9 ms·

Masks on planes requirement dropped by some UK airlines

40 points by taubek 5y ago

Hulitio 5y ago
Just be aware that it might mean for you that you catch COVID and will be sick in your holiday. I got COVID from one event 3 weeks ago and it threw my plans around. It wasn't that big of an issue as I have a booster but I planed to visit a close friend who does cancer treatment and I was quite happy that he had no time for a short visit as I learned about my COVID invection two days later and I don't want to put him on unnecessary risk. Let's see and hope covids route to endemic is getting easier and easier.
- culopatin 5y ago
  In reality I all a bit of a theatre. If you believe in the mask effectiveness, you’ll get it when everyone takes their mask off at the same time to eat every time they hand off something. Almost no one wears an n95 for long flights and most people will wear the mask as poorly as they can anyway. Edit: just to clarify, I don’t have anything against anyone who believes in the mask effectiveness and wants to wear it. But I don’t see the point of enforcing the half assed way things are being done.
  - involans 5y ago
    You don't have to eat during the flight, or you can delay eating to be out of phase. I've done that and so far it's been effective over a number of transatlantic flights.
    - throw7576521 5y ago
      Order vegetarian or ither special option, get it usually first and probability of someone doing the same nearby is low, and then eat like you haven't eaten for days before and put mask on before anyone else takes it off - worked fine for me lol. Also keep ventilation from above right on you at least a little... Much more frightening were all the people in queues at the airports, bad ventilation, coming close, not wearing a mask at all. Why so scared? Same reason, didn't want to get even a single day wasted for the first and quite costly vacation, glad it all worked out!
    - andy_ppp 5y ago
      I was under the impression that masks don't protect you that much, they protect other people from you?
      - nicoburns 5y ago
        N95 masks do if fitted properly. You can buy one for ~£3, well worth it for a flight in my opinion.
        culopatin 5y ago
        Agreed, but I’ve taken several flights during covid all over the world and I see 1 n95 every 50 people at most. And it’s very likely that the person wearing it does not have covid anyway. The one that probably had covid is that guy with his nose out and the one snacking a little bit the whole flight to not have to wear it.
      - throw7576521 5y ago
        True, tight FFP2/N95 help you also to some degree though. Its all probability and exposure amount and many more factors, not binary at all.
      - andybak 5y ago
        The devils's in detail. How much is "not that much"? I'll take all the cumulative small probability gains I can get. Cost vs benefit.
      - glenra 5y ago
        > I was under the impression that masks don't protect you that much, they protect other people from you? That claim has been made but is questionable. The masks were designed to reduce exposure to the wearer, not so much from the wearer. It's a matter of physics: When you inhale the suction generated automatically pulls the mask tighter on your face such that the air you breathe in essentially all has to pass through the mask but when you exhale, not so much. In designing a mask there is a choice between a finer mesh or a looser one. If you pick a very loose mesh - say, cotton gauze - then air is easy to push through when you exhale but so are virus particles. On the other hand if you pick a very tight mesh - say, N95 or better - then air is much harder to push through but exhaling forces the mask slightly away from the face such that moist potentially virus-laden breath puffs out the sides and top. This is why your glasses fog up when wearing an N95 - moist air is escaping out the top of the mask completely unfiltered. (You can find youtube videos demonstrating this process with cigarette smoke). Double- or triple-masking doesn't help either - that makes it even harder for air to pass directly through the masks so even more air pushes out the side and top instead. If your N95 is VERY well fitted and the strap VERY tight - tight enough to make your ears hurt - you'll get less escape, but wearing a mask that way is sufficiently uncomfortable that almost nobody does it. In short, an N95 does plausibly filter nearly all the air you breathe IN, but if you want to filter the air you're breathing OUT, you really should be wearing a cleanroom suit.
    - dustinmoris 5y ago
