaired person to the young people developing speech impairments, who don't have any choice, that make so many people react with utter contempt and hostility towards people with that attitude.

"Resiliency" is NOT the issue here. It's submission to unproven orthodoxy at great personal cost.

Lockdowns caused more harm than good, by a long shot. The cloth and non N95 masks that most people wore the last two years are now being found to have had little to no effect at all. The "miracle" vaccine was found to be extremely temporary. All three shots that I got have basically lost all effectiveness. Yet I made it this far and have not contracted it.

There will always be new variants, delivered to us with all the panic and concern that the news media can muster. I refuse to participate any longer. I have properly placed the risk from covid where it belongs in the hierarchy of risks that I take, and I think a lot of us have finally figured out how to do that.