Covid Mask Mandate for Transportation

[crescent-zephyr]

The only thing I’m wondering is why two engines? A P42DC can pull up to 9 cars at a time. When I rode the Star in 2019, it only had one engine. It had 4 coaches, 1 lounge, 2 sleepers and 1 baggage on the rear.

The route of the Silver Star is flat. The route of the Starlight has some serious grades!

 

[jebr]

Officially, no masks need to be worn at all times. However I wouldn't be surprised if they let you take them off in your room; you can have them ask their car attendant.
https://www.amtrak.com/coronavirus

My understanding is that since the TSA mask mandate does not have a specific carve-out for private sleeper compartments, Amtrak's official policy also cannot have an explicit carve-out for private sleeper compartments. In practice, when I've taken the train they state to make sure your mask is on "when outside of your sleeper compartment" (or similar.) If you're in your room with the doors and curtain closed, there's no way for them to know anyways, and they seem to be more concerned with making sure it's being worn in public places where there's no wall separating you from other passengers.

 

[Oreius]

That’s what I thought..

 

[west point]

The silvers route is definitely flat. How else could Auto Train run at a maximum of 17 Superliners and 33 auto carriers for a total of 50 using just 2 P-40s with one providing HEP ? However AT is slow to accelerate to its 70 MPH max speed.

 

[neroden]

Given the Covid case trajectory, I'm simply not expecting things to get good enough for me to feel comfortable travelling until January. We currently have all the school-driven outbreaks, which will be followed by holiday-driven outbreaks. Holiday outbreaks happened last year and will happen again this year.

Also, nobody under 12 is vaccinated yet, but this is expected to happen in November-December. (P.S. I am truly furious about how many people don't mind infecting children with a disease which often causes lifetime crippling or even brain damage, and just blithely send them off to maskless mass gathering environments in school with no vaccination. Too many people do not actually care about kids at all. Nobody under 12 should be in in-person school in the US right now.)

So anyway, the holiday outbreaks should have calmed down by early January and a lot of the kids should be vaccinated. So maybe it'll be safe enough for me to travel.

SO, I'm very glad the mask mandate will still be in place at that time. I might actually be able to travel. Though honestly I wish they'd extended it a bit longer than January 18th. TSA extends mask mandate for transportation through Jan. 18

 

[Winecliff Station]

My understanding is that since the TSA mask mandate does not have a specific carve-out for private sleeper compartments, Amtrak's official policy also cannot have an explicit carve-out for private sleeper compartments. In practice, when I've taken the train they state to make sure your mask is on "when outside of your sleeper compartment" (or similar.) If you're in your room with the doors and curtain closed, there's no way for them to know anyways, and they seem to be more concerned with making sure it's being worn in public places where there's no wall separating you from other passengers.

I've even been told by SCA's on more than one occasion, while reaching for my mask when they've come to the door, that I don't have to put it on....this is even with though the door is open while we're talking. I still do it though in case the roomette across the hall has a problem, then take it off when I close the door.

As for carve out exceptions, I'm wondering if it's an oversight by Amtrak....while they don't make an exception, they don't specifically mandate you must wear it even in a sleeper, which should be an obvious question.

 

[Ryan]

They don't make an exception because they literally cannot make an exception.

I wouldn't call applying common sense at the deckplate level of enforcement an oversight by Amtrak, but individual people applying discretion even when the policy doesn't allow for it.

 

[Winecliff Station]

They don't make an exception because they literally cannot make an exception.

I wouldn't call applying common sense at the deckplate level of enforcement an oversight by Amtrak, but individual people applying discretion even when the policy doesn't allow for it.

Oh I don’t doubt that they’re applying common sense in practice, but to say there isn’t an oversight somewhere either by Amtrak or the federal mandate means when they cover eating and drinking explicitly but fail to mention showering or brushing teeth seems inconsistent. I mean, shouldn’t common sense apply to eating and drinking as well?

 

[AmtrakBlue]

British model Emma Louise Connolly shows how to eat food with the face mask on. (Photos: Instagram/emmalou)

 

[Winecliff Station]

View attachment 24439
British model Emma Louise Connolly shows how to eat food with the face mask on. (Photos: Instagram/emmalou)

And for drinking you could use one of those beer helmets with the straw snaking around your ear behind your mask lol

 

[BlackDiamond]

I am currently in the SWC as we speak. In practice you can take mask off in room and also at table in diner when food is delivered. Crew has been pretty good about it. Same was true on the Lake Shore Limited.

 

[F900ElCapitan]

On my Empire Builder to Texas Eagle trip, most (not all) people took off their mask as they sat down for a meal, much as they would in a restaurant. In the SSL, nothing was said either way but most were wearing most of the time.

I know I’m an outlier, but I personally am glad we are not in a hurry to vaccinate <12 year olds. There have already been a significant number of cases of myocarditis in otherwise healthy sub 20 year olds. Plus the disease is typically very light and easily survived with zero side-effects by this age group. The biggest surprise for me so far is the number of cases doesn’t seem to be much different from a year ago, even though +50% (and in most place +60%) have been vaccinated, that (and data from Israel) tells me this vaccine isn’t doing much and isn’t worth the risk to put into kids.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

The biggest surprise for me so far is the number of cases doesn’t seem to be much different from a year ago, even though +50% (and in most place +60%) have been vaccinated, that (and data from Israel) tells me this vaccine isn’t doing much and isn’t worth the risk to put into kids.

You're surprised a new and much more contagious variant has been able to overwhelm a meager 50-60% vaccination rate? The vaccine I took was advertised as being effective at keeping inoculated people out of hospital beds and coffins, which it seems to be doing quite well so far.