      > You don't have to eat during the flight In theory you don't have to do anything mate. Just lie down in a coffin at home, shut the door and I bet you you won't catch COVID or any other mild respiratory illness. If to you the meaning of life is to get born, not catch COVID under any ridiculous circumstances and then die then this is a dead sure way of achieving your dreams! I rather live life, take risks, feel my heart beat, go out and spend intimate time with other people, feel the thrill of being close to other human beings, feeling the joy of a person's touch, seeing their beautiful face when they laugh, share food and drinks without being paranoid and indulge myself in everything the world has to offer. Getting a mild cough or feeling a week a bit ill because of a flu every few years is a small price to pay for all the amazing memories I'll collect along the way.
      - DiggyJohnson 5y ago
        Well put. The conservative (true sense of the word) position on this is so frustrating to communicate, because those who want to keep these sorts of policies and patterns are so often coming from people with a risk tolerance profile that I genuinely can’t understand or relate to.
      - blub 5y ago
        Airline food is indeed living the life while feeling the thrill of being close to other human beans.
      - Hulitio 5y ago
        COVID is still very very new. There was and still are good reasons to be careful. It would have been just stupid to get COVID out of yolo. Now doctors have much more experience with it, vaccines exists.
  - hsshjshshs 5y ago
    - culopatin 5y ago
      It would be more like telling everyone to drive only at lunch and tea time because some people drink and drive. Look, I don’t get offended by people who wear masks or anything like that. But I got covid from a plane while wearing a mask, and I haven’t seen a peer reviewed paper that says the blue ones we use everywhere are worth anything. That in addition to the behaviors of 80% of the mask wearers on a plane… might as well remove the fake sense of security and let me have a pleasant 9h flight without my ears feeling like they are about to fall off. I’m vaccinated, I’ll be tested by the time I get on the plane, so will everyone else (unless they fake a test, which is very easy), so I think my risk is the same risk I had of getting the flu before the pandemic.
      - barnabee 5y ago
        You no longer need a test to get on a plane to the UK, from most countries
    - bluescrn 5y ago
      > Ps: every single person boarding a plane for non urgent reasons is an idiot. Period. 12 months ago I'd have agreed. But we're past the 2 year mark now. We have the jabs, we have better treatments, we have ubiquitous testing, and omicron seems milder. At some point life needs to go on. Choose your own risks based upon your individual situation.
    - sgjohnson 5y ago
      > Ps: every single person boarding a plane for non urgent reasons is an idiot. Period. Why?
    - DiggyJohnson 5y ago
      Your postscript has so business on this forum. You are blatantly projecting your own beliefs on to others, and assuming anyone who doesn’t align is an idiot. That is backwards, childish reasoning, and I bet you don’t usually resort to that type of thing. Why in this case?
  - Hulitio 5y ago
    I'm not what there is to believe in mask effectiveness? There are studies about it. You don't get infected with COVID just because it's a mix of your own immune reaction, the amount of particles etc. A mask is really easy to wear and reduces your risk. I'm not advocating for mask mandates at this point or let's say I don't care about it but if you want to reduce the risk of having COVID while on holiday, I would suggest trying to wear a mask. Independently of it, in Germany the hospitalization is currently high and plenty of personal is sick. I still don't want to be in a situation of having something really bad and having to be in a hospital right now.
    - culopatin 5y ago
      There are studies about it and from what I’ve seen the surgical mask does not show enough impact to say that it clearly helps. The tests of how much the material can filter are irrelevant if everyone is wearing with massive gaps around their faces that let the air go out unfiltered anyway.
      - Hulitio 5y ago
        Yeah I do ignore those. They are nice to wear for this reason. But when I'm wearing them I do have a proper mask.
- breakfastduck 5y ago
  Absolute nonsense.
  - ImaCake 5y ago
    Non-substantive comments aren’t really welcome here. If you disagree with someone, explain why. HN respects a well worded argument.
  - Hulitio 5y ago
    Are you not aware of the steep COVID invection s around the globe? Germany is now at 150000-200000 daily new cases. We have not had this before. This means that you chance to get it and perhaps you being sick for 1-3 weeks is much much higher than before. It was just something I wanted to share so that you might plan ahead for this case or weir a mask to reduce the risk and have a great holiday. And for the last few weeks way more people got COVID around myself than ever before. This is also, next to intensive care capacity, a big risk if for example too many people from police, medical sector, fireman get sick in parallel.
