Raphael Stevens

Vials labelled “COVID-19 Coronavirus Vaccine” and syringe are seen in front of displayed Johnson & Johnson logo in this illustration taken, February 9, 2021.
Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading Tuesday.
Johnson & Johnson — Shares of the pharmaceutical and consumer giant gained 3% after the company beat earnings expectations in its first-quarter report. Still, J&J lowered its full-year sales and earnings outlook and stopped providing Covid-19 vaccine revenue guidance due to a global supply surplus and demand uncertainty.

Twitter — Shares of the social media giant dipped 4.7% on news that Apollo Global Management is reportedly considering financing a potential takeover of Twitter. To be sure, the firm is not interested in joining a private equity consortium in a buyout bid. Apollo’s stock rose 3.2% following the report.
Airline stocks — Airline stocks jumped after the Transportation Security Administration said it is no longer enforcing mask mandates on planes. The news comes after a federal judge in Florida ruled that the CDC had overstepped its authority with the mandate. Shares of Delta, United Airlines and American Airlines rose 2.2%, 4.5% and 5.7%, respectively.
Blackstone — Blackstone’s stock rose 4.9% on news that it would buy student housing company American Campus Communities in a deal worth nearly $13 billion. Shares of American Campus surged 12.5% on the news.
Halliburton — Shares of the oilfield services giant dipped about 1% even after Halliburton beat estimates for the latest quarter and raised its outlook for customer spending in North America for the year.
Citizens Financial —  The bank posted better-than-expected quarterly results, sending its stock up about 7%. Citizens reported a profit of 93 cents per share on revenue of $1.65 billion. Analysts expected earnings of 92 cents per share on revenue of $1.64 billion, according to Refinitiv. The company’s net interest margin also beat analyst expectations.

Travelers — The insurance company reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue for the previous quarter, thanks in part to lower catastrophe losses, but the stock fell more than 4.9%. Piper Sandler noted that the company’s “underlying margins were worse than expected” for the quarter.
WeWork — WeWork’s stock jumped 8.1% after Piper Sandler initiated coverage of the office-sharing company with an overweight rating. Analysts said WeWork is nearing profitability as it focuses on its balance sheet and the popularity of flexible work continues to grow.
Lululemon — Shares of the apparel retailer jumped nearly 4.4% after Truist upgraded Lululemon to buy from hold. Analysts are expecting a “robust” five-year outlook at Lululemon’s upcoming analyst day with greater details on new products and plans to expand internationally. Truist also believes the company can easily pass on higher costs to consumers in an inflationary environment.
Plug Power — Plug Power’s stock soared 9.8% the company announced a partnership with Walmart to supply liquid green hydrogen.
Hasbro — Shares of Hasbro rose 5.2% after the toymaker reported a stronger-than-expected revenue for the previous quarter. Sales from the company’s consumer products segment also topped analyst expectations.
— CNBC’s Yun Li, Hannah Miao and Sarah Min contributed reporting

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U.S. natural gas futures plunged more than 11% at the lows Tuesday, reversing Monday’s surge which saw the contract rally more than 10% at one point to break above $8 per million British thermal units and hit the highest level since September 2008.
Henry Hub prices declined 11.1% at the session low to trade at $6.95. However the contract made back some of those losses during afternoon trading, and ultimately settled 8.24% lower at $7.176.

From Monday’s high to Tuesday’s low the May contract shed 13.8%.
Natural gas prices have been on a tear since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February. The contract is coming off five straight weeks of gains and is up nearly 90% for the year.
Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak, said Monday that natural gas looked ripe for a pullback from a technical perspective. Pointing to the relative strength index, a momentum indicator, Maley said the commodity was second-most overbought since 2003.
“Its RSI chart is now up to levels that have been followed by short-term pullbacks in the past,” he noted Thursday. “We are still bullish on natural gas (and natural gas-related stocks), so we’re not saying that investors should take profits right here. Instead, we [are] merely saying that investors should avoid chasing these assets over the near term.”
Prices surged Monday on forecasts for colder spring temperatures, fuel switching from coal to natural gas, as well as the U.S. sending record amounts of LNG to Europe.

