Coronavirus Culture Shock While Traveling

[Grokenstein]

7. And some of us are assholier than others:

https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/Airline-passenger-refuses-mask-15349202.php

Two days after American Airlines announced it would strengthen its mandatory mask policy, a passenger was booted off one of the airline’s flights at New York’s LaGuardia Airport after refusing to wear a facial covering. At SFO, a woman refusing to wear a mask argued with a fellow passenger, telling him to "go back to China," in an encounter posted to YouTube.

We are only a few days into new airline policies requiring passengers to wear masks to help stem the spread of COVID-19, and controversy is erupting on airplanes and airports across the country.

In the first instance, passenger Brandon Straka documented the Wednesday encounter aboard American Airlines flight 1263 to Dallas-Fort Worth in a Twitter video.

“They told me that it was the law that I had to wear a mask,” he said in the video. “Then eventually they changed their story and said it was their policy and that you can’t fly with us if you don’t do it.”

Straka, a conservative pundit* and self-described former liberal, said American Airlines staff intimidated him and said his refusal to wear a mask “was keeping people waiting.”

“This is not a thing,” Straka said in the video. “I don’t have to do this.”

Straka was likely unaware that he was seated next to a New York Times reporter, who is calling into question some of Straka's claims about the incident on Twitter, which only stokes the controversy even more.

*BECAUSE OF COURSE HE IS

(In the follow-up, American states that Straka is officially no longer welcome on their flights for as long as masks are a requirement.)