I’m traveling for the first time since the mask mandate ended. I expected to see about 25% in masks but it’s more like 5%. And somebody in the bathroom didn’t even was his hands. Turns out the new normal is just the old normal.
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I’ll admit that for my upcoming trip next month, I’m half-expecting that airports/ airplanes will have fallen below the standard I use when deciding whether to mask: I don’t want to be “the only one” or “almost the only one”.
I recently traveled and saw fewer masks than I’d hoped.
I’ve stopped wearing masks in most non-compulsory situations, largely because community transmission of COVID and flu is pretty low right now in my area. During cold/flu/COVID season when cooties are widespread, I will still wear a mask in many situations: air travel, mass transit,…
For anyone wondering about my rationale for my “I don’t want to be the only one” stance as to masking…it has to do with an incident my wife and I had when traveling after we got our first couple of doses of Pfizer. As we went further south, we kept getting the evil eye when we masked during our stops, and at one bio/fuel break in rural West Tennessee, we were verbally accosted for being masked.
Then, this morning, I encountered this (found on Reddit, someone sharing a Facebook post, click to embiggen):
Some people really, really suck.
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I flew recently. Id day about 2%-10% masked depending on the flight.
That’s really sad.
I got really sick after traveling last year. It’s possible I picked up a bug before flying, who knows? And I had realized before Covid that I often get sick after flying.
Probably not gonna mask at my family reunion this summer, but definitely getting that fall booster I had put off. Driving for that one.
Might still mask the next time I fly. Or I might take Airborne or something and hope for the best.
I used to get some kind of crud at least 50% of the time after flying. More often than not, my wife (whose immune system sucks) would catch the crud from me, and it’d be more than a minor annoyance for her.
I’ve been masked for every plane trip I’ve taken since coming out of lockdown. Knock wood, I haven’t had a case of crud. Not sure whether that’s been because of masks, or because I’ve been making fewer air trips and more of those trips have been in business/first class, or because the airlines are still doing better when it comes to cleaning cabin air.
My wife, on the other hand, isn’t doing masks anymore on her twice-a-year air trips, since she hates being masked for extended periods. It’ll be interesting to see what we do when we go to Hawaii this fall. 16+ hours in airports and airplanes each way…
IFYP
Cabin air filters were great long before Covid. But the cabin itself was really filthy. Sitting in first probably helps a little too, but mostly masking and cleaner cabins.
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That’s fair. Covid is mostly spread via air, but there’s lots of other crud that’s spread via surfaces. Airports have filthy air. Airplanes have filthy surfaces. In my experience.
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I’m sure the air quality in airports is all over the map, but yes, that’s another possible source of infection.
Saw this pop up on the economist. I haven’t been following mask stuff at all…
But this certainly looks unimpressive.
(Admittedly their use of a log scale makes it even less impressive looking.)
That meta-study (or at least one like it) has come up in an ongoing argument on another forum where I spend way too much time.
I read through it, and while it does report that the studies it surveyed have underwhelming results (a finding that has me feeling a little less squicked about going maskless under my rule of thumb of “I don’t want to be the outlier” when deciding whether to mask), it goes on to point out the deficiencies in the studies it surveyed, concluding that the deficiencies are sufficient to not draw conclusions, one way or the other, from those studies.
Here’s the link btw. And yes, I agree these are awful studies. Mostly pre-COVID. Way too much non-adherence and self-reporting.
I guess we feel uncomfortable about doing RCTs on therapies we think save lives, but I sure wish we did them anyway. We need real laboratories for democracy imo!
I had a look at local numbers. Seems like its plateaud and at a low level. Arguably we are at the point where covid isnt a concern here for the general public. I still mostly wear my mask.when out, but if i forget it i dont bother going back to get it.
What a weird time the last three years have been.
I’m inconsistent. Mostly still mask at stores, sometimes at the office on days I go in, wore one when flying recently, but didn’t wear one at an indoor sporting event. COVID is still around tho. Wife was recently exposed by a friend but didn’t catch it.
Not much point in wearing one locally unless you have a compromised immune system and/or you use mass transit (always a huge exposure vector).
I only use mine for train/tube here and airport/plane when travelling.
I remember back in the pre-covid days when people used to make fun of the occasional asian wearing a moon suit at an airport while travelling. Thats definitely changed now.
I’m sitting in Terminal A at Boston Logan, waiting to catch a flight.
I have not seen anyone wearing a mask.
(I would, but my rule of thumb has been “not if I’m the only one”…and I’m headed to a convention for one of my hobbies, an event in fairly red country where many “the regulars” were EXTREMELY publicly critical about the 2020 and 2021 events having been canceled, and where I expect to see a booth or two of Trump and/or Q memorabilia at the flea market. If I’m going to pick up travel crud or the plague, it’ll be there, regardless of any facial nudity in the germ-ridden cesspool of aviation sterile space.)
Whoops, almost clicked “reply” too soon. Just saw a frail-looking elderly person, masked and being pushed in a wheelchair. Good for them at being more resistant to peer pressure than I!
I must say that going bare-faced has a certain advantage given how I’ve been handling this pollen season. (I saw multiple yellow-geeen clouds blowing past my window yesterday.)
Why do you care what others think of your doing the right thing? By which I mean, protecting your immuno-compromised spouse?
Went to a play last night. Wore my mask on the subway, did not wear my mask on Hollywood Blvd (outdoors), did not wear my mask inside at the theater (very airy). Wore my mask on the subway ride to my car.
Anyone asks, I simply say, “You don’t know where I’ve been.”