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COVID and the Shoe Bomber
In December of 2001, terrorist Richard Reid tried to blow up a plane by placing explosives in his shoes. During the flight he attempted to ignite the bomb with a match, but other passengers blew out his matches, and he was eventually subdued.
The shoe bomb didn’t work very well, but just months after 9/11, it showed us another possible way terrorists could strike. In reaction to this potential threat, people were asked to take off there shoes and have them run through the x-ray machines at the airport. The hope was that a security agent scanning hundreds of bags and thousands of shoes every hour would be able to to pick out the one shoe with plastic explosives in the heel.
Yesterday l flew to Florida and had to take off my shoes to go through security. Twenty years later and shoe bombing is still threat? Is there intelligence stating that terrorists are working on shoe bombs? No, the shoe bomb wasn’t a great idea and it is unlikely that this is a top threat to air travelers. Though not probable, it is still possible that someone could become the next shoe bomber, so we still check shoes (but not if you’re old).
Which brings us to COVID. With vaccines and natural immunity, the virus is already less of a threat than it once was, but the threat will never be zero. There will always be the chance that someone somewhere could contract the disease. So, 20 years from now, do you think that there will still be mask mandates on planes an other places? I want to say, “No,” but I have seen how the government works. What say you, Ricochet? Will people keep this up indefinitely?
Published in General
You’ve just given me the lead-in for my next blog post. Thanks ever so much!
I’ve wondered about this quite a bit.
So, at some point, a politician says, “Ok, everybody – you can take your masks off!” Then someone dies of COVID next week. Perhaps, Lord help us, a black woman. And then there are marches in the streets accusing the politician of murder for weeks.
At this point, American society has been broken down into two groups: mask wearers and vicious hate-filled sociopath Republicans. There is no in-between. And it doesn’t matter how we got here. Because here we are.
So no, I don’t see how we get out of this.
As I often say, I really hope I’m wrong about this.
You are so right. I was going to post this on another thread yesterday, but it was so depressing that I decided not to. But I guess it is more important for people to know how bad it is. These are quotes from a recent Boston Globe newsletter that I subscribe to. The newsletter writer introduces these quotes by saying, “I must say, you are completely fed up with the willfully unvaccinated. Your anger is evident in your e-mails. Here are your comments. (Since some of you didn’t want your name used, I haven’t used any.)” She does not counter any of it, does question any of the commenters’ assumptions, and she lets the hatred sit there as a way of stoking it:
[continued in next comment]
[continued]
[continued from preceding comment and the end of the quotes from the newsletter]
I wonder how many of those commenters believe in God or attend church occasionally? What’s the old line, if you don’t believe in something you’ll fall for anything. This is a new religion.
I think a divorce is on the near horizon. It could be peaceful. It might look just like Brexit. “We will all work together in declared wars, as long as we agree that the war is justified. Otherwise, we keep our money at home.”
Wow, @MarciN, you’re on a roll.
I think some will. Eventually the Powers-That-Be will want to flip the narrative to Global Warming. Is it easier to manipulate people through their use of energy than making personal mandates (if you are reading this, you are using regulated energy). When the time is right, patented therapeutics will be approved and testing thresholds will be lowered and the Covid fear machine will be turned off. But some will wear masks forever.
Yes. People will keep this up indefinitely. Government will hardly need to require it, although government probably will.
I no longer have my 1918 mask. I had older relatives who lived through the 1918 pandemic and had the privilege of listening to many stories of their youth and never heard the 1918 events mentioned.
The alternative version was written in 1969.
In the year 3535
Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lie
Everything you think, do and say
Is in the pill you took today
During Rosh Hashanah a reporter in Australia posted this on Twitter:
It is amazing to me that any nation can spiral from fighting for freedom to yelling, “Hey, Fritz, there are dancing Jews in the alley!” in just three to four generations. Afterwards the Jewish Community Council of Victoria issued a press release condemning their fellow Jews and urged everyone “follow the rules.” (Just get on the train, people, and all will be well…)
This same reporter who ratted out the Jews then complained that media were herded to the other side of the building when the cops showed up. You must not see what’s being done in your name.