andy_ppp 5y ago
I saw some research that suggested planes (and cinemas) don't transmit the virus as much as a bar or restaurant, say, because you aren't really aerosolising the virus in the same way (i.e. vigorous conversations). Apparently the worst places are things like choirs and church where everyone is spraying potential virus into the air... Do we really have any definitive answers around masking effectiveness in different situations, there must have been some decent research by now?
yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
I wonder what happens to all the conspiracy theorists who a couple of years ago said "this [the enforcement of mask wearing] is just the beginning", and that this is "exactly what Orwell predicted"? Do they admit they were wrong? Or do they conveniently forget they ever said anything like that and move onto the next conspiracy (which currently is likely to resemble toeing the Kremlin line)?
- bigDinosaur 5y ago
  Where I live one is still required to present what amounts to an internal passport to do pretty much anything, despite not having any medical justification. Certainly some things have been normalised which never should have been normalised.
  - ImaCake 5y ago
    Don’t these kind of things happen whenever a war or pandemic happens? Showing your papers was important during WWI and WWII and I am aware of plenty of quarantines and mask mandates associated with previous cholera/TB/flu pandemics. Sure, I agree it sets a dangerous precedent, but we have been setting those kind of precedents for like 150 years. In that time we’ve had totalitarian states and liberal democracies.
    - bigDinosaur 5y ago
      Yes, humanity has normalised many problematic things before. We've set many poor precedents. I don't disagree! The issue here is that vaccine passports currently have no medical justification but are persisting purely as a punishment (I'd say incentive, but anyone here who hasn't yet been vaccinated will never be swayed by vaccine passports at this point). I of course do expect these to go even in my fairly strict jurisdiction, but now the precedent of punishing people in this way has been set. Was quarantine, mask mandates, vaccine mandates used to punish people in this way previously?
      - ImaCake 5y ago
tomerv 5y ago
Shame, I actually liked the idea of mandatory masks on public transportation. I always get sick on flights (pre-COVID; I haven't flown since COVID started) and it's really annoying to have a runny nose while on vacation. I'm sure I catch it in the airport or on the plane, because it always starts 1-2 after the flight.
- hughrr 5y ago
  If it's anything like my discovery with supermarkets, most of it might not be airborne. I started gelling my hands after using a trolley a few years back. Rarely if ever get sick now. I suspect people sneezing all over the handle and then me rubbing my face was why I was always sick.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    Yeah, but SARS-CoV-2 is spread via aerosols, as are influenza viruses [1]. Not to say it's not a good idea to disinfect your shopping cart handle - and the downturn of the last years in non-covid infectious diseases as part of hygienic measures being made mandatory or at the very least somewhat followed proves that -, but it won't help much against covid. [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC3372341/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC3372341/
- andybak 5y ago
  I had a very expensive holiday mostly ruined because someone arrived at a 1 to 1 meeting with me the week before and announced 5 minutes in: "sorry - i've got a cold at the moment". I now always phone ahead if I've got sniffles and ask permission. There should be better ettiquette around things like this.
  - aeternum 5y ago
    I'd rather see the ettiquette around coughing in public confined spaces. In some cultures it is frowned upon and happens very rarely. In western culture it seems like the agreement is that coughs are completely uncontrollable and are acceptable anywhere. Maybe those that can't control their coughs should wear masks but those healthy enough to suppress coughs do not have to.
ImaCake 5y ago
I think the timing is right for this. Or at least it is getting close to the right time. Case Fatality Rate in heavily vaxxed populations is getting below seasonal influenza so the burden on society just isn’t as high as it was. The threat model has completely changed.
alkonaut 5y ago
How is this newsworthy? Aren't at least domestic flights mask-free in lots of countries for a long time now? I remember flying mask free both october last year, and a month ago. Unless the requirement was reinstated between october and now, that's a good 5 months at least.
