Last week, a video taken on a JetBlue airplane went viral. It wasn’t what we’ve come to expect from this genre of content: there was no person behaving badly, or causing a scene. Instead, it was the pilot of a JetBlue plane telling customers they were allowed to fly mask-free, per a Florida judge. The crowd cheered sporadically and quickly. Otherwise, it was unclear how many people actually removed their masks following the announcement.
The Florida judge, Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, is a Donald Trump appointee who has never tried a case and was considered “unqualified” by the American Bar Association. The case is going to be appealed by the U.S. Department of Justice, so long as the CDC says that it still believes masks are necessary.
While the decision is controversial, we would be remiss to call it surprising. It’s part of the new phase of the pandemic we’re entering, and a continuation of the same issues we’ve seen since 2020: If we want to stay safe, we must take precautions. But now, those precautions are increasingly up to us instead of being the products of mandates.
