On the other hand, the good news is that if you prophylactically take Ivermectin (let’s say 6mg/week for a normal male) the odds of contracting it are quasi null. As shown on doctors in close contact with covid and pretreated. That’s what I do when I fly which is often.
Sme airlines now allow high paying customers (presumably more educated than average, though sometimes not…) to fly without masks.
Which is great news.

Well, yes I REALLY am surprised. However, I don’t think you give any hint as to how you pulled this off in the Time of the Pandemic. Please enlighten us when you have the time in your packed flying schedule.. -cb

Who is telling us that they are effective against this virus?

That’s right. The US Government. And mass media.

They haven’t always told us that, have they? Nope. Before this pandemic, there were randomized control studies that showed that masks don’t work against respiratory viruses. The studies used hospital grade masks.

Early in the public, the CDC told the public that ordinary masks do not protect against the virus, and the public should not wear them.

But then, they suddenly said that masks do work, including cloth masks, and that the public needs to wear them.

After all, they didn’t want to let things return to normal when the lockdowns ended. They wanted to keep restrictions in place, for political reasons. Even though it meant that many more Americans were going to die, because they would be misled into thinking that masks prevent people from catching it.

Do you actually believe that it is unlikely that the virus will be transmitted on a plane? Do you know how contagious it is? It spreads through the air in enclosed spaces.

The CDC has been deliberately misleading the public. They have refused to publish information that suggests that masks or six-foot distancing won’t work.

https://www.aier.org/article/the-strangely-unscientific-masking-of-america/

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/podcasts-webinars/special-ep-masks

What I mean about acquiescence is the ways in which so many people seem to be just fine with how things are. I’m not talking about wearing masks; I’m talking about accepting as normal a world that is anything but.

I think you misinterpreted what I said. I have no problem with a mask policy, so long it’s rational and effective. For instance, wearing masks on planes or in stores, etc. Wherever it helps. What I don’t agree with is what I call “performative” mask-wearing (that is, doing it to prove a point and to feel sanctimonious), and forcing others to follow suit even in situations where it serves no purpose, such as when swimming in the ocean or sitting alone in an empty park.

There is a lot of that around where I live: people who insist that others wear masks outdoors, even when not remotely close to other people. I don’t like being yelled at, whistled at, hissed at, and shot dirty looks because I won’t abide by something so patently stupid.

Further, because I agree with or follow a mask protocol — or any other COVID-related restriction — doesn’t mean that I like or enjoy it, or that I want it to last forever. OF COURSE these measures are frustrating. Nobody should WANT things to be this way.

As for a “sense of perspective,” I accept your point. However, I could point out that 80,000 Americans died from the flu in 2018. Shouldn’t we all have been wearing masks and social distancing? In 1968, 100,000 Americans, and one million people worldwide, died during the H3N2 pandemic… a pandemic at least half as deadly as this one (so far), and it barely made the news! How many lives is “too many?” When do things make the jump from a health crisis to a global emergency?

The pilots have only themselves to blame for the seniority system.