The comments on Twitter were predictable. Most of them called the celebrants “selfish.” They have convinced the populace that individualism and freedom are evil because it goes against “the collective good.”
I think it depends on whether or not there is an airline CEO with guts enough to stand up for private enterprise. Imagine if Southwest Airlines (for example) said they were going mask free and challenged the FAA to ground all of their flights by force. I suspect there would be a lot of seemingly powerful people who would blink when confronted with forceful opposition from a major industry player and the cities and support personnel who serves it.
Of course, courage is at a premium these days.
Holy crap.
You should expand this into a post.
Brilliant sentence.
Another brilliant sentence.
I won’t fly.
I can ignore people, and will.
I hadn’t flown in years, but I had to help out my mother. Flying was fun when I was younger but now. . .
It always felt like a bus ride to me.
https://youtu.be/kCj-Rnd5SsA?t=47Regarding still inspecting shoes
Where do the people who are vaccinated, get the idea that THEY are the ones who have to hide from the UN-vaccinated?
Talk about ignorant/stupid…
Exactly. Why the vaccination if you think it makes a difference?
I think government officials will want to keep in place all the restrictions, for fear of the reason noted in comment #2 by Dr. Bastiat. But, I think it likely they will be forced to relax some of the restrictions (mostly mask mandates) when enough of the public that refuses to comply or at least gets very noisy about removing the restrictions. I am hoping that there is the requisite critical mass of people who do so, and am encouraged that some have been emerging. I therefore remain hopeful that as it becomes harder to maintain the fear porn, more will join.
And I think the government is so screwing up the “messaging” on vaccine mandates that, although vaccine mandates currently have wide support, the government has alienated enough people that there will be enough resistance that vaccine mandates and “show your papers” rules are not likely to last.
As to airline travel in particular, we are next week driving from our home in north Texas to a wedding in Virginia, rather than flying. The mask mandate and other Covid related restrictions added on top of the anti-terrorist indignities has caused us to up our threshold for flying vs. driving from the previous threshold of a 10 hour drive time to a threshold of a two day drive time. (In this case, also the fear of not being able to get a rental car, and to a lesser extent, the fear that the airlines won’t in the end be able to get us there because they are cancelling so many flights.) But, the overwhelming factor in the drive vs. fly decision is the discomfort of the flying experience. Not that many years ago I did look forward to flying places. No longer.
I think the airline mask mandate will end sometime next year or early 2023 at the latest. There are too many incidents and repressed resentment over it.
Flight attendants are constantly having to police it. Obviously there is a small but controlling subset that love that sort of thing, but most of them are probably tired of it. Not to mention they have to wear those masks too. At some point, their union is going to flip and start advocating against the masks (I think their union is presently advocating for them).
I’m in an area where the Delta variant is whipping through resulting in high hospitalization rates. There is no mask mandate here like there is in California. What’s telling about all this when I go into stores here, I’m seeing maybe 20% masked people inside, and generally all the employees masked.
In 2020 at the height of of the scare but before mandates were put in place, I could go into a department store and see 50%-60% compliance.
I’m sure that aviation will be the last to let go of this, but the fact that the population is ignoring hospital administrators, minus local mask mandates, is telling.
Remember, taking off your shoes at TSA only lasts a few minutes. Wearing a mask for hours is a major inconvenience.
A bigger problem would seem to be flying there, and not being able to get BACK because of cancellations etc.
BTW, in Minneapolis you do not need to remove your shoes- you walk about 30 feet and an explosives-detecting dog runs a full circle around you and sniffs you from the knees down.
True. And, actually better than removing shoes, but the process looks sort of ridiculous.
In April 2020 I told people exactly what Dr. Bastiat said above, that we will be wearing masks forever because no one wants to be blamed for the first death that occurs after we take them off.
Lots of people are already going mask-less, how to decide which one to blame for which death?
I did notice more than a few people on the plane with masks under their masks. No one was forcing them to do that. And if that makes them feel safer then that’s OK but don’t force everyone else to do the same.
And now that I am waiting at the gate for my return flight, they just told us there’s an hour delay. Another hour of mask wearing. Perhaps I can find a reason to take off my mask at the airport bar.