jl6 5y ago
Covid appears to be “done” in the UK. Not that the virus is gone, just that there now seems to be widespread acceptance of its health impact, and a strong desire to move on without any restrictions on normal life.
- Reason077 5y ago
  My theory is that there can be only one crisis at a time in this country. Brexit gave way to Covid, and for 18 months or so that was the only story in the news. But now, there’s a frigging war going on in Europe, so Covid might as well not exist anymore.
  - core-utility 5y ago
    Add the US to the list of "only one crisis".
  - brigandish 5y ago
    Can be only one and must be at least one would seem to describe the news very well.
  - kylehotchkiss 5y ago
    Before the war, multiple effective vaccines were invented and distributed, promising medications for those sick are distributing, and we have a better understanding of the types of events that cause mass infection (conferences of course!) and a realization that aviation was not the super spreader event that many other things were. We even have increasingly better pictures of vaccine cadence (which I hope just become annual soon!). Covid as a crisis needed to end, and Ukraine has served as an odd segue out of it.
- Overtonwindow 5y ago
  Perhaps media and politicians have decided they’ve gotten enough power and politics out of this crisis, and now it’s OK to move onto the next one.
Overtonwindow 5y ago
I am neither a medical professional, nor a scientist, but I absolutely fail to see how wearing a mask on a three hour flight, sitting side by side, is going to protect anyone. Please, is there real science to back up wearing a mask but still being 18 inches away from each other, for hours on end, or is this just the flight attendants union? I beg your pardon, but I Really hate masks on planes and I think it’s total BS.
- dTal 5y ago
  In a small unventilated closed room you'd be right - the aerosol from mask leakage would saturate the room and the masks would be useless. The kind of masks that most people wear are mainly useful for preventing direct droplet transmission when two people's faces are in close proximity - especially when there's talking involved. However an airliner is extremely well ventilated - the entire cabin air is refreshed every 3 minutes, through a combination of HEPA filters and fresh outside air. In addition, the airflow in the cabin is vertical - new air is introduced at the top through the nozzles you're used to, and the intakes are by your feet. This means the risk from ambient aerosol transmission is much reduced and direct droplet infection becomes the primary risk vector. I would absolutely expect to see a reduction in transmission if everyone kept wearing masks.
  - Overtonwindow 5y ago
    That is very helpful, thank you. So it's airflow that is the advantage. I guess my next question, at what point, if ever, will it be ok to fly without masks?
freitasm 5y ago
Until people go on a summer holiday this season and fall ill. When people start dying they might ask themselves "why?" and realise that the virus is not actually gone. Just wishful thinking.
- usedtoprog 5y ago
  Key takeaway is "mask requirement dropped". Everyone should feel free to protect themselves. Just don't mandate that other people do things to protect you.
  - floor2 5y ago
    So roughly, everyone should wear bullet proof vests and gas masks, because it's unreasonable to mandate that people not shoot guns into the air or spray mace whenever they want. We have mandates for how wiring and plumbing need to work in private homes, apartments, offices, etc to maintain safety. We have mandates for how fast cars can drive, which lanes they can use, how they need to signal turns to maintain safety. We have mandates for what chemicals farmers can spray on fields and what chemicals factories can dump into sewers. The mask mandate is so utterly trivial compared to everything else in our lives. The airplane also makes you wear a seatbelt, is that a violation of your rights?
    - usedtoprog 5y ago
      If you can tell me under what exact conditions it ends, then we can have a discussion about it. Until then, and in absence of incontrovertible proof that it saves a single life, I'm out.
- dreaminvm 5y ago
  If not now, then when? UK studies show IFR for COVID for those vaccinated/immunized is now lower than seasonal flu [1]. We never wore masks during the flu and I am not sure why anyone would advocate this continuing. Moreover if someone wants to wear a mask, nothing stops them from doing that, but don't force it on everyone ages 2 and up. https://www.ft.com/content/e26c93a0-90e7-4dec-a796-3e25e94bc59b https://www.ft.com/content/e26c93a0-90e7-4dec-a796-3e25e94bc... [1]

