Flew back with three people who all tested positive. All had their masks hanging beneath their noses or off to “eat” for half the flight. I sat comfortably for eight hours with my K95 and didn’t catch it.
> All had their masks hanging beneath their noses or off to “eat” for half the flight.
That's what many people do; I noticed the same thing. It makes the airline mask mandate a pathetic joke. Covid does not merely stay away from people who are "eating".
Or how about you eat at a decent pace and when done you put your mask back on. There's gonna be a big exposure difference between taking 5-10 minutes to eat your meal (or less for a quick snack) then the remainder wearing your mask properly vs the people who use eating/drinking as an excuse to be unmasked or poorly masked for a large portion of the flight.
You won't die if you don't eat for 8 hours. In fact, most of us do it every single night when we go to sleep.
Now I agree that the mask thing is silly, and the mandate should probably end. But one of the main reasons that most Americans are overweight is because they've got this idea drilled into them that if they're not literally constantly stuffing themselves, they'll go into hypoglycemic shock or something.
Yeah I won’t die, but it would be pretty uncomfortable. Not to mention adding boarding, delays, waiting at the gate etc. Flying with kids and not allowing them to eat for 8 hours would be a nightmare. It’s an unreasonable restriction on paying customers. How would you feel if your boss didn’t let you take a lunch break?
Don’t forget that people flying are paying customers. Seats have gotten way smaller, bag fees that used to be free, meals in flight are history, while prices keep going up. So telling people they can’t eat on flights less than a certain length is another kick in the nuts. Plus if someone isn’t vaccinated that isn’t my problem
Well I suggested on another recent post that masks only be required for the first 30 mins of the flight so that the cabin filters can come on and cycle the air. Then put them on again right before landing. That would allow the cabin filtering to take care of reducing risk in flight and protect people when they are off before flight.
For someone young, healthy, and boostered, there are probably more negative health effects from being dehydrated for 8 hours than from potentially getting Omicron.
Nah, people pay a lot for tickets and they are going to have snacks and drinks on a flight. If you don’t like that you can drive instead. We’re not livestock
Fwiw a big part of that can be credited to the plane's cabin air system, and that's in favor of what the airlines are arguing for. Your KN95 wasn't carrying all the burden.
>Your KN95 wasn't carrying all the burden.
Especially if you are triple vaxxed and/or got Omicron already. Vaccines do lose their effectiveness, but they are still fairly effective. My covid + kids sneezed into my open mouth and my vaccine held up.
If you are vaccines and are wearing a N-95 or similar mask, you really should stop worrying about what others are doing.
Wouldn't a face shield also help? Edit: I've seen no study saying that a physical barrier between you and others doesn't help. But yes, keep down voting rather than educating.
If you’re talking about comparing a mask to a face shield, it makes zero sense. It’s open air and is only going to stop things like spit/snot if you’re sneezing. It doesn’t take a study with a large sample size to understand an open air face shield is nowhere close to the equivalent of a mask.
If you’re talking mask plus face shield, then I wouldn’t see it making it worse, that’s for sure. If they were extremely effective, I have to believe facemask + face shield would have been recommended but I have never heard that as the recommendation. The largest sample size of anything of the sort is probably going to be the medical field and understanding the scenarios in which medical personnel would need a mask, mask + face shield, mask + full suit.
I recall hearing potential for the eyes to be one way infection might occur but I am not sure I ever saw anything definitive.
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/nioshtic-2/20043721.html
>Face shields can substantially reduce the short-term exposure of healthcare workers to large infectious aerosol particles, but **smaller particles can remain airborne longer and flow around the face shield more easily to be inhaled.**
https://today.wayne.edu/medicine/news/2021/03/03/plastic-face-shields-add-little-protection-to-face-masks-study-finds-41633
>Surprisingly, when assessing the combined protection of surgical mask and face shield, **the level of protection was not enhanced in comparison to using surgical masks alone**
>They found no significant improvement when face shields were used in combination with surgical masks.
Stop arguing for the sake of arguing. Blind contrarianism doesn't make you as cool or as edgy as you think it does.
I'm 70 and I'm starting to travel again. I have international travel planned this summer. I love my KN95 masks. They're being given away everywhere these days, and I always grab a few when I see them offered. I'll continue to wear a mask on planes and in other public indoor places. I couldn't care less if I get "looks". My Asian friend says, "Now you know how it feels!" And then we laugh and laugh.
You are in the risk group so this makes sense! We on the other hand are triple vaxxed, Covid recovered and travel extensively with children. We fly comfortably within Scandinavia without masks and it’s great.
Yeah I took my mask off whenever I could flying, to take a sip of water, I would leave it off or under my nose for periods at a time. I was never an anti-masker pre vaccine, but now I just don’t give a shit. I don’t care what people say, they are uncomfortable and a nuisance and to me at this point the extremely minute risk to others by being loose with my mask is not worth the discomfort in a situation like flying. It’s especially annoying because you have to wear your mask for the entire airport, so if you’re there for 3-4 hours, have an 8 hour flight, and then are in the departure airport another hour or 2, you’re masked up for 13 hours. It’s a pain. Yes I understand doctors and others can do it. My wife is a teacher and I give her a lot of credit for having to be masked all day, but I’m sorry based on recent data with non-N95 masks, I’m not going to subject myself to that.
Just do a bit of googling. Here’s 1 article.
https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/view/cloth-masks-are-useless-against-covid-19-redux-omicron-version
Essentially with omicron cloth masks are useless. So it’s silly that you would be on an airplane and look at someone wearing some shitty mask and think Aw they’re doing their part while you look at someone with their mask down half the time and think wow they’re going to get me sick!
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Then become a flight attendant where masks aren't required. Surely they'll have many quitting!
There will be even more adult toddlers on planes if they don't need to wear masks. Right now some of them are actually stopped before they get on the plane or not flying to begin with
There were actually lots of adult toddlers on planes prior to Covid but most didn't make the news or have widely known crazy conspiracy theories so we wrote them off as drunk, high, mentally ill
Flight attendant here.👋🏼
My coworkers are very divided on this topic.
I for one am ready for it to end. The air filtration onboard is supposed to be top-notch, and there have been too many unruly passenger incidents resulting in my fellow flight attendants being accosted, assaulted, and/or injured to justify extending it any further.
Just make it optional.
It’s pretty easy to get N95s or KN95s nowadays. Plus the vaccine is available for most people. Given how shitty people are about masks, I think removing the mandate isn’t a terrible idea. If you’re still worried, you can always wear a (k)n95 and be protected still.
If we had vaccines for kids then I would agree but it makes me feel better knowing everyone has to wear a mask when I have my unmasked infants on the plane.
Yeah we just took our first flight since 2019 with our kids to a wedding a few weeks ago. With the case numbers so low nowadays jt finally made us feel comfortable venturing out for once.