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A recent Etsy fee hike of 30% has led to a sellers’ strike, and the current headline is a microcosm of the issues that the e-commerce retail platform has faced in growing as a public company beyond its DIY creative entrepreneurial roots.
Etsy was among the start-ups to make the inaugural CNBC Disruptor 50 list in 2013 and was notable for being a B Corp. (a status since dropped) and for being a multi-billion-dollar IPO based in Brooklyn, New York.
Co-founder Chris Maguire tells CNBC of the company today, “It’s kind of more geared towards, ‘We’re selling stuff and we’re selling as much as possible, and that should be the driving goal.’ But it’s, you know, there’s not quite as much playfulness.” 

Executives of Etsy applaud as they open the Nasdaq MarketSite ahead of Etsy’s initial public offering in New York, April 16, 2015.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

In this weekly series, CNBC takes a look at companies that made the inaugural Disruptor 50 list, 10 years later.
In 2005, Chris Maguire, Jared Tarbell, Rob Kalin and Haim Schoppik were sick of building websites for clients and wanted to build something of their own. Eventually they made a website for an online community called GetCrafty.com. 

“It was mostly women who were crafting and sharing their tips and how to make things. And we thought it was really fun” says Chris Maguire, co-founder of Etsy and current shareholder. “They kept saying on the [GetCrafty] forums at the time, ‘I wish there was a place to sell things that I made, like eBay’s too expensive and unwieldy. And there’s not really a whole lot out there that, you know, caters to just us,'” he recalls.
That was what led Maguire and his co-founders to say, “We could build that.”
Etsy has grown from that idea into one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world. Approximately 95 million people used Etsy in 2021 to buy or sell items, according to the company’s 2021 annual investor presentation. Maguire said it is surreal how common the name Etsy has become, and is not something he and other founders ever expected. 
But as Etsy has grown well beyond its original goal – to create a sustainable place for people to buy and sell the things they make – it has become more difficult to maintain its do–it-yourself ethos. Maguire says being emotionally involved with the crafting community made the founders want to build something that would suit their needs, and today, while Etsy still makes sure that there’s a buyer and seller connection that goes beyond a transaction, he has noticed that the company has become more like a machine for making sales.
“They had this playful aesthetic. And I don’t see that as much on Etsy now,” Maguire said. “It’s kind of more geared towards, ‘We’re selling stuff and we’re selling as much as possible, and that should be the driving goal.’ But it’s, you know, there’s not quite as much playfulness.” 

Nowhere has this tension become more apparent than during the current furor among sellers after Etsy announced plans to increase its seller fees by 30%, from a total of 5% to 6.5% as of April 11. 
The company’s management – which would only respond to requests for comment via email – has stressed the access it provides to over 95 million shoppers and says improvements it makes directly translate into more sales for its more than 5 million sellers. 

Sellers remain unconvinced, and in the past week, in a sign of how some feel about the company, they eyed forming a union and went on selling strike. An online petition that was created and outlined sellers demands has garnered over 80,000 signatures.
“We’re kind of navigating uncharted territory,” Kristi Cassidy, the strike’s lead organizer, told CNBC.
Nicole Lewis, who has sold handmade crayons on Etsy for 15 years, told CNBC she doesn’t blame Etsy for hiking transaction fees. “I think a lot of the OG sellers that are upset with Etsy still see it as the Etsy of 2004, 2005, 2006,” Lewis said. “It’s not that anymore and it can’t be.”
Indeed, the e-commerce industry has changed in the decade since Etsy first appeared on CNBC’s inaugural Disruptor 50 list. 
Maguire, who now owns and operates the Tubby Robot Ice Cream Factory in Philadelphia, a homemade ice cream shop and arcade, says that unlike ten to fifteen years ago, the industry is controlled by a few major players. 
“When I was first getting interested in the internet, I thought it was amazing that anyone could make their own website, put up their own HTML and have their own domain, and they had full control over it. That’s amazing,” Maguire said. “And that’s something I think that we’ve lost over the past decade. Some of that individuality.” 
At the time of Etsy’s IPO in 2015, which priced shares at $16, a $1.8 billion valuation, it had a little over one million sellers.

