No, it's a basic courtesy to stay home if you are sick. Airborne diseases cannot be prevented by mask wearing between sips of your courtesy peanuts and soda.

And plenty is lost about a society that focuses more about preventing illness than just staying generally healthy. Smiling is good for you, engaging with your fellow humans, with full facial expressions available for communication and connection, are absolutely essential to a happy and fulfilling life.

So you expect people who have planned an expensive vacation and booked a flight to cancel everything if they get the sniffles? Should they also self-isolate and avoid grocery shopping, all public transport etc for 5-10 days after their first sore throat? And note, I'm saying this as someone who has just renounced a week-long vacation and two non-refundable flights because I tested positive for Covid, even though I barely had any symptoms, because I do believe the risk to others is too great. Not so for a cold.

While masks are far from 100% efficiency, they are still much much much better than doing nothing, while self-isolation for minor illnesses like a common cold is not in any way realistic.

Also, I'm explicitly not saying that we should always wear masks - the dangers of un-treatable, un-vaccinatable Covid (that 100% justified universal mask wearing) have passed. But, when you're sick and for various reasons have to be in closed spaces with others, wear a mask.

Yes, actually. If you know you've got the flu or some other mild-but-still-serious illness, you don't go outside your home unless it's absolutely necessary (eg: going to the hospital, buying essential groceries).

And before you say "I don't care if I pass my flu around.": Stay home /for your own sake/. What the fuck do you think is going to happen if your mild illness takes a turn for the worst right when you're overseas? I hope you have good traveller's insurance, or otherwise sufficient savings to afford medical and emergency care out of pocket.

Winter in the Midwest, especially if you have kids, is an unending parade of mild cold symptoms. It's not reasonable to ask everyone to seal themselves inside forever.

What about some common cold? That's still very spreadable, but it is far from a serious illness.

Also, if you have mild respiratory symptoms (say, you're sniffling and your throat is a little sore), do you immediately go and run various tests to see what specific pathogen it is, or do you take some symptomatic treatment and go about your life? Why not add "and wear a mask outside" to that?

Oh mah goodness.

Courtesy peanuts are another thing from a bygone era, decades ago...

Once upon a time, air travel was only available to people who needed to go somewhere or had the means to do so. We're in a little gap right now where first class is diminished to almost steerage, but private jets are a little too expensive. It's probably a reflection of the widening rich/poor gap. There used to be a way for people who earned in the top 20% to travel without having to subject themselves to the other 80%. Now you really have to be in the top 0.1% to travel without the garbage.

The irony is that the top 0.1% and the bottom 80% both have shit manners, and only when you make the top 20% act well and put on their shoes do you have something resembling civilization.

Yeah but what you gonna do if they do say no?

You can’t kick them off, you’re not going to get violent with them and coerce them so the only answer is turning the plane around if they don’t and how do you think the other passengers will react to that.

End of the day the rest of the world has moved on and no longer consider all this an issue and would rather just get on with their lives without inconvenience and yeah we can imagine a world where they have a bit more empathy for those that haven’t but I just don’t see how you can imagine that scenario playing out.

You explain to them nicely that they will be arrested and/or put on a no-fly list once they arrive at the next airport. It's the same with anyone breaking other rules on an airplane mid-flight - such as smoking, vaping, spritzing perfume or various other activities that are normal in other situations but illegal on an airplane.

How do you think the mask mandates were enforced mid-flight when they were universal?

Also, everything in saying is already common practice in much of the world, especially in East Asia.