COVID-19 caught the United States unprepared and unwilling in some ways to defend itself against the viral pandemic that has now taken nearly a million American lives. More than 400,000 had been lost by the time Joe Biden, on his first day as president, ordered face-masking across an array of federal agencies. His predecessor had been scornful of it.
There is no reasonable doubt that masks have saved lives, eased the burden on hospitals and helped Americans return to a semblance of normalcy. But a key element of that defense has been swept away by a Florida-based federal judge’s ludicrous interpretation of the word “sanitation” in a 1944 law to mean only cleaning and to disallow face masks. For now, at least, the government is powerless to mandate masking in public transportation, even with infections rising again.
The nation is newly more vulnerable to the next inevitable pandemic and to more of COVID-19′s frequent mutations.