“The success of our business model is based on the success of our sellers,” then-Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson told the New York Times. “That means we don’t have to make a choice between people and profit.”
But that has become an increasingly harder line to walk as a public company with Wall Street on watch. The changes at Etsy go much deeper than the latest transaction fee increases. 
In 2017, Dickerson, who had led the company since 2011, was ousted and board member Josh Silverman was brought in as CEO at time when private equity firms and hedge funds were amassing shares. The fears of a potential takeover were matched by fears about the company’s mission being lost.
A New York Times feature from 2017 noted that even as financials improved, in other respects, “Etsy is barely recognizable.” 
Though Dickerson came to Etsy from Silicon Valley, the company was and remains based in Brooklyn, and its multi-billion-dollar IPO was a milestone for the New York City start-up world. It was also among the most notable start-ups and CNBC Disruptor 50 companies to go public as certified B Corp. (others include Warby Parker, Lemonade Insurance and Coursera), a rigorous certification process to prove a company is aligned with social goals, but dropped that status after Silverman took the reins of the company. 
Etsy has also made a string of acquisitions under Silverman which have grown geographic markets and in size. His first deal in 2018 was a $35 acquisition of German retailer DaWanda. Last year, Etsy spent $1.6 billion to acquire resale retailer DePop. 
“Depop might be for Etsy what Venmo was for PayPal: The choice of the next generation,” Silverman said in an interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer.

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By some financial metrics, Etsy has shown impressive growth, especially during the pandemic, with sales growth topping 100% in 2020.
And it has continued to post strong numbers, with its most recent quarterly sales total coming in over $4 billion and its revenue topping $700 million. But it did forecast a slowdown in sales for the first quarter and the heady days of its pandemic-driven stock boom have ended. Etsy, which saw its market capitalization reach over $300 per share last year, has since seen two-thirds of that value erased as investors have run from the pandemic’s biggest winners.
Maguire holds out hope that while it’s hard to compete with the pricing and the convenience of the monolithic operators, at some point people will get tired of what e-commerce has become.
In a CNBC interview on IPO day in 2015, Dickerson, said, “We really think of Etsy as a marketplace for creative entrepreneurs to make, buy and sell unique goods. … We are only in our tenth year as a company and we want to operate for decades and decades.”
Lewis, the Etsy seller who isn’t on strike, seems doubtful there is any going back for e-commerce. Among her reasons for not joining the sellers’ strike, she told CNBC: “We compete with Amazon.”
—CNBC’s Annie Palmer contributed to this report.

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Boxed CEO Chieh Huang said in an interview on CNBC’s “TechCheck” that gas prices are driving up costs for the online grocer.
He said for fresh foods, such as beef, the company has had to pass on some of the higher prices to customers.
Groceries are one of the major categories surging in price, with inflation at its highest levels since the early 1980s.

Online grocer Boxed CEO Chieh Huang said shoppers may have to get used to paying more to fill up the fridge and pantry — especially if gas prices stay elevated.
Huang told CNBC’s “TechCheck” higher fuel prices are the main driver of steeper costs in the company’s e-commerce business. Boxed sells bulk groceries, which are shipped to households and corporate offices. It went public last year through an SPAC merger.

