Convenience Will Kill Us All
What will it take for some of us to live more difficult lives for the sake of everyone’s survival?
In a video posted online earlier this week, a JetBlue pilot speaks over his plane’s intercom to the passengers. “I’ve been going up and down this coast, from South Florida to New York for about 35 years,” he tells them. “I’ve worked through the blackout, 9–11, all the storms, the crazy stuff, it’s kind of a crazy world. We just got an announcement a few minutes ago…at this moment, if you choose to, you may remove your mask.”
“Yeah!” the camera-holder, a passenger, shouts. Other cries of “woo!” can be briefly heard. The video is one of a handful that circulated in the hours following a decision by a federal judge in Florida who, in ruling on a lawsuit filed by an anti-masking group against President Joe Biden, struck down the Center for Disease Control’s mask mandate for public transit.
Why do people think wearing a mask is the end of everything?
I suspect part of why flight crews are happy the mask mandate is lifted — for now — is that they hated having to enforce it with unruly passengers. And while most people did as they were asked, we can all admit that wearing one kinda sucks. Not wearing one also sucked for a…
