Dr. Fauci on why the U.S. is 'out of the pandemic phase'

[BumRushDaShow]

29. "Masks can certainly slow the spread"

THAT is probably one of the biggest points many of us have made. "To 'slow' or 'reduce' the spread". It won't be eliminated (and this is where those who specialize in droplet and particle sizes start getting into the unnecessary weeds about simple masks - completely forgetting that a sneeze will never have perfectly identical droplet or particle sizes that will always pass through a "large weave" of a surgical mask ).

But based on what you noted, it is an issue dependent on the amount of time that state of being "unmasked" goes on, which would be dictated by your total flight time (or actually, time-in-cabin - and obviously including the time sitting waiting to taxi, taxiing, then waiting to take off, etc).

So for someone on a "short" (a couple hours or less) flight, it might not be as much of a big deal. But for something like a non-stop east coast to west coast (that can be 5 hours) flight or for a long haul or international flight - and I know that when I traveled from here in Philly to both Hawai'i going one direction and to Cairo, Egypt going the other direction (each about 6,000 - 6,500 miles away), the flights were 11 hours, and the exposure time was obviously much longer. Alternately, my flights to California (both L.A. & San Francisco) and to Washington state (Seattle) were both about 5 hours. It was also about that long to go to London from here.

Proper ventilation (and not just the knee jerk repetition that "airlines always filter their air and have excellent air handling (which is a bit of B.S. P.R.)), suggests the consideration of getting some HEPA filtration into those HVAC systems (and in other facilities), which can go a long way to mitigation (as long as the systems are maintained) and precluding the need for masking (unless obviously someone is showing symptoms of some respiratory illness).

The fact that Public Health officials have reported remarkable low incidences of both cold and flu (and other respiratory viruses) during the pandemic when simple mitigation strategies were deployed, is the perfect example of how well this can work.