Coronavirus Files: Legal battle ensues over masks on planes

coronavirus
April 25, 2022

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Schools struggle to attract missing students

In-person learning has resumed across the nation, but something’s missing: many of the students.

Millions of public school students are “chronically absent” — frequently defined as missing at least 10% of school days — reports Jacey Fortin of The New York Times.

According to the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, the fraction of students likely to miss 15 days or more in a school year has more than doubled since the pandemic began, to 22%.

McKinsey added, “While absenteeism rates for high-income students are leveling off, rates for low-income students have continued to worsen.”

Chronic absence is linked to worse academic performance and graduation rates, and is expected to exacerbate inequities because the problem is more common among students who already face a host of disadvantages.

For example, in Connecticut, pandemic absenteeism has been particularly high among Native American, Latino, and Black students.

“What we really learned from the pandemic was that many families who were already in situations where they were struggling, who had high basic needs — those needs were exacerbated,” said Erin M. Simon, the director of student support for Long Beach Unified School District.

School districts, Fortin reports, are getting creative in their efforts to stem absenteeism that could be due to illness, employment, family instability or other issues.

Some offer night classes or gift cards for groceries. And one school staffer, Fortin reports, promises students who attend every day for a month they can watch her eat a cricket.

So far, she’s swallowed two, one salted and one chocolate-covered.

DOJ appeals to bring back masks on planes

The Biden administration is appealing last week’s ruling by a federal judge that the CDC lacks the authority to mandate face masks on public transportation.

The ruling, made by U.S. District Court Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle in Florida, concluded the CDC exceeded its reach with the mask mandate, originally issued in January 2021. When the TSA announced it would stop enforcing the mask requirement, some travelers stripped off their face coverings mid-flight.

The ruling set off a rush of polarized commentaries.

“The decision was sound not only as a matter of law, but also a matter of public policy,” wrote conservative columnist Henry Olsen in The Washington Post.

In the same newspaper, liberal columnist Paul Waldman called the decision “dubious.” Regarding masks, he added, “I’d argue that in almost no context are they more justified than in transportation, where people get packed into a confined space breathing each other’s air.”

The mask mandate was set to expire May 3 after a two-week extension, and some commentators have noted it was already pretty toothless: people didn’t have to wear high-quality masks on planes, and could remove them to eat or drink.

Nonetheless, the sudden unmasking has made many people anxious about flying. But some may take comfort in the fact that combining vaccination, a booster and a tightly fitting N95 mask drastically reduces risk.

CNN notes that the Department of Justice appeal did not request an immediate stay of Mizelle’s ruling, a strong indicator that the legal battle going forward will be less about masking in the current pandemic, and more about the CDC’s authority to issue such rules in the future.

The appeal is a risky move for the CDC because if higher courts uphold Mizelle’s decision, it strengthens the legal precedent for future challenges to the CDC’s authority.

Future decisions at the level of a federal appeals court or the Supreme Court will likely hinge on the definition of the word “sanitation” in 1944’s Public Health Service Act, reports NPR.

Mizelle opted for a narrow definition, encompassing measures to clean spaces, but not measures like masks that keep spaces clean.

But legal experts who spoke with NPR countered that in 1944, when the law was written, “sanitation” had a broader definition that included traditional measures against disease spread —in which case, masking would likely have been included.

Score one for combo vaccines

Moderna’s latest salvo against COVID-19 appears to deliver a one-two punch, successfully raising antibodies with a booster shot that encodes spike proteins from both the original virus and the beta variant, the company reported last Tuesday.

The increases in antibody levels after boosting with the combination booster were relatively “modest,” writes Lauren Neergaard at AP: the jump in antibodies over the original vaccine ranged from 28% to more than 100% in the first month after the booster.

However, the updated booster yielded antibodies that worked against not only the earlier versions of the coronavirus, but also the omicron and delta variants. That’s due to overlap between the variants, Neergaard explains: the beta and omicron variant share four mutations.

The study has not yet been peer reviewed, and wasn’t designed to show real-world efficacy, so the results don’t prove that the new booster is any better than the original against infection or severe illness, notes Matthew Herper at STAT.

As with previous vaccines, antibody levels decreased by more than half by six months after people got the booster.

Encouraging as these results are, this isn’t Moderna’s top candidate for a potential fall booster: Both Moderna and Pfizer are testing omicron-specific vaccines as well. But these data support the combination approach, already in use with annual flu vaccines, for COVID as well.

Moderna and Novavax are also testing vaccines that they hope will immunize against COVID and influenza with one shot.

If vaccine-makers can achieve good immunity with a single annual booster, it could help combat the “booster fatigue” many feel after recommendations to get three or four vaccinations over the past year and a half.

From the Center for Health Journalism

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What we're reading

  • “A tale of many pandemics: In year three, a matter of status and access,” by Yasmeen Abutaleb, The Washington Post
  • “New data shows who, exactly, got evicted the most during the pandemic,” by Edwin Rios, Mother Jones
  • “COVID hasn’t given up all its secrets. Here are 6 mysteries experts hope to unravel,” STAT
  • “Are new omicron subvariants a threat? Here’s how scientists are keeping watch,” by Amy Maxmen, Nature
  • “Welcome to the choose-your-own-adventure phase of the pandemic,” by Dylan Scott, Vox
  • “The first COVID-19 breathalyzer test is coming to the U.S.,” by Alice Park, Time

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