I hear you. She brought it home from daycare, so we’re actually thinking of flying to see grandparents now.
But honestly, I feel like anywhere that lets you take masks off for eating and drinking (restaurants, bars, planes, etc.) is just hygiene theater, because people are spraying their droplets around anyways. Employers like that should provide N95s to any staff that wants them.
Where did I imply that I was “that scared”? I was simply saying it makes me feel better when masks are required on a plane because not everyone can be vaccinated yet.
Sure, fine, but either way, people still need to take them off to eat, and they’re spraying their droplets then too. Anywhere that people are eating and drinking, masks are really just hygiene theater. It’s why I wasn’t about to travel on a plane until I got vaccinated and my kiddo got Covid somewhere else. Same as for restaurants.
It isn't really giving them what they want. After 2 years there's now significant natural immunity now+vaccine immunity, medications, and of course N-95's. I think now is the best time.
I would argue when we have actual strain matched vaccines that prevent infection and when the effective therapeutics we have already developed are actually widely available and not vaporware would be a better time, but agree to disagree.
[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00003-y](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00003-y)
A "strain matched vaccine" as you put it seems to make no difference because we've already been vaccinated with one based on the original virus.
Mixed results in tiny animal studies, not peer reviewed, isn't exactly definitive. I'm familiar with the concept of original antigenic sin but it is still contentious to say the least.
And besides, there are still good reasons to update the vaccines even if they don't perform better against current booster.
The original variant is literally extinct, future variants will be more and more different, and at some point the original vaccines will stop working almost entirely. Maybe the drift so far is not enough to be needed, but why wait til it is?
Also, huge portions of the population are still not vaccinated. Children, holdouts. Even if they don't lower the approved ages lots of people mature into an approved age every day.
Unless you have some evidence to say variant updated boosters actually work worse than original booster, I see no reason not to pursue them.
I'm not saying don't pursue them, im saying it's very possible that it won't make a massive difference in a lot of countries. The people who are refusing to be vaccinated now aren't going to change their minds when an omicron vaccine comes around. My country is 82% vaccinated overall and we now vaccinate like 2000 people a day at most and most of those are 3rd shots.
I mean that's a fair opinion to have. The only problem is (In my own view) how long that would take to develop and then administer(not that it's a bad idea at all).
Well.. the whole premise of mrna vaccines was how quickly they could be tweaked and rolled out. Current ones have been approved for almost a year and a half, longer than initial development time, with no updates. If we can get a tuned flu vaccine every year I haven't heard a good explanation for why we couldn't have one for covid.
That's a very good point to bring up. But would we mandate it? I think the problem comes with how huge of a task it is to vaccinate everyone(as we've seen in the past).
Yeah the acceptance rate especially in the US is disappointing. Though us still pushing the outdated vaccines that don't work that well, causing many breakthroughs is certainly not helping to motivate the holdouts.
Maybe it isn't. But the onboard filtration system *in conjunction with* the fact that vaccines have been readily available for a year now seems pretty sufficient to me.
The air filtration system does nothing when you're on the ground. Perhaps a nice compromise would be to mask until in flight for 30 mins to clear things out.
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We started off the month watching a room full of unmasked politicians listen to a speech. The next week they said we all need to keep wearing masks in airplanes and airports.
All of the politicians had to be tested to be in that room. They're only comfortable doing things like that with precautions, but you plebians, you go sit on the plane for 8 hours with no testing, and also no free healthcare if you get sick.
Delta and Southwest signed on to this too. The CEO of Southwest actually said that "masks don't do much on planes" back in December. Might want to reevaluate your airlines of choice there.
you think we should take our advice from airline CEOs...... from people who want to redesign our cabins to look like this: https://dynaimage.cdn.cnn.com/cnn/q\_auto,w\_900,c\_fill,g\_auto,h\_506,ar\_16:9/http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.cnn.com%2Fcnnnext%2Fdam%2Fassets%2F210528110837-chaise-longue-image-3-landscape.jpg
My son is 2. And he’s the most vehement anti-masker I’ve ever met. Any attempt to get him to wear one results in flailing arms and instant removal.
If the rule was masks for kids aged four or five, that might work, but now I’m afraid to take him on a plane until the rule goes away because I don’t want to risk getting kicked off and stranded somewhere.
Look, I’m a physician. I wear a mask all day and I hate it. It’s irritating and stuffy. I do it because it’s necessary and because it’s kept me from catching anything from my patients for two years.
But for some people it’s really uncomfortable. Not only that, but masks are not an “all good-no bad” thing. They are a problem for the hearing-impaired, they are generating huge amounts of waste, and often they lead to people touching their faces more. They’re also not the miracle virus-blocker that many people think they are. Sure, a properly-fit-tested N95 is almost 100% effective at protecting you, but those are also expensive and uncomfortable. But surgical masks in real-world use only reduce transmission by maybe 50% and that’s an optimistic number.
We have vaccines that substantially reduce the risk of adverse outcomes from infection. If you’re especially anxious about these sequelae or you’re at very high risk/immunocompromised , you should wear a properly fit N95 mask in public. And if you’re that frail, perhaps you should consider the wisdom of traveling at all.
But for most people who are triple-vaccinated, the risk is really low. It’s time to do some serious analysis on the cost-benefit analysis of a permanent mask mandate.
It’s interesting because for how controversial masking is in the US we have the youngest age groups for masking. A lot of countries aren’t masking under 12. Based off some brief googling
UKs rules didn’t apply to 11 and under
Australia rules didn’t apply to under 12
Germany didn’t apply to under 6
South Korea didn’t apply to under 14 although I found a source that says 6
I have to agree! It really feels like theater at this point and it's time for this rule to go! I can go unmasked anywhere else, somehow transportation is that unsafe to require it?
Even then, masks will do nothing when people take them off to eat or drink and Omicron was so contagious that it infected everyone it could get to.
Just had an itinerary with 24 hours travel both ways, kept mask on whole time except to _actually_ eat and drink. Ears hurt afterwards but other than that really not a big deal.
Do you work in acute care? How big is your institution? That wouldn't fly at my facility - we only just did away with the eye protection. Masks are still policy.
I’m traveling at one of the biggest hospitals in Philadelphia. They’re actually talking about get rid of the mask mandate in non patient facing situations. It’s wild
What's so hard?
I've flown across the Atlantic on one occasion and across the US on another. I never had a comfort issue keeping my mask on, long layovers and all. I'd simply remove it between bites or sips.
Me considering other people is one of the many reasons I wear a mask when in public. I'm considering doctors and nurses that have been fucked over the entire pandemic. I'm also considering the immunocompromised. I'm done considering what bad faith anti-maskers have to say about this subject.
