Missing the mask mandate.

Joe Biden abandons me.

All my art can be found on Instagram @klonskyart

We made travel plans last January knowing that the pandemic might change them.

Our friend of fifty years is getting married in New Orleans this weekend and we wanted to be here.

We booked a room at a bed and breakfast in the Marigny and tickets on American.

Both Anne and I are triple vaccinated and were planning on getting the second booster when a month ago I came down with a cold.

I tested twice and was negative. Then Anne got the cold and tested positive. So I tested again and I was positive. Then tested again.

Positive.

By most measures, it was mild for both of us: The continuing cold symptoms, a dry cough and fatigue.

But two weeks later I woke up at 1am, with a unique chest pain. It was scary enough for a trip to the hospital where I was poked and tested with for five days.

The doctors were rightfully concerned about a pulmonary embolism or heart issues.

None were found, thankfully, and I was sent home.

I was told to self-monitor going forward because there is still a lot that is unknown about post-Covid health issues.

The day before our flight to New Orleans, Middle District of Florida Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle voided the CDC's mandate, ending travel mask requirements on public transportation.

Like the plane we were taking to NOLA.

Mizelle is a Trump appointee who was put on the bench for the purpose of doing away with government regulations that protect us.

She’s a corporate flunky.

She’s certainly unqualified to make medical decisions. When her name first came up for appointment to the federal bench she was also deemed unqualified by the American Bar Association.

This morning’s New York Times raises the question as to whether the Biden administration is really interested in overturning Mizelle’s ruling on mask mandates.

Does the Biden administration really want and intend to fight for a higher court reversal of the ruling this week striking down its mask mandate on airplanes, trains and other public transportation — as its high-profile appeal of the case seemed to suggest?

Legal specialists raised another possibility on Thursday: The administration may instead be buying time and thinking about trying to erase the ruling — a move that would allow it to protect the powers of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to respond to a future crisis — but without reviving a mask mandate.

The tell, several outside specialists said, was that the Biden administration was letting days pass without seeking a stay of the ruling, the step that could most immediately resurrect the mask requirement.

“Basically, it is giving up on the mask mandate,” said Lawrence O. Gostin, a Georgetown University professor of global health law who advised the White House on the case. “The administration’s goal is a legal principle, which is to ensure that the C.D.C. has strong public health powers to fight Covid and to fight future pandemics. And it appears much less important to them to quickly reinstate the mask mandate.”

Arriving at O’Hare yesterday morning, maybe 1 out of ten people were masked.

Walking through the terminal is considered the most dangerous part of air travel and we were nearly alone wearing our N95 masks.

Even airline personnel were walking by us maskless.

At the gate we were in boarding Group 5 (out of 10), but we waited until everyone was on board so we wouldn’t be bunched up on the ramp.

As I we approached our aisle seats I saw the guy I would be sitting next to.

He was big and wore no mask. Anne offered to take it. Her assigned seat was across the aisle next to a woman who was masked.

I said it was okay, squeezing into my coach seat.

“We can take turns with the arm rest,” I assured the Big Guy.

“No problem,” he responded. “I can go two hours standing on my head taking a shit.”

I have no idea what that meant.

But I adjusted my mask to make it tighter.