Sometimes getting people to follow rules for the sake of following rules can make sense. Forgetting about masking, is it possible that getting airplane passengers used to doing things like wearing seatbelts and adjusting seats and tray tables is a thing useful in itself as it might dampen unruly passenger incidents?
If only this could be used as a catalyst to get rid of the 9/11 induced useless rules.
Keep your shoes on through security, don’t worry about the airplane mode, you can keep your water bottle…. How amazing would that be?
At least in Canada we got rid of the shoes off rule.
I personally think that if rules make sense and people are asked to follow them when you ask them to “evacuate, evacuate, evacuate… leave everything behind” maybe they’ll think that ‘so far they have only asked me to follow arbitrary rules maybe this request might also have some merit. I think I’ll exit the plane.”
Putting your tray table up, seat up and bag under the seat is a reasonable safety measure. A rejected takeoff involves more braking and reverse then you have ever felt in an aircraft unless you have been in that situation. So much braking that there are charts that state the required cool down time for the brakes before reattempting a takeoff.
Now should you have to quickly evacuate after an RTO or landing the last thing you want is a bunch of people with cords plugged into their laptops with seat trays down and bags blocking people from leaving their seats quickly.
I didn't see anything in that video that suggests "Everyone, get out of your seats quickly" would be an important concern, or even desirable. At most, hitting the tray table with your ribs when the plane slams on the brakes would be unpleasant, but I doubt the angle of incidence would be enough to break anything since you would be rotating around your belt. Likewise, having your bag in your lap instead of under the seat in front of you seems unlikely to make any difference at all unless you have a bunch of spikey bits in the bag.
The video is just an example of the braking that takes place for an RTO. There was no reason for them to reject that take-off other than it was for demonstration purposes. Even so the heat generated from the brakes just melts and deflates those tires.
In real life you might reject a takeoff for a runway incursion or something. However if it’s something wrong with the aircraft that necessitates an RTO it’s likely a Master Warning that is triggered before V1.
There are several things such as engine fires, smoke in the cabin, cargo fires that may turn this into an evacuation. This isn’t very likely event but certain procedures can increase the likelihood of survival.
Another extreme event such as Sully’s ditching of the aircraft in the Hudson was less than 4 minutes from take-off to ‘landing’ on the water? Not much time for FA’s to prepare the cabin for a water landing there. Better to have those tray tables stowed and laptops put away before they become projectiles.
I don't think airplane mode is a terrorism rule per se. I think it was out of concern that the cell signals would somehow interfere with the airplanes comms. That is not really a thing but you should put your phone in airplane mode anyway. On iPhones at least it doesn't actually turn off bluetooth or wifi, but it will prevent your phone from constantly trying to ping cell towers and drain the battery throughout the flight.
"The administration will appeal, but their heart likely will not be in it, and they won’t especially want to win."
The initial ruling is non-precedential and largely doesn't apply to anything other than this case. Appealing and losing, on the other hand, creates precedent that could have much wider implications that the administration (should) want to avoid.
If the issue is indeed that they didn't do the groundwork, then losing only means they need to do the groundwork next time. A ruling that they actually couldn't do this at all would be scarier and worth avoiding from their perspective, I agree on that.
This bit of law has a clause that grants the CDC to regulate "sanitation...and other measures, as in his judgment may be necessary" that the CDC thinks authorizes its actions. The judge rules that the preceding part of the sentence constraints the scope of "other measures." The full sentence reads:
"For purposes of carrying out and enforcing such regulations, the Surgeon General may provide for such inspection, fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, pest extermination, destruction of animals or articles found to be so infected or contaminated as to be sources of dangerous infection to human beings, and other measures, as in his judgment may be necessary."
The CDC contends that the mask mandates are covered as sanation or "other measures." The ruling does a deep dive on what people would have meant by sanitation at the time the law was enacted and concludes that masking ain't it. It also limits the scope of "other measures" to things akin to the preceding list of inspection, fumigation, etc. and finds that mask mandates aren't like those other things either.
What isn't made a big deal of is the preceding sentence, which clearly limits the scope of the authority to state and national boundaries: "The Surgeon General, with the approval of the Secretary, is authorized to make and enforce such regulations as in his judgment are necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the States or possessions, or from one State or possession into any other State or possession."
Even if mask mandates were in scope, they'd be clearly limited to interstate trips. There's no power here to enact a mandate for a taxi ride in the city.
How effective do you think the mask a typical person wears? I don't think people wearing masks less on transportation in general will have much effect on cases over the next few weeks. Maybe if everyone was wearing properly fitting N95s, but that's never been the case anyway.