40 points by taubek 5y ago

Just be aware that it might mean for you that you catch COVID and will be sick in your holiday. I got COVID from one event 3 weeks ago and it threw my plans around. It wasn't that big of an issue as I have a booster but I planed to visit a close friend who does cancer treatment and I was quite happy that he had no time for a short visit as I learned about my COVID invection two days later and I don't want to put him on unnecessary risk. Let's see and hope covids route to endemic is getting easier and easier.

culopatin 5y ago
In reality I all a bit of a theatre. If you believe in the mask effectiveness, you’ll get it when everyone takes their mask off at the same time to eat every time they hand off something. Almost no one wears an n95 for long flights and most people will wear the mask as poorly as they can anyway. Edit: just to clarify, I don’t have anything against anyone who believes in the mask effectiveness and wants to wear it. But I don’t see the point of enforcing the half assed way things are being done.
- involans 5y ago
  You don't have to eat during the flight, or you can delay eating to be out of phase. I've done that and so far it's been effective over a number of transatlantic flights.
  - throw7576521 5y ago
    Order vegetarian or ither special option, get it usually first and probability of someone doing the same nearby is low, and then eat like you haven't eaten for days before and put mask on before anyone else takes it off - worked fine for me lol. Also keep ventilation from above right on you at least a little... Much more frightening were all the people in queues at the airports, bad ventilation, coming close, not wearing a mask at all. Why so scared? Same reason, didn't want to get even a single day wasted for the first and quite costly vacation, glad it all worked out!
  - andy_ppp 5y ago
    I was under the impression that masks don't protect you that much, they protect other people from you?
    - nicoburns 5y ago
      N95 masks do if fitted properly. You can buy one for ~£3, well worth it for a flight in my opinion.
      - culopatin 5y ago
        Agreed, but I’ve taken several flights during covid all over the world and I see 1 n95 every 50 people at most. And it’s very likely that the person wearing it does not have covid anyway. The one that probably had covid is that guy with his nose out and the one snacking a little bit the whole flight to not have to wear it.
    - throw7576521 5y ago
      True, tight FFP2/N95 help you also to some degree though. Its all probability and exposure amount and many more factors, not binary at all.
    - andybak 5y ago
      The devils's in detail. How much is "not that much"? I'll take all the cumulative small probability gains I can get. Cost vs benefit.
    - glenra 5y ago
      > I was under the impression that masks don't protect you that much, they protect other people from you? That claim has been made but is questionable. The masks were designed to reduce exposure to the wearer, not so much from the wearer. It's a matter of physics: When you inhale the suction generated automatically pulls the mask tighter on your face such that the air you breathe in essentially all has to pass through the mask but when you exhale, not so much. In designing a mask there is a choice between a finer mesh or a looser one. If you pick a very loose mesh - say, cotton gauze - then air is easy to push through when you exhale but so are virus particles. On the other hand if you pick a very tight mesh - say, N95 or better - then air is much harder to push through but exhaling forces the mask slightly away from the face such that moist potentially virus-laden breath puffs out the sides and top. This is why your glasses fog up when wearing an N95 - moist air is escaping out the top of the mask completely unfiltered. (You can find youtube videos demonstrating this process with cigarette smoke). Double- or triple-masking doesn't help either - that makes it even harder for air to pass directly through the masks so even more air pushes out the side and top instead. If your N95 is VERY well fitted and the strap VERY tight - tight enough to make your ears hurt - you'll get less escape, but wearing a mask that way is sufficiently uncomfortable that almost nobody does it. In short, an N95 does plausibly filter nearly all the air you breathe IN, but if you want to filter the air you're breathing OUT, you really should be wearing a cleanroom suit.
  - dustinmoris 5y ago
