Originally published at: Hundreds of flights cancelled due to Covid illness immediately after airlines cancelled mask policy | Boing Boing
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Will US airlines learn from this predictable lesson?
No.
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Fly the Covid Skies
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It’s almost like packing in a few hundred people willing to travel during a pandemic into a sealed tube is a bad idea. Weird, right?
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I caught Covid in FOUR days after everyone around me dropped masks when my province did.
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I think the only question of interest to airline executives is “yeah, but did they make more money?”
Which I’m guessing they did, if bookings were up, since they probably do OK on cancelled flights. Especially if they have spare seats on all their ofher flights anyway. I flew from London to NY in February and there was like one person per row in economy.
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So the real question is: were there more “Covid adjacent” flight cancellations that first no-mask week than the last 3-6 weeks beforehand?
OR did the airlines plan more flights anticipating a flood of travelers after masking dropped, and then cut some back when they didn’t get immediately booked solid?
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I am also interested in whether those employees who got sick were required to wear a mask, or allowed to mask, or required to Not wear a mask? And what their mask status was by infection. And also to see infection rates by vaccination status, plus infection severity by vaccination status.
Those data points would provide a lot of information to make smart policy (beyond the obvious, that wearing masks in public transport is the right choice!).
- I am a nurse, I work around infected people every shift, and it is obvious how much protection n95s have in my workplace.
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Oh, we’re in the stage where tracking and testing went out the window well before the masks did. I had similar questions, but TPTB no longer care. When this happened in my area in January, it jumped out at me how much research and testing happened in an attempt to discover the source of this outbreak suspected of killing 3 people*:
There was an investigation, and the owner pushed back against the actions of the health department because closing down cost them money and affected their reputation. In a few reports, statements from the restaurant’s attorney were included.
*Not to minimize any deaths, but the difference in action and level of concern based on that should be noted.
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My kid’s middle school made mask-wearing optional. The kids there sit real close together, each looking at their phone screens and showing each other their screens. My kid caught it, then a few days later, I tested positive with symptoms, and a few days after that, so did my wife. Our stance now is that 1) masks work, and 2) the mandate was lifted too soon.
This really sucks because now I have that virus in me, or remnants of it, and who knows, there might be some kind of shingles-like thing, where years later, some crazy ass new thing erupts from the ashes of today’s coronavirus.
ETA: We’re all fully vaxxed and boosted.
ETA v2: Why did the FedEx and UPS CEOs sign that letter too? Last I heard, they don’t carry passengers.
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I am a pediatrician and I swim in it all day every day. Managed to avoid it so far. N95’s are a godsend.
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(ETA: WOO HOO! I can’t believe I finally got to be the first person to use this reaction in a story that deserved it)
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“Swiss-based EasyJet” … another one of the “Brexit benefits” that have made life in the UK so fantastic. We can’t even claim Europe’s second-largest budget airline any more.
Let me guess- Alberta? 
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This is good to know. I was wondering if “mask optional” policies were extra stupid because the whole point of masks is that they protect the other person. However if N95s do protect oneself, that’s some comfort.
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That’s the change. If everyone is masked, it makes a huge difference regardless of the mask type (mostly, anyway) but if you are among maskless so-and-so’s, N95’s make a huge difference in protecting yourself.
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Clearly you just don’t understand the special airplane magic which means that the air you exhale automatically gets sucked straight out of your lungs into the filtration and recirculation system of the plane where all traces of infectious material are removed before the air is pumped back into the passenger cabin.
I believe that is the argument airlines have been running although I admit I didn’t quite understand it myself.
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