Friday Afternoon Update: Feds Suggest Mask Mandates, Home Purchases Drop, Fauci Dodges The Press

This article is a companion piece to today’s Morning Wire Afternoon Update. To listen to the podcast version, click here.

Airline Travel Returns To Pre-Pandemic Levels, Still Below Record

If you’ve been traveling for Thanksgiving this week, you know that airline travel is back to pre-pandemic levels — but hasn’t quite hit 2019’s record of 2.9 million travelers on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

The TSA is expecting to screen 2.5 million passengers a day across U.S. airports on the busiest days this week. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg celebrated the numbers.

“We are delighted that demand is returning like nobody thought possible with more and more passengers having the desire and the income to return to the skies,” Buttigieg said.

Mask Mandates Imminent? 

The Department of Health and Human Services is again saying that the American public should partake in masking and social distancing to reduce the spread of COVID and guard against “Long COVID.”

The new…