    > You don't have to eat during the flight In theory you don't have to do anything mate. Just lie down in a coffin at home, shut the door and I bet you you won't catch COVID or any other mild respiratory illness. If to you the meaning of life is to get born, not catch COVID under any ridiculous circumstances and then die then this is a dead sure way of achieving your dreams! I rather live life, take risks, feel my heart beat, go out and spend intimate time with other people, feel the thrill of being close to other human beings, feeling the joy of a person's touch, seeing their beautiful face when they laugh, share food and drinks without being paranoid and indulge myself in everything the world has to offer. Getting a mild cough or feeling a week a bit ill because of a flu every few years is a small price to pay for all the amazing memories I'll collect along the way.
    - DiggyJohnson 5y ago
      Well put. The conservative (true sense of the word) position on this is so frustrating to communicate, because those who want to keep these sorts of policies and patterns are so often coming from people with a risk tolerance profile that I genuinely can’t understand or relate to.
    - blub 5y ago
      Airline food is indeed living the life while feeling the thrill of being close to other human beans.
    - Hulitio 5y ago
      COVID is still very very new. There was and still are good reasons to be careful. It would have been just stupid to get COVID out of yolo. Now doctors have much more experience with it, vaccines exists.
- hsshjshshs 5y ago
  - culopatin 5y ago
    It would be more like telling everyone to drive only at lunch and tea time because some people drink and drive. Look, I don’t get offended by people who wear masks or anything like that. But I got covid from a plane while wearing a mask, and I haven’t seen a peer reviewed paper that says the blue ones we use everywhere are worth anything. That in addition to the behaviors of 80% of the mask wearers on a plane… might as well remove the fake sense of security and let me have a pleasant 9h flight without my ears feeling like they are about to fall off. I’m vaccinated, I’ll be tested by the time I get on the plane, so will everyone else (unless they fake a test, which is very easy), so I think my risk is the same risk I had of getting the flu before the pandemic.
    - barnabee 5y ago
      You no longer need a test to get on a plane to the UK, from most countries
  - bluescrn 5y ago
    > Ps: every single person boarding a plane for non urgent reasons is an idiot. Period. 12 months ago I'd have agreed. But we're past the 2 year mark now. We have the jabs, we have better treatments, we have ubiquitous testing, and omicron seems milder. At some point life needs to go on. Choose your own risks based upon your individual situation.
  - sgjohnson 5y ago
    > Ps: every single person boarding a plane for non urgent reasons is an idiot. Period. Why?
  - DiggyJohnson 5y ago
    Your postscript has so business on this forum. You are blatantly projecting your own beliefs on to others, and assuming anyone who doesn’t align is an idiot. That is backwards, childish reasoning, and I bet you don’t usually resort to that type of thing. Why in this case?
- Hulitio 5y ago
  I'm not what there is to believe in mask effectiveness? There are studies about it. You don't get infected with COVID just because it's a mix of your own immune reaction, the amount of particles etc. A mask is really easy to wear and reduces your risk. I'm not advocating for mask mandates at this point or let's say I don't care about it but if you want to reduce the risk of having COVID while on holiday, I would suggest trying to wear a mask. Independently of it, in Germany the hospitalization is currently high and plenty of personal is sick. I still don't want to be in a situation of having something really bad and having to be in a hospital right now.
  - culopatin 5y ago
    There are studies about it and from what I’ve seen the surgical mask does not show enough impact to say that it clearly helps. The tests of how much the material can filter are irrelevant if everyone is wearing with massive gaps around their faces that let the air go out unfiltered anyway.
    - Hulitio 5y ago
      Yeah I do ignore those. They are nice to wear for this reason. But when I'm wearing them I do have a proper mask.
breakfastduck 5y ago
Absolute nonsense.
- ImaCake 5y ago
  Non-substantive comments aren’t really welcome here. If you disagree with someone, explain why. HN respects a well worded argument.
- Hulitio 5y ago
  Are you not aware of the steep COVID invection s around the globe? Germany is now at 150000-200000 daily new cases. We have not had this before. This means that you chance to get it and perhaps you being sick for 1-3 weeks is much much higher than before. It was just something I wanted to share so that you might plan ahead for this case or weir a mask to reduce the risk and have a great holiday. And for the last few weeks way more people got COVID around myself than ever before. This is also, next to intensive care capacity, a big risk if for example too many people from police, medical sector, fireman get sick in parallel.