“We certainly don’t see price abatement anytime soon, but we’ll do what we can to keep them low,” he said, adding the company is using its own software, a transportation management system and multiple carriers to keep prices down.
Groceries are one of the major categories surging in price, with inflation at its highest levels since the early 1980s. Food prices rose 1% in March and 8.8% over the past year, according to to the Labor Department. Some of those pricier food items include ground beef, rice, citrus fruits and fresh vegetables.
Gasoline prices jumped by 18.3% in March, according to the Labor Department, which is making it costlier to move food across the country.
Those rising prices have inspired some retailers — including Boxed’s bulk-selling competitors like Walmart-owned Sam’s Club, BJ’s Wholesale and Costco — to emphasize cheaper gas prices and play up other gas perks.
Huang said he expects to see a “demand shift” in consumers’ shopping patterns, which could include buying in bulk for a better value.

Boxed, which began with pantry staples, has expanded into fresh foods. Huang said some of those items, such as beef, have been faced some of the hardest price hits.
“There’s certain things like that where there’s nothing that we can do but pass some of those costs along to those customers,” he said.
Huang said Boxed is finding one bright spot in the return of workers to corporate offices.
Prior to the pandemic, he said, about 25% of sales came from businesses, such as companies stocking up on snacks for employees. The business-to-business side of Boxed is faster growing, more lucrative and stickier than the consumer business, Huang said.
“We’re definitely looking forward to seeing, ‘Hey, what happens in a post-Covid world as people come back not five days a week to the office, but even one day a week, three days a week?'” he said. “It’s going to force offices to begin to restock their pantries.”

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Veteran physician and Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz has close ties to members of the wealthy du Pont family.
Oz, who amassed a multimillion-dollar fortune as the host of “The Dr. Oz Show,” is related to Ben duPont by way of the men’s respective marriages to sisters Lisa and Laura Lemole.
Ben duPont has donated $70,000 to a political action committee that’s solely dedicated to helping Oz’s run for Senate.

Mehmet Oz, celebrity physician and U.S. Republican Senate candidate for Pennsylvania, speaks during a campaign event at a restaurant in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, U.S., on Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2022.
Nate Smallwood | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Veteran physician and Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz has little-known, but close ties to the heirs of the DuPont chemical fortune who are financially backing Oz’s Senate run, according to a review of campaign finance records.
Oz, who amassed his own multimillion-dollar fortune as the host of “The Dr. Oz Show,” is related to Ben duPont by way of the men’s respective marriages to sisters Lisa and Laura Lemole. DuPont, who uses a slightly different spelling of the du Pont family name on his company website and LinkedIn, has donated $70,000 to a political action committee that’s solely dedicated to helping Oz’s run for Senate. Oz has also received $50,000 in speaking fees from a political group founded by Ben duPont’s late father, former Delaware Gov. Pete du Pont, who died last year.

The family ties also overlap with various business ventures founded by Ben duPont, according to Oz’s most recent financial disclosure forms.
Oz, who was recently endorsed by former President Donald Trump, is currently in a Republican primary battle for Pennsylvania’s Senate seat with former Bridgewater CEO Dave McCormick. The closely watched primary race on May 17 and the later general election to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey this fall could play a key role in determining the balance of power in the Senate. The Cook Political Report marks the seat as a toss-up. A Real Clear Politics poll shows McCormick with an edge over Oz. And with the Senate currently split 50-50, the race is a critical one to watch to see which party will control that chamber in 2023.
Though Ben duPont doesn’t work in the oil and gas business or for the DuPont corporation, a win for Oz in Pennsylvania could be good news for the company founded by his grandfather’s great-great grandfather in 1802 in Wilmington, Delaware. Oz has become an outspoken advocate on the need for increased hydraulic fracking, a controversial method of extracting oil and gas from difficult-to-drill land that’s long been opposed by climate change activists. He’s teamed up on the campaign trail with the likes of Harold Hamm, chairman of Continental Resources which specializes in natural gas exploration, according to a report.
Ben duPont’s brother, Eleuthere I. du Pont, has an identical name as the company’s founder and sits on the DuPont corporation’s board. The company spent more than $400,000 lobbying Congress and the White House in the first three months of the year on issues ranging from climate change to the construction of the Keystone Pipeline, according to the corporation’s most recent lobbying disclosure reports.
The influential du Pont family has a net worth of $16 billion and some 4,000 heirs to that fortune, which primarily comes from DuPont, one of the oldest chemical companies in the world, according to Forbes. DuPont’s global headquarters are based in Wilmington, but one of its chemical plants is located in the neighboring state of Pennsylvania.