I remember Scott Alexander’s take on the studies he had at the time. Unfortunately he has not revisited the topic. Any links or citations you can share? My bias to agree with you but anyone who reads this blog probably has some aspiration to overcome bias.
Now if they would just get rid of that stupid covid test to come back to the USA I could leave the country on vacation without the possibility of my vacation being extended by a week or 2 or me having to learn how to falsify covid tests results. I can't figure out why I need to get get tested so I don't bring covid back from a country with covid to another country that also has covid.
If it makes you feel any better, the test to come back in seems to be mostly about getting money to administer tests and less about actually keeping people from entering. I had some extended family just get back from overseas and they all said that the test application was badly done (just patting around the nose) and seemingly no one on their plane got rejected. They still had to pay for the test and insurance for the hotel stay etc. of course.
Yeah, I've had several rapid tests to return to the US after international travel. And it certainly seemed to me like the person taking the sample was very intentionally trying to get a bad sample...
The default for iPhone is that "airplane mode" means everything _except for_ Bluetooth. However, if you turn off Bluetooth while in airplane mode, then in the future it will assume you want airplane mode to also turn off Bluetooth. (See: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204234)
There have been occasional stories of airlines not letting passengers with P100 respirators on the plane. Of course there are occasional stories about all kinds of things.
Unrelated to this post, but in case you wanna include it in the next update: Spain ends its indoor mask mandate today, after 699 days, except for public transportation and healthcare.
One observation on the ruling: it was difficult to actually find the ruling. The larger sites that showed up first in my search didn't have it. I eventually skipped around and found a random local TV station report that linked to a scribd of the ruling. Here it is: https://www.scribd.com/document/570471995/Mask-mandate-ruling
The arguments on Twitter have pretty much nothing to do with the ruling.
It strikes me as a little odd that someone taking immunosuppressants after an organ transplant at the tail end of a pandemic would be taking mass transit. I would think that one would plan around not having a fully functional immune system and avoid that sort of thing, even before COVID. Am I missing something here? Is it normal procedure for transplant patients to spend a lot of time in crowded public places like airports while they are still on the suppressants? Wouldn't you worry about getting the flu? I almost always get a sinus infection after flying for any length of time.
Eventually an organ recipient would want to live a normal life and that includes taking a flight occasionally. Of course, he needs to be more cautious, use a mask even if it is not mandatory. Flying is considered quite safe so why not do it? I wouldn't expect that the rules of travel should be adjusted for immunosuppressed people however.
Ahhh, looking it up it seems some transplant patients do need to take suppressants for the rest of their lives. In that case it does seem reasonable that they would be on flights periodically, although that still seems like it would be a less than ideal situation if only because of all the time spent in the terminal. I would think such a patient would still expect to mask up all the time to take care of themselves and not expect everyone else to mask for his benefit.
They can take prophylactic antibiotics for many bacterial infections. For covid they could take Paxlovid. Even though it is not yet approved for such prophylactic indication, I can imagine that it would minimise the risk because it works by directly inhibiting this virus. Although it would be a complicated drug to use due to many interactions.
I just saw the latest Covid data from Canada, where people are supposedly more quiescent in terms of following government guidelines. But our performance now is worse than the US. It seems that one can do everything "the right way" (I.e., "follow the science"), and it still doesn't appear to make a difference.
No doubt if cases, hospitalization and deaths continue on an upward trend in the US, there will be some who claim this is as a result of the elimination of the mask mandates. But my guess is that this will be more a case of causation in search of correlation, depending on one's political predilection.
I have generally considered myself more of a person of the left, but masks are now the new avocado toast, IMO.
Sometimes getting people to follow rules for the sake of following rules can make sense. Forgetting about masking, is it possible that getting airplane passengers used to doing things like wearing seatbelts and adjusting seats and tray tables is a thing useful in itself as it might dampen unruly passenger incidents?
Wow that is more saying the quiet part out loud than I expected.
"Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud" Good name for a substack!
If you get a chance and have an interest, I started my own (free) substack called Let Me Challenge You're Thinking.
https://robertsdavidn.substack.com/p/war-what-is-it-good-for-absolutely?s=w
Insert hitting-themselves-with-hammers reference
If only this could be used as a catalyst to get rid of the 9/11 induced useless rules.
Keep your shoes on through security, don’t worry about the airplane mode, you can keep your water bottle…. How amazing would that be?
At least in Canada we got rid of the shoes off rule.