andy_ppp 5y ago

I saw some research that suggested planes (and cinemas) don't transmit the virus as much as a bar or restaurant, say, because you aren't really aerosolising the virus in the same way (i.e. vigorous conversations). Apparently the worst places are things like choirs and church where everyone is spraying potential virus into the air... Do we really have any definitive answers around masking effectiveness in different situations, there must have been some decent research by now?

yakshaving_jgt 5y ago

I wonder what happens to all the conspiracy theorists who a couple of years ago said "this [the enforcement of mask wearing] is just the beginning", and that this is "exactly what Orwell predicted"? Do they admit they were wrong? Or do they conveniently forget they ever said anything like that and move onto the next conspiracy (which currently is likely to resemble toeing the Kremlin line)?

bigDinosaur 5y ago
Where I live one is still required to present what amounts to an internal passport to do pretty much anything, despite not having any medical justification. Certainly some things have been normalised which never should have been normalised.
- ImaCake 5y ago
  Don’t these kind of things happen whenever a war or pandemic happens? Showing your papers was important during WWI and WWII and I am aware of plenty of quarantines and mask mandates associated with previous cholera/TB/flu pandemics. Sure, I agree it sets a dangerous precedent, but we have been setting those kind of precedents for like 150 years. In that time we’ve had totalitarian states and liberal democracies.
  - bigDinosaur 5y ago
    Yes, humanity has normalised many problematic things before. We've set many poor precedents. I don't disagree! The issue here is that vaccine passports currently have no medical justification but are persisting purely as a punishment (I'd say incentive, but anyone here who hasn't yet been vaccinated will never be swayed by vaccine passports at this point). I of course do expect these to go even in my fairly strict jurisdiction, but now the precedent of punishing people in this way has been set. Was quarantine, mask mandates, vaccine mandates used to punish people in this way previously?
    - ImaCake 5y ago

tomerv 5y ago

Shame, I actually liked the idea of mandatory masks on public transportation. I always get sick on flights (pre-COVID; I haven't flown since COVID started) and it's really annoying to have a runny nose while on vacation. I'm sure I catch it in the airport or on the plane, because it always starts 1-2 after the flight.

hughrr 5y ago
If it's anything like my discovery with supermarkets, most of it might not be airborne. I started gelling my hands after using a trolley a few years back. Rarely if ever get sick now. I suspect people sneezing all over the handle and then me rubbing my face was why I was always sick.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  Yeah, but SARS-CoV-2 is spread via aerosols, as are influenza viruses [1]. Not to say it's not a good idea to disinfect your shopping cart handle - and the downturn of the last years in non-covid infectious diseases as part of hygienic measures being made mandatory or at the very least somewhat followed proves that -, but it won't help much against covid. [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC3372341/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC3372341/
andybak 5y ago
I had a very expensive holiday mostly ruined because someone arrived at a 1 to 1 meeting with me the week before and announced 5 minutes in: "sorry - i've got a cold at the moment". I now always phone ahead if I've got sniffles and ask permission. There should be better ettiquette around things like this.
- aeternum 5y ago
  I'd rather see the ettiquette around coughing in public confined spaces. In some cultures it is frowned upon and happens very rarely. In western culture it seems like the agreement is that coughs are completely uncontrollable and are acceptable anywhere. Maybe those that can't control their coughs should wear masks but those healthy enough to suppress coughs do not have to.

ImaCake 5y ago

I think the timing is right for this. Or at least it is getting close to the right time. Case Fatality Rate in heavily vaxxed populations is getting below seasonal influenza so the burden on society just isn’t as high as it was. The threat model has completely changed.

alkonaut 5y ago

How is this newsworthy? Aren't at least domestic flights mask-free in lots of countries for a long time now? I remember flying mask free both october last year, and a month ago. Unless the requirement was reinstated between october and now, that's a good 5 months at least.

jl6 5y ago

Covid appears to be “done” in the UK. Not that the virus is gone, just that there now seems to be widespread acceptance of its health impact, and a strong desire to move on without any restrictions on normal life.

