Tuesday on CBS’s “Mornings,” infectious disease expert Dr. Celine Gounder reacted to a federal judge striking down the federal travel mask mandate.
Gounder, who served on Biden’s COVID advisory board, said she was “concerned” with the decision and stressed that two more weeks would have been the “cautious approach” to gather enough information to make the proper decision on whether to lift the mandate or not.
“The CDC had delayed lifting of the masking on public transportation, including airplanes, just for another two weeks,” Gounder outlined. “Right now, we’re waiting to see how this new BA2 variant, this newer subvariant of Omicron, is going to play out across the country. And if it turns out to be pretty mild, the CDC was planning to let those mandates expire. I am concerned that we just don’t have quite enough information yet, and another two weeks was really the cautious approach here.”
Gounder cautioned that the judge’s ruling could mean the CDC was stripped of its “power” to reimpose mandates in future surges or pandemics.
“The real question here is what does this mean for the CDC’s power to reimpose a mask mandate,” she said. “Say if we have another big surge next fall or winter, or say we have another pandemic, and so I do think you are likely to see this decision appealed to preserve the CDC powers for that what-if scenario.”
“There’s certainly more to come,” Gounder added. “It’s mutating very rapidly. We will see more variants, and we will see other pandemics after COVID, so I do think the idea of stripping ourselves of an essential tool in the toolbox is a really bad idea. I think we do need to have that option at our disposal if we do face another crisis.”
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