Mask policing

Acting on a Delhi High Court order, the DGCA has declared that the passengers who refuse to wear the mask in flight be de-boarded. Though after a three-month lull, the country is witnessing a surge in Covid-19 cases, the mandate seems disproportionate to the severity of the disease as patients are reporting mild symptoms. An advisory to the passengers on the benefit of wearing masks and the risk of shunning them should suffice at this stage. Let compliance be optional. Extreme measures are best reserved for situations that would seriously hamper leisure travel and, ideally, should be issued by public health officials.

Even as sanitisers and masks should be freely available in airports and planes, a vaccinated passenger donning a right fitting mask should feel fairly protected against possible infection, irrespective of the fellow flyers’ choice. That people remove the facial covering to have food and beverages also partially defeats the purpose of the binding mask-wearing direction. Plus, the enforcement of this rule by the flight crew is a tricky one and likely to cause unpleasant scenes. Earlier, when flights resumed after the lifting of the lockdown, passengers were seen to be taking umbrage at the policing by the airlines and would often vent their anger at flight attendants. Deciding on what constitutes an ‘unruly’ flyer is subjective and entails a distinction between misbehaviour and being casual.

Having lived through over two years of the pandemic and three to five waves, including the first one when Covid-appropriate behaviour was sternly enforced and offenders were detained by the police, most people now have a pretty clear idea of the picture: you can postpone the onset of the pathogen, not avoid it. Then, the wave earlier this year — riding on the Omicron variant that led to mild infections, very low hospitalisation and mortality rates, along with the vaccine-induced immunity — to a large extent banished the fear of the disease. People have learnt to live with it and are generally tilted towards the pre-pandemic lifestyle. Let there be no more panic lockdowns.

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