Fifteen months after caving to pro-mask public figures by applying a scarlet letter to its research questioning the effectiveness of masks against influenza and COVID-19 – over the strident objections of its authors, whose critics declared victory – a U.K.-based international research collaborative funded by American taxpayers has reached an anticlimactic conclusion.

President Joe Biden will mask up in certain situations and socially distance himself after first lady Jill Biden tested positive for COVID, the White House announced Tuesday.

On Monday, the first lady’s communications director, Elizabeth Alexander, told the press, “This evening, the First Lady tested positive for COVID-19. She is currently experiencing only mild symptoms.” The president tested negative both Monday and Tuesday morning and now will undergo a series of precautionary measures.

Millions of people in North America have been advised to wear N95 masks outdoors due to poor air quality levels sparked by intense wildfires in Canada.

New York will begin distributing free masks on Thursday. Canada has said that people should wear a mask if they are unable to remain indoors.

The smog is expected to spread beyond New York to other East Coast areas.

Officials warn that the dangerously smoky conditions are expected to persist into the weekend.

In the past few weeks, the conventional wisdom about COVID seems to have been upended.

Early in the pandemic, several mainstream news outlets dismissed theories that COVID came from a Chinese lab. But recently The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported that the Department of Energy reversed its prior judgment by announcing that the coronavirus probably did emerge from a laboratory. The FBI shares that assessment.

North Korea abruptly stopped importing COVID-19 prevention and control products from China in May, trade data released by Beijing showed, after the country bought face masks and ventilators from its neighbor in previous months.

Daily new cases of fever in North Korea, as reported by its state news agency, KCNA, have been declining since the reclusive country first acknowledged in mid-May that it was fighting a COVID-19 outbreak. However, how many of those cases tested positive for the coronavirus has yet to be revealed.

So that was it, wasn’t it?

The Super Bowl was our unofficial return to normality for the United States. A relatively normal game, with a halftime show geared toward people in their 40s. But the “normal” part was the crowd. It was the general atmosphere. The Chinese Olympics that nobody is watching feature athletes getting served by people in hazmat suits. Meanwhile, SoFi stadium gathered over 70,000 fans for the big game, and the cameras panning the vast crowd showed the spectators to be almost entirely maskless.

About a week after announcing his executive order making masks optional in schools throughout Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) said on a radio show that school districts statewide had rushed to comply.

“The reality is it’s about 25 out of our 130 school systems across Virginia who aren’t recognizing the rights of parents today,” Youngkin told conservative host John Fredericks on Monday, adding that the noncompliant districts were prioritizing “bureaucrats and politicians over the rights of parents.”

The Biden administration on Wednesday is expected to announce plans to make 400 million N95 masks available free at pharmacies and community health centers across the country, a White House official said.

It was pretty jarring earlier this month when the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court took the bench for the first time since the omicron surge over the holidays. All were now wearing masks. All, that is, except Justice Neil Gorsuch. What's more, Justice Sonia Sotomayor was not there at all, choosing instead to participate through a microphone setup in her chambers.

In recent weeks, as the omicron variant spread rapidly across the United States, Americans have found that the financial costs of the pandemic are increasingly falling on their shoulders.

As Covid-19 cases have climbed, public health experts have urged people to dump their cloth masks in favor of higher-quality options and to test more frequently to curb the virus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday updated its mask guidance to note that the disposable N95 or KN95 masks offer the "highest level of protection" against the virus.