One of the oddest post pandemic norms we’ve come to accept are the hacking coughing fits we pretend are normal parts of public transit.
By public transit I don’t just mean just subways or busses. I’m sure they suffer from this issue as well.
But rather our most expensive version of public transportation, air travel, is riddled with passengers clearly infected with one variant or another of a respiratory illness.
Now I get it. It’s not cheap to fly. A cold coming on won’t stop you from going as you paid a lot to travel. Everyone is on the road trying to make their way to family, friends and community. It is hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to get from here to there.
So as you stand in long boarding lines where people queue seemingly at random in groups 1 through infinity, you see various flavors of sneaks, cheats and idiots bottlenecking the mess.
And then you hear the coughing, hacking, sniffing, sneezing and other variants of ignoring the body’s strain.
I am prone to skin infections rather than respiratory ones or this trend would worry me more. I generally don’t mask unless I’m stuck in tight quarters. Sometimes I wish I had. Dealing with Chicago and the sweating, panting, running, struggling human masses, I feel I should have.
You still see depending( on the city, its demographics and its politics, a range of mask wearing. The elderly are often masked. I see frequent flyers wrapped up tight in the good N95. There is quite a lot of masking and I think it’s a good thing.
Maybe these maskers know something. They must be used to persistent cold and flu season and understand some folks who don’t care about their impact on others. Masking must work well enough to be worth the hassle for some.
I hate to bring up the old awful politics of the COVID era, but we should have learned a thing or two from Asian nations who politely mask themselves when ill to benefit their fellow citizens.
Wouldn’t that be an impressive thing to see? Americans caring about each other’s welfare. If I have a cold, it will be because I was too stupid to mask up. But if I get a cold I promise I’ll mask up to avoid passing it on.