I personally think that if rules make sense and people are asked to follow them when you ask them to “evacuate, evacuate, evacuate… leave everything behind” maybe they’ll think that ‘so far they have only asked me to follow arbitrary rules maybe this request might also have some merit. I think I’ll exit the plane.”
Putting your tray table up, seat up and bag under the seat is a reasonable safety measure. A rejected takeoff involves more braking and reverse then you have ever felt in an aircraft unless you have been in that situation. So much braking that there are charts that state the required cool down time for the brakes before reattempting a takeoff.
See https://youtu.be/UhSgwpJuIq0 for an extreme situation.
Now should you have to quickly evacuate after an RTO or landing the last thing you want is a bunch of people with cords plugged into their laptops with seat trays down and bags blocking people from leaving their seats quickly.
I didn't see anything in that video that suggests "Everyone, get out of your seats quickly" would be an important concern, or even desirable. At most, hitting the tray table with your ribs when the plane slams on the brakes would be unpleasant, but I doubt the angle of incidence would be enough to break anything since you would be rotating around your belt. Likewise, having your bag in your lap instead of under the seat in front of you seems unlikely to make any difference at all unless you have a bunch of spikey bits in the bag.
The video is just an example of the braking that takes place for an RTO. There was no reason for them to reject that take-off other than it was for demonstration purposes. Even so the heat generated from the brakes just melts and deflates those tires.
In real life you might reject a takeoff for a runway incursion or something. However if it’s something wrong with the aircraft that necessitates an RTO it’s likely a Master Warning that is triggered before V1.
There are several things such as engine fires, smoke in the cabin, cargo fires that may turn this into an evacuation. This isn’t very likely event but certain procedures can increase the likelihood of survival.
Another extreme event such as Sully’s ditching of the aircraft in the Hudson was less than 4 minutes from take-off to ‘landing’ on the water? Not much time for FA’s to prepare the cabin for a water landing there. Better to have those tray tables stowed and laptops put away before they become projectiles.
I don't think airplane mode is a terrorism rule per se. I think it was out of concern that the cell signals would somehow interfere with the airplanes comms. That is not really a thing but you should put your phone in airplane mode anyway. On iPhones at least it doesn't actually turn off bluetooth or wifi, but it will prevent your phone from constantly trying to ping cell towers and drain the battery throughout the flight.
I disagree with this:
"The administration will appeal, but their heart likely will not be in it, and they won’t especially want to win."
The initial ruling is non-precedential and largely doesn't apply to anything other than this case. Appealing and losing, on the other hand, creates precedent that could have much wider implications that the administration (should) want to avoid.
If the issue is indeed that they didn't do the groundwork, then losing only means they need to do the groundwork next time. A ruling that they actually couldn't do this at all would be scarier and worth avoiding from their perspective, I agree on that.
The ruling was that they both violated rule-making procedures and that the rule exceeded their authority.
The ruling says that the CDC relied on this bit of the US Code to instate the mask mandate: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/264
This bit of law has a clause that grants the CDC to regulate "sanitation...and other measures, as in his judgment may be necessary" that the CDC thinks authorizes its actions. The judge rules that the preceding part of the sentence constraints the scope of "other measures." The full sentence reads:
"For purposes of carrying out and enforcing such regulations, the Surgeon General may provide for such inspection, fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, pest extermination, destruction of animals or articles found to be so infected or contaminated as to be sources of dangerous infection to human beings, and other measures, as in his judgment may be necessary."
The CDC contends that the mask mandates are covered as sanation or "other measures." The ruling does a deep dive on what people would have meant by sanitation at the time the law was enacted and concludes that masking ain't it. It also limits the scope of "other measures" to things akin to the preceding list of inspection, fumigation, etc. and finds that mask mandates aren't like those other things either.
What isn't made a big deal of is the preceding sentence, which clearly limits the scope of the authority to state and national boundaries: "The Surgeon General, with the approval of the Secretary, is authorized to make and enforce such regulations as in his judgment are necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the States or possessions, or from one State or possession into any other State or possession."
Even if mask mandates were in scope, they'd be clearly limited to interstate trips. There's no power here to enact a mandate for a taxi ride in the city.
How effective do you think the mask a typical person wears? I don't think people wearing masks less on transportation in general will have much effect on cases over the next few weeks. Maybe if everyone was wearing properly fitting N95s, but that's never been the case anyway.