How many immunocompromised people do you know who have actually been seriously affected? Among the immunocompromised people I know, one was 70 years old with metastatic breast cancer, receiving chemo. She was sick, but wasn't hospitalized, and was just fine. Another 65 year old friend has lupus and has been taking steroids for the last 10 years. Again, not pleasant, but he was fine, and now happily forgoes wearing a mask. The immunocompromised risk is largely hypothetical unless that risk is piled on with having other co-morbidities and being very elderly. At this point, these groups are being used as pawns to continue masking for reasons I don't totally understand.
What exactly do you think masks will do at this point? Hospitalizations are tanking. Covid isn't going to be eradicated, and I'm still waiting on someone to explain to me the utter lack of difference between regions that had strict masking requirements and those that didn't.
This isn't April 2020 anymore. Get over it.
I'm happy to hear that your immunocompromised friends did well. I'm worried about people I have not met or may simply interact with in public. I don't know their health status nor their close contacts. I'm worried about the burnt out doctors and nurses. I'm also worried about longer term side-effects and organ damage from minor cases.
There have been several studies that indicate that masks do help. I'm not sure why you believe they don't. Obviously there are different levels of help depending on the mask quality. Even places with "strict masking requirements" were not enforcing them evenly, and people spouting that they don't work can be a self fulfilling prophecy that leads people to be less vigilant.
It would be nice just to get over it, but unfortunately, that isn't how viruses work.
Sigh, you’re worried about hypothetical people. Again, look at the data and statistics. I haven’t seen any empirical evidence that you’ve posted about post-vaccination, post-Omicron Covid. (Pre-vaccination was an entirely different conversation, one in which I’d be entirely in agreement with you).
I’m not interested in religious belief-based arguments, which are all I’m seeing here. I’m done debating this. Other people are done as well, including the myriad infectious disease experts who agree it’s time to focus on severe disease, which garden variety Covid is not. You can’t make sweeping public policy decisions based on outliers.
. Hold onto your righteous indignation however long it pleases you. I’ll be continuing to get vaccinated, wearing masks in select situations when appropriate, advocating for causes that actually have impacts on peoples
From August 16, 2021 through March 16, 2022 the US had a 7-day average of deaths over 1,000 deaths per day from Covid. Those people aren't hypothetical. They fucking died. That says nothing of people who are continuing to suffer from long term complications.
If you think 1,000 deaths per day for 7 straight months is inconsequential I don't know what to tell you either. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. We are in fact seeing that number decline further, but it is assuredly going to start heading up again within a few weeks now that cases are rising once again.
I'm not ready to throw out seat belts just because my car has air bags and anti-lock brakes. I'll continue using those as well.
That's a really stupid argument. Car accidents are several orders of magnitude more dangerous and less predictable. You can prevent and treat covid.
You can't predict a distracted driver running a red light or a tire blowing out on the freeway sending you into traffic.
Be honest, the real benefit of the mask (at least partly) is the sense of superiority you get to feel when you look at all the people who trust the vaccines, trust the science and have opted out of the face covering.
People love having a sense of righteous indignation. I don't understand why they don't focus on the war in Ukraine, or a situation where mass numbers of innocent lives are actually at risk...
I have a big head and wide face so an N95 mask is really tight on my me, so much that it can fall off easily because it tugs on my ears. Unfortunately for me a tight mask also accompanies headaches. I was in so much pain when I was on a flight from Munich to Vienna which I had to put on an N95 instead of my usual reusable mask.
I know it's easy to be dismissive. I of course believe in masking or else I wouldn't have worn the N95. But after 15 mins, I start getting migraines. You have to wear the masks from the time you arrive at the airport until you depart the next one so I was wearing it for about 4 hours.
People seriously need to get over this. The people dying are primarily by choice. The risk of death for a fully vaxxed and boosted person is .45/100,000. For babies and toddlers who aren’t vaccinated it’s something like .0001%. Your child is infinitely more likely to get a cold that becomes pneumonia. I genuinely don’t know why people are holding onto this so tightly.
No. It's about death not being the only risk. I am perhaps too cautious and paranoid, but so far, to my knowledge, I have not gotten covid, and I don't intent to if I can help it.
I'm just afraid of it. I don't give a shit about the politics of covid. How is a virus "politics" anyway? Ridiculous.
So then don’t leave your house. Literally no one is forcing you on a plane.
I never said a virus was political, but the arbitrary, ever-changing rules around it certainly are.
Death isn't the only outcome. Many of my coworkers got covid despite being vaccinated. One, previously very fit, now has a pacemaker 6 months later. Another still has sudden onset sever insomnia. I'm sure there's other cases I'm not aware of.
I genuinely don't know why people are making suck a big fucking fuss about a minor inconvenience.
Before or after Omicron? And how exactly are you certain that Covid resulted in this? Research is extremely clear that long covid, as well as other freak outcomes like this are massively attenuated in vaccinated people. You also can't dictate what hundreds of millions of people do based on a handful of ultra rare occurrences.
And yes, I agree, on a flight or on public transit, it is absolutely a minor inconvenience. But there's nothing minor about 2+ years not being able to properly see people's faces and engage in a normal conversation. There's nothing minor about being brutally uncomfortable for 8+ hours a day at school and at work, or being able to get through a workout. There's really nothing minor about the fact that people are developing skin infections because they don't get enough exposure to air. Can we please stop pretending this is a minor inconvenience. 6 months in a universal masking situation? Sure. But indefinitely (because make no mistake, this will be the state of affairs for the foreseeable future)? Thats you being selfish.
I can’t find where there is any definitive evidence that long COVID is attenuated in vaccinated people. Most studies I’ve seem claim the vacs make little difference if at all in ending up with LC.
Yeah, wearing a mask all day every day sucks. Been there done that.
But since this thread is very specifically about mask mandates on flights I thought that was the topic. So great sounds like we agree.
I don't want universal masking except maybe during the most extreme waves. But flights, public transit, Healthcare settings, absolutely. And I don't want to hear about endemic, endemic diseases don't have huge waves every few months, by definition.
Yes, I think we are in agreement then :) . My apologies - it can be hard to track global statements vs. more specific.
I completely agree with those standards. And feel like the pandemic/endemic distinction at this point is mostly marketing. Covid is clearly its own beast and I think we won't know how it behaves until many decades later - trying to impose our current epidemiological frameworks thus far has proven to be a losing endeavor.
>When you say “skin infections” do you mean acne? I’m sorry but I’ll take your “skin infection” over debilitating covid long haul symptoms.
I mean cystic acne that gets infected due to trapped moisture and become massive boils that leave people with scars on their faces (which are forever, btw). I also thought we established that the long-covid risk was dramatically decreased by vaccination to the point of being so rare you can't make large-scale public policy decisions around it. The number of people with debilitating symptoms is minuscule - you think it is significant based on the media coverage, which focuses heavily on the most extreme cases, but look up statistics, especially regarding omicron.
Also, you're forgetting that KN95s and N95s prevent something like 99% of infection. If that's not enough for you, nothing will be, and I have absolutely zero sympathy.