While the company’s political action committee has not backed any of the candidates in the Pennsylvania Senate race, individual members of the family have, according to Federal Election Commission records and data from the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog group. A spokesman for chemical giant DuPont declined to comment.
Ben duPont, who co-founded the technology consulting firm yet2 and ran the now-defunct venture capital fund yet2Ventures, is one of Oz’s biggest backers from the du Pont family so far. Oz’s wife’s father, cardiology surgeon Dr. Gerald Lemole, who isn’t a du Pont, donated $1 million in January to the American Leadership Action political action committee, a pro-Oz super PAC. Ben duPont, a yet2 spokesperson and a representative from the Oz campaign did not return requests for comment.
Though duPont doesn’t directly work for the DuPont company, his advisory firm yet2 lists the corporate giant on its website as one of the original corporate funders of the firm.
Ben duPont donated $50,000 to the American Leadership Action PAC in late December. The super PAC is solely backing Oz’s Senate run.
The du Pont heir has also contributed two $2,900 checks, one earmarked for the primary election and the other directed to the general election, directly to Oz’s campaign — the most an individual can directly give to a campaign in an election, according to FEC records.
He then contributed another $20,000 to the same PAC in February, the records show. Super PACs can spend and raise an unlimited amount of money. The super PAC has spent more than $1 million opposing McCormick’s campaign for the Senate, according to Center for Responsive Politics.
In January, Ben duPont and his wife Laura co-hosted a massive Oz campaign fundraising event in Wilmington, according to an invite. The invite says donors were asked to give up to $5,800 per person.
Separately, Oz was paid $50,000 in 2020 by GOPAC, a GOP political organization founded by Ben duPont’s late father.
GOPAC, which was once led by former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, describes itself on its website as a resource for Republican candidates “for coaching and best practices on effective ways to communicate conservative ideas and solutions.”
GOPAC Executive Director Jessica Curtis told CNBC in an email that the former governor wasn’t involved with arranging Oz’s speaking engagements for the group, but she confirmed that Oz has spoken to them. The two $25,000 payments covered Oz’s fees for two speeches to GOPAC leaders in 2020, according to the Senate candidate’s financial disclosure.
Oz promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine to combat Covid-19 in one of those GOPAC speeches, according to a link to his talk on the group’s Soundcloud page. The Food and Drug Administration has cautioned against the use of hydroxychloroquine, which is commonly prescribed for malaria, as a means to combat Covid. The World Health Organization strongly recommended doctors against using it to prevent the virus, noting that hydroxychloroquine provided no meaningful benefit to Covid patients.
GOPAC also previously financed Oz’s nonprofit organization, HealthCorps, Curtis said, declining to provide more details. HealthCorps 2020 annual report shows GOPAC was among a group of donors that gave between $25,000 and $49,999 to the organization.
“Since Oprah introduced Dr. Oz to the American public, many have sought his advice and counsel which is why we have invited him to speak in the past. As you noted, Dr. Oz’s remarks are publicly available and can be judged on their own merit,” she said.

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Oz’s financial disclosure also shows business ties between the two men and Oz’s wife, Lisa. The disclosure lists the venture capital firm Ben duPont founded as one of Lisa Oz’s assets.
Ben duPont’s “Yet2Ventures Fund II” is repeatedly listed as one of Lisa Oz’s assets. The fund is one of a group affiliated with duPont’s yet2Ventures, according to data from PitchBook. Yet2Ventures was the predecessor of duPont’s current investment firm, Charline Capital Partners, according to the company’s website.
Another sister fund of the now defunct duPont venture capital business listed on the disclosure is “YET2VENTURES NANOPACK INVESTORS.” That asset is marked on Oz’s financial disclosures as a joint holding with his wife.
DuPont is listed on PitchBook as a founder of at least two of the related venture capital funds that Oz lists on his financial disclosure. Ben duPont’s LinkedIn profile says he was a founder and managing director of yet2Ventures until 2017. According to the firm’s website and its Pitchbook profile, it is the venture capital arm of his advisory firm yet2 and had at least $50 million in assets under management.
The values of the Ozs’ stakes in those ventures wasn’t disclosed.