According to this guys graph mask mandated were entirely useless. Anyone know the legitimacy of his analysis?
https://www.city-journal.org/the-failed-covid-policy-of-mask-mandates
I remember Scott Alexander’s take on the studies he had at the time. Unfortunately he has not revisited the topic. Any links or citations you can share? My bias to agree with you but anyone who reads this blog probably has some aspiration to overcome bias.
A mask *mandate* lets people wear very shitty masks, while the people who were going to wear good masks continue to wear them anyway.
Mandates being useless at stopping community spread is different than masks being useless at protecting yourself.
Now if they would just get rid of that stupid covid test to come back to the USA I could leave the country on vacation without the possibility of my vacation being extended by a week or 2 or me having to learn how to falsify covid tests results. I can't figure out why I need to get get tested so I don't bring covid back from a country with covid to another country that also has covid.
If it makes you feel any better, the test to come back in seems to be mostly about getting money to administer tests and less about actually keeping people from entering. I had some extended family just get back from overseas and they all said that the test application was badly done (just patting around the nose) and seemingly no one on their plane got rejected. They still had to pay for the test and insurance for the hotel stay etc. of course.
Yeah, I've had several rapid tests to return to the US after international travel. And it certainly seemed to me like the person taking the sample was very intentionally trying to get a bad sample...
Huh - Airplane mode doesn’t affect my Bluetooth, I always use AirPods with airplane mode on while flying
On my Pixel it turns it off for sure. Often I keep the phone plugged in on flights so I can get the power to keep using my headphones. It's annoying.
Obviously you should get a phone with a proper operating system ;-)
Pixel 4 user here. Switching Bluetooth back on doesn't take the phone out of airplane mode.
The default for iPhone is that "airplane mode" means everything _except for_ Bluetooth. However, if you turn off Bluetooth while in airplane mode, then in the future it will assume you want airplane mode to also turn off Bluetooth. (See: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204234)
Sounds like this isn't the same for Pixels.
There have been occasional stories of airlines not letting passengers with P100 respirators on the plane. Of course there are occasional stories about all kinds of things.
Unrelated to this post, but in case you wanna include it in the next update: Spain ends its indoor mask mandate today, after 699 days, except for public transportation and healthcare.
Source: https://english.elpais.com/society/2022-04-20/after-two-years-spain-ends-indoor-face-mask-rule.html
One observation on the ruling: it was difficult to actually find the ruling. The larger sites that showed up first in my search didn't have it. I eventually skipped around and found a random local TV station report that linked to a scribd of the ruling. Here it is: https://www.scribd.com/document/570471995/Mask-mandate-ruling
The arguments on Twitter have pretty much nothing to do with the ruling.
It strikes me as a little odd that someone taking immunosuppressants after an organ transplant at the tail end of a pandemic would be taking mass transit. I would think that one would plan around not having a fully functional immune system and avoid that sort of thing, even before COVID. Am I missing something here? Is it normal procedure for transplant patients to spend a lot of time in crowded public places like airports while they are still on the suppressants? Wouldn't you worry about getting the flu? I almost always get a sinus infection after flying for any length of time.
Eventually an organ recipient would want to live a normal life and that includes taking a flight occasionally. Of course, he needs to be more cautious, use a mask even if it is not mandatory. Flying is considered quite safe so why not do it? I wouldn't expect that the rules of travel should be adjusted for immunosuppressed people however.
Ahhh, looking it up it seems some transplant patients do need to take suppressants for the rest of their lives. In that case it does seem reasonable that they would be on flights periodically, although that still seems like it would be a less than ideal situation if only because of all the time spent in the terminal. I would think such a patient would still expect to mask up all the time to take care of themselves and not expect everyone else to mask for his benefit.
They can take prophylactic antibiotics for many bacterial infections. For covid they could take Paxlovid. Even though it is not yet approved for such prophylactic indication, I can imagine that it would minimise the risk because it works by directly inhibiting this virus. Although it would be a complicated drug to use due to many interactions.
I just saw the latest Covid data from Canada, where people are supposedly more quiescent in terms of following government guidelines. But our performance now is worse than the US. It seems that one can do everything "the right way" (I.e., "follow the science"), and it still doesn't appear to make a difference.
No doubt if cases, hospitalization and deaths continue on an upward trend in the US, there will be some who claim this is as a result of the elimination of the mask mandates. But my guess is that this will be more a case of causation in search of correlation, depending on one's political predilection.
I have generally considered myself more of a person of the left, but masks are now the new avocado toast, IMO.
Agree on not changing the rules mid-flight. You couldn't wear a P100 on a flight because they didn't comply with the old mask rules.