Anthony Fauci — who is the current director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as well as the chief medical advisor to the president of the United States — admitted during an interview with Jonathan Karl of ABC News earlier today, Sunday, December 19, 2021 that he does not think that the time will ever come when people aboard airplanes will not be required to wear masks.
Video: Wearing Masks Aboard Airplanes May Always Be Required
At the 10:14 mark in this video from ABC News This Week, Jonathan Karl asked, “Okay…I…I…I…I also w…wanted to ask you a…about what the airline executives said this week about masks on airplanes. They…uh…several of the…of the top…you know…the…the CEOs of the top airlines said that on an airplane, you are actually safer…uh…than you are…uh…in an ICU that the protection with the filters…filtration system they have — they were suggesting that there really isn’t much of need for a mask on an airplane. Are we gonna get to the point where we won’t have to wear masks on airplane?”
“I don’t think so”, Fauci responded with a blank and tired look on his face as his eyes repeatedly blinked. “I think when you’re dealing with a closed space — even though the filtration is good — that you wanna go that extra step when you have people…you know, you get a flight from Washington to San Francisco, it’s a well over a five hour flight. Even though you have a good filtration system, I still believe that masks are a prudent thing to do and we should be doing it.”
Karl was referring to statements which were cited by several chief executive officers of airlines based in the United States who testified before the Senate of the United States during a hearing at which they convened entitled Oversight of the U.S. Airline Industry by the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on Wednesday, December 15, 2021.
Roger Wicker — who is a member of the Republican Party who represents the state of Mississippi as one of its senators — asked both chief executive officers of Southwest Airlines and American Airlines, “Will we ever, do you think, be able to get on an airplane without masks?”
Gary Kelly responded — noting that partners of Southwest Airline include The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Stanford School of Medicine — “Yeah, I think the case is very strong that masks don’t add much if anything in the air cabin environment. It is very safe, and very high quality compared to any other indoor setting.”
Doug Parker of American Airlines concurred: “The aircraft is the safest place you can be. It’s true of all of our aircraft, they all have these HEPA filters and the same airflow.”
Scott Kirby — who is the chief executive officer of United Airlines, which partners with the Cleveland Clinic — testified: “And the conclusion of that is that effectively anywhere that you’re going to be indoors, the airplane is the safest place that you can be indoors, it’s because of the air filtration.”
The studies which the chief executive officers had referenced were “done with mannequins who were sitting straight forward with masks on, not removing them, not eating at any point in time,” according to Sara Nelson, who is the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO, which is a union that representing almost 50,000 flight attendants at 17 airlines. “So it is important to recognize that the safe controlled environment on the plane is a layered safety protocol, which includes the sanitation of the aircraft and includes the service procedures and includes the HEPA filtration that is not on all aircraft, by the way, and it includes everyone wearing the masks.”
The next day — Thursday, December 16, 2021 — Gary Kelly reportedly received a positive test result for the 2019 Novel Coronavirus after experiencing mild symptoms.
Final Boarding Call
During what I have been calling “the longest two weeks of our lives”, we have all been told many things by many so-called experts who seem to “keep moving the goalposts”, so to speak.
I wonder how we all survived during the days when no one was required to wear masks aboard airplanes during all of the past decades of air travel when other diseases were transmitted…
…so if masks will supposedly be permanently required by people aboard airplanes, what will stop the mask mandates from being required at other public venues?
Do you believe that the requirement to wear masks aboard airplanes should be a permanent policy?
All photographs ©2020 by Brian Cohen.