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Moderna’s redesigned vaccine includes nine mutations found in the beta Covid variant.
A 50-microgram dose doubled the antibodies, which block the virus from infecting human cells, against the omicron variant six months after injection.
Moderna is also developing a vaccine that targets 32 mutations present in omicron.
The FDA is debating whether the U.S. will need updated Covid shots ahead of an expected wave of infection in the fall.

A healthcare worker fills a syringe with Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at the Giorgio Companies site in Blandon, PA where the CATE Mobile Vaccination Unit was onsite to administer Moderna COVID-19 Vaccines to workers, April 14, 2021.
Ben Hasty | MediaNews Group | Reading Eagle via Getty Images

Moderna on Tuesday released clinical data demonstrating that a new version of its Covid-19 vaccine that targets several mutations produced a stronger immune response against the major virus variants, including omicron and delta, than the company’s current shots.
The biotech company’s redesigned vaccine targets nine mutations found in the beta Covid variant, as well as the original strain of the virus that first emerged in Wuhan, China, in late 2019. Four of the mutations targeted by the updated vaccine are shared with omicron. Moderna and Pfizer are developing new shots that target multiple virus variants in the hope of producing vaccines that provide longer-lasting protection against infection.

The current vaccines were developed to recognize the spike protein, which the virus uses to invade human cells, of the Wuhan strain of Covid. But the more the spike protein has evolved, the less likely the antibodies produced by the vaccine are able to recognize the virus and fight it, which reduces the efficacy of the shots. Two doses of the original vaccines still provide strong protection against hospitalization, though effectiveness against severe illness also has dropped. Third shots of the current vaccine also boost protection against infection and hospitalization.
A 50-microgram dose of Moderna’s new vaccine doubled the antibodies, which block the virus from infecting human cells, against the omicron variant six months after injection compared with the original booster at the same dosage, the data indicated. The updated shot also increased antibody levels against the delta variant six months after injection, though they were lower than the response observed with omicron and did not show superior results in comparison to the original booster. The data has not undergone peer review by outside scientists.
The most common side effects of the updated 50-microgram shot were injection site and muscle pain, fatigue and headache, according to the data.
The clinical trial included 895 participants who received a single booster dose of the updated shot with either a 50-microgram or 100-microgram dosage. The average age of the participants was about 50 years of age, 56% of whom were female. Most of the trial population was white, while 13% were Hispanic and 6% Black in the group that received the 50-microgram dose.
Moderna is developing an additional vaccine that includes the Wuhan strain and 32 mutations present in the omicron Covid variant. CEO Stephane Bancel said that shot is the company’s lead candidate for a fall booster in the Northern Hemisphere, which includes the U.S. and Europe. The company expects initial data on that shot in the second quarter of this year.

Bancel, in a statement, said the data on the shot with the beta variant demonstrates that updating the vaccines to target mutations is the right strategy to fight Covid moving forward.