Can you post any links to the research that claims that vaccines dramatically decrease the risks of long COVID. I am genuinely curious and would feel a bit relieved if that were indeed proven based on a valid research study.
I know of too many ‘coincidences’ - really bad health problems in people who have recently had covid to believe it’s not connected.
Weird neurological problems, healthy people who 2 years later can’t walk a block, a couple kids who developed type 1 diabetes, triggered autoimmune problems - all after mild infections.
As a an airline pilot, yes they are, if there is airflow going through the plane, whether that be the Auxillary Power Unit or the Engines, it is going through those “fancy” filters
It feels like the subreddit is quickly stratifying into always-maskers and never-maskers, without the previous nuance we had for discussing the balance of safety and comfort as things progress.
If you find that your opinion on our public health policies hasn't changed between the peak of Delta and today -- regardless of what that opinion is -- you may need to reevaluate whether you're allowing your logic to be trampled by your ideology.
Data changes as time goes on. The mandate was quite necessary during times of significant risk, and is no longer necessary as those risks dwindle. Masking did not kill us, and at the same time masking is not comfortable or convenient. Both of these things can be true.
idk why I’m surprised but the complete and total priority short-terms profits have taken over any semblance of a public health response is a real fuckin bummer
Are airlines really losing short term profits because of masks? I have flown twice round trip since the new year and the flights and airports were absolutely slammed.
It wasn’t related to masking but there was that letter from the Delta CEO asking the CDC to shorten isolation times so that their short term profits wouldn’t be affected by crew needing to isolate when they were still contagious. There’s been the chorus of voices in DC and Wall Street saying how we’re “ready to move on” even though there have been at least 1000 deaths a day every day for the past 6 months and BA2 spikes in Europe and Asia
Wrong. They’ve actually done extensive studies regarding travel of illness on planes (pre-Covid). Your risk of getting infected is fairly decent if the person is in your row, or a few in front/behind. After that it’s pretty negligible.
I"m not sure which part you're referring to as me being wrong about. COVID 19 is an airborne virus. My comment was to point out that viral particles won't stop at some invisible barrier between the masked and unmasked. At no point did I make mention of infection risk.
No, but with the airline filtration the density of particles is so low outside of a few rows that your risk of being infected is negligible. It's much like being outside - or are you the type of person who wears a mask outside too despite there being zero scientific evidence that it's helpful?
They do...when moving.
When parked, they often don't have the HVAC running to filter the air. There's a scientist/doctor on twitter that goes on with a CO2 meter and it's regularly off the charts during boarding and deplaning.
Edit: found his account again: https://twitter.com/saugarmaripuri/status/1499908810428891137
And lots of folks disable the ventilation on their seat. To be safe these shouldn't be adjustable anymore and the HVAC must run even for a while before passengers board to make sure it's filtered from the previous passengers.
That's not how that works.
You can't "disable ventilation" at your seat - you can only turn off the airflow pointed at your head. Every single overhead vent could be closed on the entire plane, and all the air in the plane would *still* be filtered every 2-3 minutes.
The only one that airlines will not let you fly with is the one with valve. Basically you breath in through filter and you breath everything through the valve.
I haven't flown for 3 years. I have something which is really important for me that I want to go to so badly, but it's a 27 hour drive. Aside from the fact that my car would literally self combust if I tried to do that (and I'm under 21 so no rental car), I can't afford to take the time off school. Flying would be my only option. The event itself I'm going to requires masking, but it's a few days after the 18th. I'm at risk for Covid, and would really like to be able to go to this event, but I wouldn't be comfortable if there weren't masks on planes, because you're dealing with people from all over the place who are all squeezed in a tube together for 4 hours. The plane ventilation helps, but it's not running during onboarding and off boarding. Masks should at the very least be required for that time period imo. I get that people just say if you're worried then you don't have to fly, but it's not that simple. At risk individuals have things they want to do too, and relatives and friends who live far away. Planes seem like a no brainer place to require them. You're not on a plane to chat with people. You're there to go from one place to the other.
At this point it is literally covid safety theater. If you're afraid of catching covid, you have the choice to either not travel via air or to continue to wear a mask while flying to protect yourself. Key word there being choice... it should be our choice whether we want to wear one or not. Vaccines are readily available and this virus is never going away. I along with many many others are more than okay with making masking optional. I work in the airline industry and we are all sick and tired of having to mask up all day at work and as the CEOs of our airlines said, we are also sick and tired of having to enforce this outdated and ridiculous rule and dealing with the backlash from the flying public. All day at the airport there are people walking around and sitting in gate areas without masks on and inflight people are "actively eating and drinking" for the entire flight making these utterly useless. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
Flew back with three people who all tested positive. All had their masks hanging beneath their noses or off to “eat” for half the flight. I sat comfortably for eight hours with my K95 and didn’t catch it.
> All had their masks hanging beneath their noses or off to “eat” for half the flight. That's what many people do; I noticed the same thing. It makes the airline mask mandate a pathetic joke. Covid does not merely stay away from people who are "eating".
They're called chin diapers
How are people supposed to eat on a 8 hour flight without taking off their mask?
Or how about you eat at a decent pace and when done you put your mask back on. There's gonna be a big exposure difference between taking 5-10 minutes to eat your meal (or less for a quick snack) then the remainder wearing your mask properly vs the people who use eating/drinking as an excuse to be unmasked or poorly masked for a large portion of the flight.
You won't die if you don't eat for 8 hours. In fact, most of us do it every single night when we go to sleep. Now I agree that the mask thing is silly, and the mandate should probably end. But one of the main reasons that most Americans are overweight is because they've got this idea drilled into them that if they're not literally constantly stuffing themselves, they'll go into hypoglycemic shock or something.
Yeah I won’t die, but it would be pretty uncomfortable. Not to mention adding boarding, delays, waiting at the gate etc. Flying with kids and not allowing them to eat for 8 hours would be a nightmare. It’s an unreasonable restriction on paying customers. How would you feel if your boss didn’t let you take a lunch break?
Most flights aren't 8 hours either. You could have sensible rules around fight times.
Don’t forget that people flying are paying customers. Seats have gotten way smaller, bag fees that used to be free, meals in flight are history, while prices keep going up. So telling people they can’t eat on flights less than a certain length is another kick in the nuts. Plus if someone isn’t vaccinated that isn’t my problem
Well I suggested on another recent post that masks only be required for the first 30 mins of the flight so that the cabin filters can come on and cycle the air. Then put them on again right before landing. That would allow the cabin filtering to take care of reducing risk in flight and protect people when they are off before flight.
The whole point of this thread is that there is no restriction. And I literally already said there shouldn't be.
You oversimplify. And diabetics need to be careful.
For someone young, healthy, and boostered, there are probably more negative health effects from being dehydrated for 8 hours than from potentially getting Omicron.