 

[jebr]

Moderator reminder: This topic, as noted in the title topic, is to discuss the mask mandate on transportation. With the discussion being in the Amtrak Rail forum, discussion should be focused on the mask mandate as it applies to Amtrak travel. Other discussion regarding COVID-19 should be placed in a more relevant topic (e.g. the COVID-19 General Discussion topic in The Lounge.) Further off-topic posts may be removed or moved as determined by the moderation team.

Thank you for your cooperation.

 

[oregon pioneer]

Given the Covid case trajectory, I'm simply not expecting things to get good enough for me to feel comfortable travelling until January. We currently have all the school-driven outbreaks, which will be followed by holiday-driven outbreaks. Holiday outbreaks happened last year and will happen again this year.

Also, nobody under 12 is vaccinated yet, but this is expected to happen in November-December. (P.S. I am truly furious about how many people don't mind infecting children with a disease which often causes lifetime crippling or even brain damage, and just blithely send them off to maskless mass gathering environments in school with no vaccination. Too many people do not actually care about kids at all. Nobody under 12 should be in in-person school in the US right now.)

So anyway, the holiday outbreaks should have calmed down by early January and a lot of the kids should be vaccinated. So maybe it'll be safe enough for me to travel.

SO, I'm very glad the mask mandate will still be in place at that time. I might actually be able to travel. Though honestly I wish they'd extended it a bit longer than January 18th. TSA extends mask mandate for transportation through Jan. 18

I feel exactly the same way, and am planning a trip (pending approval from the relatives on the east coast) in January or February. I also hope the mask mandate will be extended. Even if it is not, I will be prepared with my stash of N95 masks, and will wear them everywhere outside my roomette. I wonder if I can get a button that says "give me space" (or just a sign to hang around my neck). I need that locally right now!

 

[neroden]

On my Empire Builder to Texas Eagle trip, most (not all) people took off their mask as they sat down for a meal, much as they would in a restaurant. In the SSL, nothing was said either way but most were wearing most of the time.

I know I’m an outlier, but I personally am glad we are not in a hurry to vaccinate <12 year olds. There have already been a significant number of cases of myocarditis in otherwise healthy sub 20 year olds. Plus the disease is typically very light and easily survived with zero side-effects by this age group.

Not so much. The long haul Covid rates in kids are, according to the last study I read (and yes, study numbers vary) between 4% and 15%. Even the low end is horrifying -- 1 in 25.

Yeah, only a few kids will die (like the 4-year-old who died of Covid recently in Galveston) but a hell of a lot more will be damaged for life. It's not hard to find the stories of kids who were athletes before Covid but will never be athletes again; start googling and you'll find them. This is frequent enough to be a serious risk worth avoiding.

Getting myocarditis if you have *Covid* is more than 10 times as common as getting it if you have the vaccine (disclaimer: I didn't recheck the numbers, that was from memory), and myocarditis from the vaccine almost always clears up on its own. Yes, a couple of people have died of vaccine reactions, worldwide; that is 1-in-100-million stuff, a whole different scale from the 4% we're seeing for Long Covid in kids.

[...feel free to move this if you also move the post it's responding to]

 

[Eric in East County]

Even after the mask mandates are lifted, we will continue to wear our masks when riding in coach and while waiting inside Amtrak station facilities. (The same goes when we are inside any public place.)

More than likely, new and more potent strains of COVID will continue to appear, so wearing masks will probably become a permanent part of our daily lives.

(This whole COVID thing bears an eerie resemblance to the events described in Tom Clancy’s book Rainbow Six.)

 

[MARC Rider]

Even after the mask mandates are lifted, we will continue to wear our masks when riding in coach and while waiting inside Amtrak station facilities. (The same goes when we are inside any public place.)

More than likely, new and more potent strains of COVID will continue to appear, so wearing masks will probably become a permanent part of our daily lives.

(This whole COVID thing bears an eerie resemblance to the events described in Tom Clancy’s book Rainbow Six.)

Even without COVID, the mask has been great in come ways. Before Covid, I'd always catch some kind of crud, both in the spring and in the fall. Over the last year and a half -- nothing! And I think the stats back me up -- as I read that last winter's flu season was milder than usual.

 

[Ryan]

If by "milder than usual" you mean "nearly disappeared", you're absolutely right. 155 people were hospitalized for flu last year, as opposed to 8,633 the previous year.

 

[Exvalley]

My doctor's office is asking people to wear surgical masks rather than cloth masks.

 

[jiml]

My doctor's office is asking people to wear surgical masks rather than cloth masks.

That's true at a lot of places - seems to be a trend due to the lack of uniformity in cloth ones.

 

[PerRock]

That's true at a lot of places - seems to be a trend due to the lack of uniformity in cloth ones.

My workplace has been doing the same thing all covid... however forgot to tell us working for home. I got in trouble for showing up to get some paperwork I needed from my desk while wearing a cloth mask.

peter

 

[denmarks]

The Transportation Security Administration extended a federal requirement that travelers wear masks on commercial flights, buses and trains through Jan. 18. What are the odds it will be extended? I am traveling next April.

 

[Cal]

The Transportation Security Administration extended a federal requirement that travelers wear masks on commercial flights, buses and trains through Jan. 18. What are the odds it will be extended? I am traveling next April.

I personally have no idea. I think we might be in the clear then, but who knows?

 

[Ryan]

I was talking about this with a friend the other day. We came to the conclusion that after the first of the year or so (maybe a bit later), we‘re going to be in one of two places. Either nearly everyone will have some form of immunity (either from the shot or from the actual virus) and things will be as close to normal as we’ve seen in almost two years…. Or some other variant will have emerged that doesn’t care about previous immunity and we’ll be screwed. Neither of us willing to even guess which would be the case.