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The Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official, Dr. Peter Marks, told the agency’s advisory committee earlier this month that the U.S. has until June to decide whether new Covid shots that target mutations are needed ahead of an expected wave of infection in the fall.
However, some FDA committee members were skeptical that new shots are needed right now, noting the current vaccines remain effective at preventing severe illness. Federal officials told the committee that Moderna, Pfizer and other vaccine makers are not currently coordinating their clinical studies on redesigned shots, which could complicate the process of selecting the most effective vaccine for the fall.
Several FDA committee members said public health authorities need to develop a unified approach to adopting a new formula for the Covid vaccines, similar to the process for selecting new flu shots every year, in order to target the strain that is most prevalent.
“At some level, the companies kind of dictate the conversation here,” Dr. Paul Offit, a committee member, said during the April 7 meeting. “You often hear that the company now has an omicron-specific vaccine, or vaccine they can now link with the influenza vaccine. It shouldn’t come from them, it really has to come from us.”
However, developing new shots to target Covid mutations could prove challenging, given how quickly the virus is evolving. Trevor Bedford, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, told the FDA committee that the Covid virus is evolving two to 10 times faster than the flu, depending on which strain of the latter virus is used for comparison.

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The leader of a flight attendants union on Tuesday encouraged airline passengers to wear a mask on flights if they’re feeling sick.
“This is not about extending this mask policy. It’s more about how we’re recognizing that we’re looking out for each other,” union leader Sara Nelson told CNBC.
A federal judge on Monday struck down the Biden administration’s national Covid mask mandate for public transportation.

The leader of a flight attendants union on Tuesday encouraged airline passengers to wear a mask on flights if they’re feeling sick, telling CNBC she believes it’s an act of “common courtesy.”
The comments come one day after a federal judge in Florida struck down the Biden administration’s Covid face-covering mandate for public transportation, including airplanes. The Transportation Security Administration said it will stop enforcing the pandemic policy, and the major U.S. airlines said they’d stop requiring masks, too.

In an interview on “Squawk Box,” Association of Flight Attendants-CWA President Sara Nelson said she agrees with co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin, who said he thinks regardless of federal rules, people should wear a mask on public transportation if they have Covid or any other illness.
“I think if there’s anything we’ve learned from this [pandemic], it has to be about common courtesy,” Nelson said, while noting the union had adopted a neutral position on whether the mask mandate should remain because its membership was divided. The union represents nearly 50,000 flight attendants at 17 airlines, according to its website.
Nelson said that flight crews had masks on hand even before the Covid pandemic and would sometimes ask a passenger who is coughing repeatedly to put one on. “This is not about extending this mask policy. It’s more about how we’re recognizing that we’re looking out for each other and not bringing our own problems or viruses to other people knowingly.”
Before Monday’s court decision, the national face-covering requirement was supposed to be in effect through May 3. The Biden administration had extended it numerous times dating back to last year, including just last week.
The Justice Department has yet to indicate whether it will be appeal the ruling from U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump in 2020.

“There’s absolutely a sigh of relief from flight crews,” Nelson said. “But there’s also people who are really concerned — people who are immunocompromised, people who are taking care of kids who are under the age of 5 at home and haven’t had access to the vaccine yet.”
Masks had become a contentious issue on airplanes, causing a spike in disruptive passengers. Last year, cases related to people not wearing masks on flights accounted for more than 70% of the nearly 6,000 reports of unruly passenger behavior recorded by Federal Aviation Administration. Flight attendants had expressed serious concerns about their own safety in trying to enforce the requirement.
It’s unclear how passengers and flight crew will approach masks in the near term while Mizelle’s ruling remains unchallenged. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to recommend people wear masks during the pandemic.
CNBC’s Sorkin sought to gain an understanding of how people are thinking about the issue in a Twitter poll. The vast majority of the initial 7,200 respondents to Sorkin’s unscientific poll say they will wear a mask “while knowingly sick.”
Nelson expressed disappointment that people who know they are sick would get on a plane without taking extra precautions such as wearing a mask.
“I’m a 25-year flight attendant. Every flight attendant knows that when you start out flying, you have to get your air legs underneath you and one of those things means you’re going to get all of the viruses and you’re going to an incredible immune system,” Nelson said.
“The idea that people would say, ‘I’m going to go on an airplane sick,’ is pretty offensive to me,” she continued. “That’s my workplace. You’re bringing that, and you have a greater risk that I’m going to be subject to your germs if you knowingly do that. I’m just talking about common courtesy here.”

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