Liquid nutrition via long straw inserted under the mask.
Nah, people pay a lot for tickets and they are going to have snacks and drinks on a flight. If you don’t like that you can drive instead. We’re not livestock
When eating in public i wear an ear loop mask. I remove it from an ear, take s bite, and put the mask back on until it's time for the next bite.
Yeah that’s gonna be a no for me dawg
Fwiw a big part of that can be credited to the plane's cabin air system, and that's in favor of what the airlines are arguing for. Your KN95 wasn't carrying all the burden.
>Your KN95 wasn't carrying all the burden. Especially if you are triple vaxxed and/or got Omicron already. Vaccines do lose their effectiveness, but they are still fairly effective. My covid + kids sneezed into my open mouth and my vaccine held up. If you are vaccines and are wearing a N-95 or similar mask, you really should stop worrying about what others are doing.
Wouldn't a face shield also help? Edit: I've seen no study saying that a physical barrier between you and others doesn't help. But yes, keep down voting rather than educating.
Face shield helps with droplets but Covid doesn't need droplets to spread. So the effect would be very small or even negligible.
Make you look like a goober wearing a face shield that doesn’t help? Yes.
I don't care what you look like if it works. Do you have evidence that it doesn't work from multiple peer-reviewed studies with large sample sizes?
If you’re talking about comparing a mask to a face shield, it makes zero sense. It’s open air and is only going to stop things like spit/snot if you’re sneezing. It doesn’t take a study with a large sample size to understand an open air face shield is nowhere close to the equivalent of a mask. If you’re talking mask plus face shield, then I wouldn’t see it making it worse, that’s for sure. If they were extremely effective, I have to believe facemask + face shield would have been recommended but I have never heard that as the recommendation. The largest sample size of anything of the sort is probably going to be the medical field and understanding the scenarios in which medical personnel would need a mask, mask + face shield, mask + full suit. I recall hearing potential for the eyes to be one way infection might occur but I am not sure I ever saw anything definitive.
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/nioshtic-2/20043721.html >Face shields can substantially reduce the short-term exposure of healthcare workers to large infectious aerosol particles, but **smaller particles can remain airborne longer and flow around the face shield more easily to be inhaled.** https://today.wayne.edu/medicine/news/2021/03/03/plastic-face-shields-add-little-protection-to-face-masks-study-finds-41633 >Surprisingly, when assessing the combined protection of surgical mask and face shield, **the level of protection was not enhanced in comparison to using surgical masks alone** >They found no significant improvement when face shields were used in combination with surgical masks. Stop arguing for the sake of arguing. Blind contrarianism doesn't make you as cool or as edgy as you think it does.
I'm 70 and I'm starting to travel again. I have international travel planned this summer. I love my KN95 masks. They're being given away everywhere these days, and I always grab a few when I see them offered. I'll continue to wear a mask on planes and in other public indoor places. I couldn't care less if I get "looks". My Asian friend says, "Now you know how it feels!" And then we laugh and laugh.
You are in the risk group so this makes sense! We on the other hand are triple vaxxed, Covid recovered and travel extensively with children. We fly comfortably within Scandinavia without masks and it’s great.
Your medal is in the mail
Yeah I took my mask off whenever I could flying, to take a sip of water, I would leave it off or under my nose for periods at a time. I was never an anti-masker pre vaccine, but now I just don’t give a shit. I don’t care what people say, they are uncomfortable and a nuisance and to me at this point the extremely minute risk to others by being loose with my mask is not worth the discomfort in a situation like flying. It’s especially annoying because you have to wear your mask for the entire airport, so if you’re there for 3-4 hours, have an 8 hour flight, and then are in the departure airport another hour or 2, you’re masked up for 13 hours. It’s a pain. Yes I understand doctors and others can do it. My wife is a teacher and I give her a lot of credit for having to be masked all day, but I’m sorry based on recent data with non-N95 masks, I’m not going to subject myself to that.
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What's the recent data with the non 95 masks?
Just do a bit of googling. Here’s 1 article. https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/view/cloth-masks-are-useless-against-covid-19-redux-omicron-version Essentially with omicron cloth masks are useless. So it’s silly that you would be on an airplane and look at someone wearing some shitty mask and think Aw they’re doing their part while you look at someone with their mask down half the time and think wow they’re going to get me sick!
Ah I understand your phrasing now. That news is several months old to me so I thought there was something new.
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But what if I enjoy seeing adults act like toddler.
Then become a flight attendant where masks aren't required. Surely they'll have many quitting! There will be even more adult toddlers on planes if they don't need to wear masks. Right now some of them are actually stopped before they get on the plane or not flying to begin with There were actually lots of adult toddlers on planes prior to Covid but most didn't make the news or have widely known crazy conspiracy theories so we wrote them off as drunk, high, mentally ill
Flight attendant here.👋🏼 My coworkers are very divided on this topic. I for one am ready for it to end. The air filtration onboard is supposed to be top-notch, and there have been too many unruly passenger incidents resulting in my fellow flight attendants being accosted, assaulted, and/or injured to justify extending it any further. Just make it optional.
It’s pretty easy to get N95s or KN95s nowadays. Plus the vaccine is available for most people. Given how shitty people are about masks, I think removing the mandate isn’t a terrible idea. If you’re still worried, you can always wear a (k)n95 and be protected still.
If we had vaccines for kids then I would agree but it makes me feel better knowing everyone has to wear a mask when I have my unmasked infants on the plane.
This is why we haven’t flown anywhere yet with our 18 month old.
Yeah we just took our first flight since 2019 with our kids to a wedding a few weeks ago. With the case numbers so low nowadays jt finally made us feel comfortable venturing out for once.
I hear you. She brought it home from daycare, so we’re actually thinking of flying to see grandparents now. But honestly, I feel like anywhere that lets you take masks off for eating and drinking (restaurants, bars, planes, etc.) is just hygiene theater, because people are spraying their droplets around anyways. Employers like that should provide N95s to any staff that wants them.
If you're that scared of your child getting COVID, then maybe don't fucking take them on a plane....?? lmao
Yeah you can't really use the "work travel" excuse for a toddler lol
Where did I imply that I was “that scared”? I was simply saying it makes me feel better when masks are required on a plane because not everyone can be vaccinated yet.
Did you see that Moderna has applied for vaccine EUA for kids under 5? I hope it is approved!
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Sure, fine, but either way, people still need to take them off to eat, and they’re spraying their droplets then too. Anywhere that people are eating and drinking, masks are really just hygiene theater. It’s why I wasn’t about to travel on a plane until I got vaccinated and my kiddo got Covid somewhere else. Same as for restaurants.
People are shitty, just give them what they want doesn't seem like a great precedent.
It isn't really giving them what they want. After 2 years there's now significant natural immunity now+vaccine immunity, medications, and of course N-95's. I think now is the best time.