Reason077 5y ago
My theory is that there can be only one crisis at a time in this country. Brexit gave way to Covid, and for 18 months or so that was the only story in the news. But now, there’s a frigging war going on in Europe, so Covid might as well not exist anymore.
- core-utility 5y ago
  Add the US to the list of "only one crisis".
- brigandish 5y ago
  Can be only one and must be at least one would seem to describe the news very well.
- kylehotchkiss 5y ago
  Before the war, multiple effective vaccines were invented and distributed, promising medications for those sick are distributing, and we have a better understanding of the types of events that cause mass infection (conferences of course!) and a realization that aviation was not the super spreader event that many other things were. We even have increasingly better pictures of vaccine cadence (which I hope just become annual soon!). Covid as a crisis needed to end, and Ukraine has served as an odd segue out of it.
Overtonwindow 5y ago
Perhaps media and politicians have decided they’ve gotten enough power and politics out of this crisis, and now it’s OK to move onto the next one.

Overtonwindow 5y ago

I am neither a medical professional, nor a scientist, but I absolutely fail to see how wearing a mask on a three hour flight, sitting side by side, is going to protect anyone. Please, is there real science to back up wearing a mask but still being 18 inches away from each other, for hours on end, or is this just the flight attendants union? I beg your pardon, but I Really hate masks on planes and I think it’s total BS.

dTal 5y ago
In a small unventilated closed room you'd be right - the aerosol from mask leakage would saturate the room and the masks would be useless. The kind of masks that most people wear are mainly useful for preventing direct droplet transmission when two people's faces are in close proximity - especially when there's talking involved. However an airliner is extremely well ventilated - the entire cabin air is refreshed every 3 minutes, through a combination of HEPA filters and fresh outside air. In addition, the airflow in the cabin is vertical - new air is introduced at the top through the nozzles you're used to, and the intakes are by your feet. This means the risk from ambient aerosol transmission is much reduced and direct droplet infection becomes the primary risk vector. I would absolutely expect to see a reduction in transmission if everyone kept wearing masks.
- Overtonwindow 5y ago
  That is very helpful, thank you. So it's airflow that is the advantage. I guess my next question, at what point, if ever, will it be ok to fly without masks?

freitasm 5y ago

Until people go on a summer holiday this season and fall ill. When people start dying they might ask themselves "why?" and realise that the virus is not actually gone. Just wishful thinking.

usedtoprog 5y ago
Key takeaway is "mask requirement dropped". Everyone should feel free to protect themselves. Just don't mandate that other people do things to protect you.
- floor2 5y ago
  So roughly, everyone should wear bullet proof vests and gas masks, because it's unreasonable to mandate that people not shoot guns into the air or spray mace whenever they want. We have mandates for how wiring and plumbing need to work in private homes, apartments, offices, etc to maintain safety. We have mandates for how fast cars can drive, which lanes they can use, how they need to signal turns to maintain safety. We have mandates for what chemicals farmers can spray on fields and what chemicals factories can dump into sewers. The mask mandate is so utterly trivial compared to everything else in our lives. The airplane also makes you wear a seatbelt, is that a violation of your rights?
  - usedtoprog 5y ago
    If you can tell me under what exact conditions it ends, then we can have a discussion about it. Until then, and in absence of incontrovertible proof that it saves a single life, I'm out.
dreaminvm 5y ago
If not now, then when? UK studies show IFR for COVID for those vaccinated/immunized is now lower than seasonal flu [1]. We never wore masks during the flu and I am not sure why anyone would advocate this continuing. Moreover if someone wants to wear a mask, nothing stops them from doing that, but don't force it on everyone ages 2 and up. https://www.ft.com/content/e26c93a0-90e7-4dec-a796-3e25e94bc59b https://www.ft.com/content/e26c93a0-90e7-4dec-a796-3e25e94bc... [1]