ATLANTA, Georgia, February 2, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – It is now a federal crime in the U.S. to use public transportation without wearing a face mask.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a statement on Friday which revealed broad federal regulations regarding the use of face masks on public transport, requiring “face masks to be worn by all travelers while on public transportation (which includes all passengers and all personnel operating conveyances).”
“People must wear masks that completely cover both the mouth and nose while awaiting, boarding, disembarking, or traveling on airplanes, ships, ferries, trains, subways, buses, taxis, and ride-shares [like Uber],” the CDC announced, laying out the extensive new measures.
The measures even extend to “transportation hubs (e.g., airports, bus or ferry terminals, train and subway stations, seaports) and other locations where people board public transportation.”
The CDC has the authority to declare being maskless on public transportation a federal crime thanks to a 1944 law, the Public Health Service Act. It states: “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.”
Public transport staff are asked to take the role of policing the new rules by using their “best efforts to ensure that any person on the conveyance wears a mask when boarding, disembarking, and for the duration of travel.”
Operators are required to “instruct people that wearing a mask on the conveyance is a requirement of federal law and that not complying with the requirement is a violation of federal law.” They must also invigilate passengers to ensure obedience and “disembark any person who refuses to comply.”
The CDC did offer a small number of exceptions for wearing masks on public transport, including “while eating, drinking, or taking medication for brief periods of time.” Those who are “unconscious (for reasons other than sleeping), incapacitated, unable to be awakened, or otherwise unable to remove the mask without assistance” are also not expected to wear a mask.
According to the regulations, children older than two will be forced to wear masks. A “person with a disability who cannot wear a mask, or cannot safely wear a mask, for reasons related to the disability” is exempt from the mask mandate, as are children younger than two.
It is unclear how this will be applied, as the CDC instructs travelers: “If you are on a conveyance and a passenger near you refuses to wear a mask, alert personnel working on the conveyance (e.g., crew member, driver, conductor) for assistance. If you are in a transportation hub, notify a staff member or security personnel.”
The CDC’s “Frequently Asked Questions” about their order do not explain whether people not wearing masks will be questioned about their disabilities or why they are unable to wear a mask. It merely says: “Operators of public transportation conveyances must deny entry to anyone not wearing a mask that completely covers the mouth and nose and require that everyone on the premises wears a mask. If a person refuses to comply, the operator must remove the person from the premises at the earliest safe opportunity.”
Of those who are exempt, the full order itself says, “This is a narrow exception that includes a person with a disability who cannot wear a mask for reasons related to the disability. CDC will issue additional guidance regarding persons who cannot wear a mask under this exemption.”
Furthermore, the CDC guidelines state that even if a person has received the coronavirus vaccine or had the virus and recovered from it, he or she is still required to wear a mask.
The “CDC reserves the right to enforce [the order] through criminal penalties,” it says in footnote 33 of its official order.
Fauci, ‘experts’ have flip-flopped on masks
By way of justifying the agency’s new edict, the CDC stated that “Scientific evidence shows that consistent and universal use of masks on public transportation systems and in transportation hubs will protect Americans and help to reduce the spread of COVID-19.”
“Therefore,” they continued, “requiring masks will help us control this pandemic and aid in re-opening America’s economy.”
Previously, however, the CDC and the World Health Organization have stated the opposite.
Chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is now one of America’s most renowned pro-mask apologists, stated in March 2020, “There's no reason to be walking around with a mask.”
“When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face,” he said in an interview with CBSNews’s 60 Minutes.
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases claimed that, under President Donald Trump, he was unable to “say something [regarding COVID-19] and there wouldn’t be any repercussions about it.” But now, following Biden taking office, “[the] idea that you can get up here and talk about what you know, what the evidence, what the science is and know that’s it, let the science speak, it is something of a liberating feeling.”
Biden signed an executive order on January 21 forcing everyone on federal property to wear masks.
He backed up his edict by claiming to be on the side of the “experts” who say, “by wearing a mask from now until April, we’d save more than 50,000 lives going forward.” A few hours after that, Biden was spotted maskless while on federal property, defying his own order.
Despite issuing widespread mask mandates and increasing the CDC’s enforcement powers, Biden said on January 22 that “there’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.”
LifeSiteNews has produced an extensive COVID-19 vaccines resources page. View it here.
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