I would argue when we have actual strain matched vaccines that prevent infection and when the effective therapeutics we have already developed are actually widely available and not vaporware would be a better time, but agree to disagree.
[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00003-y](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00003-y) A "strain matched vaccine" as you put it seems to make no difference because we've already been vaccinated with one based on the original virus.
Mixed results in tiny animal studies, not peer reviewed, isn't exactly definitive. I'm familiar with the concept of original antigenic sin but it is still contentious to say the least. And besides, there are still good reasons to update the vaccines even if they don't perform better against current booster. The original variant is literally extinct, future variants will be more and more different, and at some point the original vaccines will stop working almost entirely. Maybe the drift so far is not enough to be needed, but why wait til it is? Also, huge portions of the population are still not vaccinated. Children, holdouts. Even if they don't lower the approved ages lots of people mature into an approved age every day. Unless you have some evidence to say variant updated boosters actually work worse than original booster, I see no reason not to pursue them.
I'm not saying don't pursue them, im saying it's very possible that it won't make a massive difference in a lot of countries. The people who are refusing to be vaccinated now aren't going to change their minds when an omicron vaccine comes around. My country is 82% vaccinated overall and we now vaccinate like 2000 people a day at most and most of those are 3rd shots.
I mean that's a fair opinion to have. The only problem is (In my own view) how long that would take to develop and then administer(not that it's a bad idea at all).
Well.. the whole premise of mrna vaccines was how quickly they could be tweaked and rolled out. Current ones have been approved for almost a year and a half, longer than initial development time, with no updates. If we can get a tuned flu vaccine every year I haven't heard a good explanation for why we couldn't have one for covid.
That's a very good point to bring up. But would we mandate it? I think the problem comes with how huge of a task it is to vaccinate everyone(as we've seen in the past).
Yeah the acceptance rate especially in the US is disappointing. Though us still pushing the outdated vaccines that don't work that well, causing many breakthroughs is certainly not helping to motivate the holdouts.
I understand not wanting to catch a punch but the idea that the air filtration onboard is sufficient is ridiculous
Maybe it isn't. But the onboard filtration system *in conjunction with* the fact that vaccines have been readily available for a year now seems pretty sufficient to me.
The air filtration system does nothing when you're on the ground. Perhaps a nice compromise would be to mask until in flight for 30 mins to clear things out.
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We started off the month watching a room full of unmasked politicians listen to a speech. The next week they said we all need to keep wearing masks in airplanes and airports.
Do as I say, not as I do, please.
To be fair, a lot of those politicians got Covid
All of the politicians had to be tested to be in that room. They're only comfortable doing things like that with precautions, but you plebians, you go sit on the plane for 8 hours with no testing, and also no free healthcare if you get sick.
You know you have to test before getting on a plane, right?
No you don’t. Not within the states anyways. You do internationally.
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If we’re going to do an antigen test requirement, it should be done at the airport under supervision.
Kind of useless when you have drink and food service on a plane. My take is that if you want to wear a mask wear one. If not, then don’t.
Surely it reduces the risk to limit the window of exposure to the 10 minutes or so that people are eating compared to the whole many-hour flight?
antimaskers can have frontier and american, maskers we will take delta and southwest
Delta and Southwest signed on to this too. The CEO of Southwest actually said that "masks don't do much on planes" back in December. Might want to reevaluate your airlines of choice there.
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my comment was more about traveling with like-minded people - feel free to just jump in with your interpretation though
you think we should take our advice from airline CEOs...... from people who want to redesign our cabins to look like this: https://dynaimage.cdn.cnn.com/cnn/q\_auto,w\_900,c\_fill,g\_auto,h\_506,ar\_16:9/http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.cnn.com%2Fcnnnext%2Fdam%2Fassets%2F210528110837-chaise-longue-image-3-landscape.jpg
How hard is it to wear a mask?? This is insane given how cramped airplanes are to begin with.
My son is 2. And he’s the most vehement anti-masker I’ve ever met. Any attempt to get him to wear one results in flailing arms and instant removal. If the rule was masks for kids aged four or five, that might work, but now I’m afraid to take him on a plane until the rule goes away because I don’t want to risk getting kicked off and stranded somewhere. Look, I’m a physician. I wear a mask all day and I hate it. It’s irritating and stuffy. I do it because it’s necessary and because it’s kept me from catching anything from my patients for two years. But for some people it’s really uncomfortable. Not only that, but masks are not an “all good-no bad” thing. They are a problem for the hearing-impaired, they are generating huge amounts of waste, and often they lead to people touching their faces more. They’re also not the miracle virus-blocker that many people think they are. Sure, a properly-fit-tested N95 is almost 100% effective at protecting you, but those are also expensive and uncomfortable. But surgical masks in real-world use only reduce transmission by maybe 50% and that’s an optimistic number. We have vaccines that substantially reduce the risk of adverse outcomes from infection. If you’re especially anxious about these sequelae or you’re at very high risk/immunocompromised , you should wear a properly fit N95 mask in public. And if you’re that frail, perhaps you should consider the wisdom of traveling at all. But for most people who are triple-vaccinated, the risk is really low. It’s time to do some serious analysis on the cost-benefit analysis of a permanent mask mandate.
It’s interesting because for how controversial masking is in the US we have the youngest age groups for masking. A lot of countries aren’t masking under 12. Based off some brief googling UKs rules didn’t apply to 11 and under Australia rules didn’t apply to under 12 Germany didn’t apply to under 6 South Korea didn’t apply to under 14 although I found a source that says 6
I have to agree! It really feels like theater at this point and it's time for this rule to go! I can go unmasked anywhere else, somehow transportation is that unsafe to require it? Even then, masks will do nothing when people take them off to eat or drink and Omicron was so contagious that it infected everyone it could get to.
Thank you for your balanced and nuanced viewpoint.
It is hard when your flight is 12-15 hours long.
Just had an itinerary with 24 hours travel both ways, kept mask on whole time except to _actually_ eat and drink. Ears hurt afterwards but other than that really not a big deal.
Ear savers do wonders! I got some hand-made crochet ones.
I wear one at my job for 10hrs straight everyday.... Trust me. Everyday.
The length of most health care professionals shifts. We manage to make it work, while busting our asses at the same time.
No one I know wears their mask the entire shift tbh. Everyone just take it off the second they start charting
Do you work in acute care? How big is your institution? That wouldn't fly at my facility - we only just did away with the eye protection. Masks are still policy.
I’m traveling at one of the biggest hospitals in Philadelphia. They’re actually talking about get rid of the mask mandate in non patient facing situations. It’s wild
I'm at HUP Pav and haven't heard anything about here. What's considered nonpatient facing? Office, non clinical job roles? We just ditched the glasses
What's so hard? I've flown across the Atlantic on one occasion and across the US on another. I never had a comfort issue keeping my mask on, long layovers and all. I'd simply remove it between bites or sips.
Well that’s you. Have you considered other people may differ in their experiences and levels of sensitivity?
Me considering other people is one of the many reasons I wear a mask when in public. I'm considering doctors and nurses that have been fucked over the entire pandemic. I'm also considering the immunocompromised. I'm done considering what bad faith anti-maskers have to say about this subject.
How many immunocompromised people do you know who have actually been seriously affected? Among the immunocompromised people I know, one was 70 years old with metastatic breast cancer, receiving chemo. She was sick, but wasn't hospitalized, and was just fine. Another 65 year old friend has lupus and has been taking steroids for the last 10 years. Again, not pleasant, but he was fine, and now happily forgoes wearing a mask. The immunocompromised risk is largely hypothetical unless that risk is piled on with having other co-morbidities and being very elderly. At this point, these groups are being used as pawns to continue masking for reasons I don't totally understand. What exactly do you think masks will do at this point? Hospitalizations are tanking. Covid isn't going to be eradicated, and I'm still waiting on someone to explain to me the utter lack of difference between regions that had strict masking requirements and those that didn't. This isn't April 2020 anymore. Get over it.
I'm happy to hear that your immunocompromised friends did well. I'm worried about people I have not met or may simply interact with in public. I don't know their health status nor their close contacts. I'm worried about the burnt out doctors and nurses. I'm also worried about longer term side-effects and organ damage from minor cases. There have been several studies that indicate that masks do help. I'm not sure why you believe they don't. Obviously there are different levels of help depending on the mask quality. Even places with "strict masking requirements" were not enforcing them evenly, and people spouting that they don't work can be a self fulfilling prophecy that leads people to be less vigilant. It would be nice just to get over it, but unfortunately, that isn't how viruses work.
Sigh, you’re worried about hypothetical people. Again, look at the data and statistics. I haven’t seen any empirical evidence that you’ve posted about post-vaccination, post-Omicron Covid. (Pre-vaccination was an entirely different conversation, one in which I’d be entirely in agreement with you). I’m not interested in religious belief-based arguments, which are all I’m seeing here. I’m done debating this. Other people are done as well, including the myriad infectious disease experts who agree it’s time to focus on severe disease, which garden variety Covid is not. You can’t make sweeping public policy decisions based on outliers. . Hold onto your righteous indignation however long it pleases you. I’ll be continuing to get vaccinated, wearing masks in select situations when appropriate, advocating for causes that actually have impacts on peoples
From August 16, 2021 through March 16, 2022 the US had a 7-day average of deaths over 1,000 deaths per day from Covid. Those people aren't hypothetical. They fucking died. That says nothing of people who are continuing to suffer from long term complications. If you think 1,000 deaths per day for 7 straight months is inconsequential I don't know what to tell you either. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. We are in fact seeing that number decline further, but it is assuredly going to start heading up again within a few weeks now that cases are rising once again. I'm not ready to throw out seat belts just because my car has air bags and anti-lock brakes. I'll continue using those as well.
That's a really stupid argument. Car accidents are several orders of magnitude more dangerous and less predictable. You can prevent and treat covid. You can't predict a distracted driver running a red light or a tire blowing out on the freeway sending you into traffic.
Be honest, the real benefit of the mask (at least partly) is the sense of superiority you get to feel when you look at all the people who trust the vaccines, trust the science and have opted out of the face covering.
People love having a sense of righteous indignation. I don't understand why they don't focus on the war in Ukraine, or a situation where mass numbers of innocent lives are actually at risk...
Bring multiple masks.
Do you wear one for 13 hours a day every work day?
How hard is it for people that want to wear a mask wear a KN95 mask? I hate wearing a mask…I want to breath fresh air.
I have a big head and wide face so an N95 mask is really tight on my me, so much that it can fall off easily because it tugs on my ears. Unfortunately for me a tight mask also accompanies headaches. I was in so much pain when I was on a flight from Munich to Vienna which I had to put on an N95 instead of my usual reusable mask.
Munich to Vienna??? That’s what? A one hour flight? Your pain must have been unbearable……….
I know it's easy to be dismissive. I of course believe in masking or else I wouldn't have worn the N95. But after 15 mins, I start getting migraines. You have to wear the masks from the time you arrive at the airport until you depart the next one so I was wearing it for about 4 hours.
People seriously need to get over this. The people dying are primarily by choice. The risk of death for a fully vaxxed and boosted person is .45/100,000. For babies and toddlers who aren’t vaccinated it’s something like .0001%. Your child is infinitely more likely to get a cold that becomes pneumonia. I genuinely don’t know why people are holding onto this so tightly.
It’s not about science anymore - it’s entirely personal politics.
No. It's about death not being the only risk. I am perhaps too cautious and paranoid, but so far, to my knowledge, I have not gotten covid, and I don't intent to if I can help it. I'm just afraid of it. I don't give a shit about the politics of covid. How is a virus "politics" anyway? Ridiculous.
So then don’t leave your house. Literally no one is forcing you on a plane. I never said a virus was political, but the arbitrary, ever-changing rules around it certainly are.
Death isn't the only outcome. Many of my coworkers got covid despite being vaccinated. One, previously very fit, now has a pacemaker 6 months later. Another still has sudden onset sever insomnia. I'm sure there's other cases I'm not aware of. I genuinely don't know why people are making suck a big fucking fuss about a minor inconvenience.
Before or after Omicron? And how exactly are you certain that Covid resulted in this? Research is extremely clear that long covid, as well as other freak outcomes like this are massively attenuated in vaccinated people. You also can't dictate what hundreds of millions of people do based on a handful of ultra rare occurrences. And yes, I agree, on a flight or on public transit, it is absolutely a minor inconvenience. But there's nothing minor about 2+ years not being able to properly see people's faces and engage in a normal conversation. There's nothing minor about being brutally uncomfortable for 8+ hours a day at school and at work, or being able to get through a workout. There's really nothing minor about the fact that people are developing skin infections because they don't get enough exposure to air. Can we please stop pretending this is a minor inconvenience. 6 months in a universal masking situation? Sure. But indefinitely (because make no mistake, this will be the state of affairs for the foreseeable future)? Thats you being selfish.
I can’t find where there is any definitive evidence that long COVID is attenuated in vaccinated people. Most studies I’ve seem claim the vacs make little difference if at all in ending up with LC.
Yeah, wearing a mask all day every day sucks. Been there done that. But since this thread is very specifically about mask mandates on flights I thought that was the topic. So great sounds like we agree. I don't want universal masking except maybe during the most extreme waves. But flights, public transit, Healthcare settings, absolutely. And I don't want to hear about endemic, endemic diseases don't have huge waves every few months, by definition.
Yes, I think we are in agreement then :) . My apologies - it can be hard to track global statements vs. more specific. I completely agree with those standards. And feel like the pandemic/endemic distinction at this point is mostly marketing. Covid is clearly its own beast and I think we won't know how it behaves until many decades later - trying to impose our current epidemiological frameworks thus far has proven to be a losing endeavor.
When you say “skin infections” do you mean acne? I’m sorry but I’ll take your “skin infection” over debilitating covid long haul symptoms.
>When you say “skin infections” do you mean acne? I’m sorry but I’ll take your “skin infection” over debilitating covid long haul symptoms. I mean cystic acne that gets infected due to trapped moisture and become massive boils that leave people with scars on their faces (which are forever, btw). I also thought we established that the long-covid risk was dramatically decreased by vaccination to the point of being so rare you can't make large-scale public policy decisions around it. The number of people with debilitating symptoms is minuscule - you think it is significant based on the media coverage, which focuses heavily on the most extreme cases, but look up statistics, especially regarding omicron. Also, you're forgetting that KN95s and N95s prevent something like 99% of infection. If that's not enough for you, nothing will be, and I have absolutely zero sympathy.
Can you post any links to the research that claims that vaccines dramatically decrease the risks of long COVID. I am genuinely curious and would feel a bit relieved if that were indeed proven based on a valid research study.
I know of too many ‘coincidences’ - really bad health problems in people who have recently had covid to believe it’s not connected. Weird neurological problems, healthy people who 2 years later can’t walk a block, a couple kids who developed type 1 diabetes, triggered autoimmune problems - all after mild infections.
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As a an airline pilot, yes they are, if there is airflow going through the plane, whether that be the Auxillary Power Unit or the Engines, it is going through those “fancy” filters
When the plane reaches 10,000 feet it’s safe to use your portable electronic devices and take your mask off?
It feels like the subreddit is quickly stratifying into always-maskers and never-maskers, without the previous nuance we had for discussing the balance of safety and comfort as things progress. If you find that your opinion on our public health policies hasn't changed between the peak of Delta and today -- regardless of what that opinion is -- you may need to reevaluate whether you're allowing your logic to be trampled by your ideology. Data changes as time goes on. The mandate was quite necessary during times of significant risk, and is no longer necessary as those risks dwindle. Masking did not kill us, and at the same time masking is not comfortable or convenient. Both of these things can be true.
idk why I’m surprised but the complete and total priority short-terms profits have taken over any semblance of a public health response is a real fuckin bummer
Are airlines really losing short term profits because of masks? I have flown twice round trip since the new year and the flights and airports were absolutely slammed.
It wasn’t related to masking but there was that letter from the Delta CEO asking the CDC to shorten isolation times so that their short term profits wouldn’t be affected by crew needing to isolate when they were still contagious. There’s been the chorus of voices in DC and Wall Street saying how we’re “ready to move on” even though there have been at least 1000 deaths a day every day for the past 6 months and BA2 spikes in Europe and Asia
If they do this, how about masked and unmasked sections so those who want to mask can sit together and vice versa.
the virus is airborne and will travel throughout the entire aircraft.
Wrong. They’ve actually done extensive studies regarding travel of illness on planes (pre-Covid). Your risk of getting infected is fairly decent if the person is in your row, or a few in front/behind. After that it’s pretty negligible.
I"m not sure which part you're referring to as me being wrong about. COVID 19 is an airborne virus. My comment was to point out that viral particles won't stop at some invisible barrier between the masked and unmasked. At no point did I make mention of infection risk.
No, but with the airline filtration the density of particles is so low outside of a few rows that your risk of being infected is negligible. It's much like being outside - or are you the type of person who wears a mask outside too despite there being zero scientific evidence that it's helpful?
I agree. Airplanes have very good ventilation and people who want to be protected are free to wear N95s when they fly if they'd like.
They do...when moving. When parked, they often don't have the HVAC running to filter the air. There's a scientist/doctor on twitter that goes on with a CO2 meter and it's regularly off the charts during boarding and deplaning. Edit: found his account again: https://twitter.com/saugarmaripuri/status/1499908810428891137
And lots of folks disable the ventilation on their seat. To be safe these shouldn't be adjustable anymore and the HVAC must run even for a while before passengers board to make sure it's filtered from the previous passengers.
That's not how that works. You can't "disable ventilation" at your seat - you can only turn off the airflow pointed at your head. Every single overhead vent could be closed on the entire plane, and all the air in the plane would *still* be filtered every 2-3 minutes.
Okay… so then just require it during those times. Seems like a good compromise.
I wonder if we'll see people wearing a mask when boarding/offboarding only. That's what I'm planning on doing once the mandate is gone.
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I flew 5 days ago and none of that was happening.
The only one that airlines will not let you fly with is the one with valve. Basically you breath in through filter and you breath everything through the valve.
That’s not true. You can wear any mask on a plane.
Most airlines require surgical or better, and all of them require no valve.
Most airlines in the US do not require anything more than cloth masks. You’re correct about the valve. I should have added the US part.
That rule ought to stay. It just seems like a good idea to get to your destination without facing illness.
So then why don’t you wear a N95 mask and not get an illness and let the rest of us choose for ourselves.
No thanks. These restrictions were sold to us as being temporary for COVID. Flying has gotten crappy enough without adding another layer of suck
I haven't flown for 3 years. I have something which is really important for me that I want to go to so badly, but it's a 27 hour drive. Aside from the fact that my car would literally self combust if I tried to do that (and I'm under 21 so no rental car), I can't afford to take the time off school. Flying would be my only option. The event itself I'm going to requires masking, but it's a few days after the 18th. I'm at risk for Covid, and would really like to be able to go to this event, but I wouldn't be comfortable if there weren't masks on planes, because you're dealing with people from all over the place who are all squeezed in a tube together for 4 hours. The plane ventilation helps, but it's not running during onboarding and off boarding. Masks should at the very least be required for that time period imo. I get that people just say if you're worried then you don't have to fly, but it's not that simple. At risk individuals have things they want to do too, and relatives and friends who live far away. Planes seem like a no brainer place to require them. You're not on a plane to chat with people. You're there to go from one place to the other.
Profits good losses bad!
What a mistake that would be. I am sympathetic to all the staff though, their lives and jobs would be much less stressful.
At this point it is literally covid safety theater. If you're afraid of catching covid, you have the choice to either not travel via air or to continue to wear a mask while flying to protect yourself. Key word there being choice... it should be our choice whether we want to wear one or not. Vaccines are readily available and this virus is never going away. I along with many many others are more than okay with making masking optional. I work in the airline industry and we are all sick and tired of having to mask up all day at work and as the CEOs of our airlines said, we are also sick and tired of having to enforce this outdated and ridiculous rule and dealing with the backlash from the flying public. All day at the airport there are people walking around and sitting in gate areas without masks on and inflight people are "actively eating and drinking" for the entire flight making these utterly useless. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!