A woman was removed from a Spirit Airlines flight to Florida on Thursday over her refusal to wear a mask. She told cabin crew that they were going to have to forcibly remove her – and that she didn’t have to wear a mask because she was eating. Back in September a man used a can of Pringles to avoid wearing a mask on an entire four hour flight.
After the flight attendant leaves to consult with the captain, who would have called for security assistance, the passenger headed down the aisle – and even poked into the cockpit before going back to her seat. If she wasn’t getting kicked off already, that would have sealed it. Airport police did remove her – but didn’t have to drag her off David Dao-style.
Here’s video from inside the cabin, note though that there’s a word used early in the recording that isn’t ‘safe for work’ (so it’s a good thing if you’re working from home, with no kids around).
Florida Woman Whines Like a Baby After Getting Kicked Off a Flight For Not Wearing a Mask from r/PublicFreakout
She was headed to Fort Lauderdale. Spirit Airlines. Florida. We probably could have written the rest of the story from that alone.
- Cops drag unhappy passengers out Fort Lauderdale terminal after Spirit Airlines cancels flights
- Woman’s cleavage gets her kicked off Spirit Airlines flight from Fort Lauderdale
- Spirit Airlines removed 15 year old girl from overbooked Fort Lauderdale flight while her mom sat in back unaware
- Delayed Fort Lauderdale flight diverts to Detroit, Spirit Airlines puts passengers on a bus that breaks down
- Spirit Airlines passengers kicked off flight to Fort Lauderdale for smelling bad
On the other hand, the officer did mention to the woman “they’re going to refund you” so maybe she just sat down in one of the Spirit Airlines seats, realized she couldn’t face the flight ahead, and knew she’d have to get off the plane – but better to do it with a refund, assisted by law enforcement?
(HT: C Boarding Group)
People of this ilk are not accomplishing anything except delaying and making the flight crew’s job harder. She knew what she needed to do when she bought the ticket. It’s seems that rudeness and lack of concern for others is now a way of life for some in the USA.
Some may call for banning her, but banning people for rude behavior is a slippery slope. What if Amazon.com banned someone for being upset at a delivery person? What if businesses everywhere started banning people for nasty comments to a “Customer Service” rep?
Starting to develop sympathy with the people who refuse to wear masks. They can’t make it clearer for us that its about power and authoritarianism, and not about health. If you can’t be on a plane with people who refuse to wear masks, best you just stay home.
I disagree with Mak. Just stop arguing and wear the mask. It’s a requirement when you buy your ticket, as WileyDog noted. If you can’t comply then don’t fly; not the reverse.
Always strikes me as a really weird hill to decide to die on. Put her on the no fly period.
@Mak I have no sympathy with the people who refuse to wear masks. If you can’t be on a plane without wearing a mask, best you just stay home.
Make the penalties for doing something like this sufficient that people won’t do it.
I wish people would quit being childish. Civilization requires cooperation.
@Pete perfect answer to Mak. Thank you.
Is anyone else bothered by the uniforms(?) worn by the police?
Why are US citizens being “policed” by army fatigued clad faceless goons? This video should scare any decent person who wants to live in anything resembling a free society. Those uniforms don’t say, “come to me when you need help.” they say, “FEAR ME”
Don’t get me wrong. I’m in favor of wearing masks in general (even before Fauci’s noble LIE telling people otherwise early on). However, if THIS is the enforcement mechanism then this country’s priorities are out of whack
Spirit Airlines. Florida…add trump deplorables and you have a clear picture of this s*hole state.
Well she put on a mask to go to the cockpit. The bottom line with these anti-maskers is that if they are going to force the police to get involved then they need to be thrown in jail. Enough of this nonsense. Want to be an anti-masker and cause a scene? Then you are going to jail. That will stop most of this crap pretty quick. Time to stop coddling these idiots. They knew the rules when they bought the ticket. No real shock that it’s a flight to Florida though.
This has nothing to do with me, as I’ve always worn a mask on planes. The issue is whether we should have masked militarized goons forcing people to wear masks when they don’t want to. It’s not like there is any scientific evidence that the masks prevent anybody from getting covid anywhere, and this is likely even more true on a HEPA filtered plane.
To my knowledge, this is the only random controlled study on the mask issue, and it failed to prove that masks reduce the spread of Covid to any statistically significant amount. Why should we be persecuting people who exercise their own judgment on the matter? https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/m20-6817
@Jonathan
Sorry, but a mistake is not a lie. If Dr. Fauci made the statement of his own volition, he believed it to be true and made a mistake.
Otherwise, I agree with you. I don’t like seeing military garb and equipment worn by police and security. The same goes for Armored Personnel Carriers and other forms of hard military equipment. They do not belong in law enforcement in a free society.
This one wasn’t very exciting, the standards for the Karen of the week story are declining.
More maskless on airplane porn. I wish I had the self control to avoid these stories and their comment sections.
@Mark, from https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118
“The available evidence suggests that near-universal adoption of nonmedical masks when out in public, in combination with complementary public health measures, could successfully reduce Re to below 1, thereby reducing community spread if such measures are sustained. Economic analysis suggests that mask wearing mandates could add 1 trillion dollars to the US GDP (32, 34). Models suggest that public mask wearing is most effective at reducing spread of the virus when compliance is high.”
Masks also reduce the chance of hands touching your face and further spreading a virus by physical contact, which is common sense. The issue is not as much the lack of scientific evidence, but the number of people arguing compliance, and wearing whatever they can wrap around their face instead of the intended medical masks.
@Aldus This paper is obsolete and doesn’t change what I said that the study I cited is the only Random Controlled Trial on the issue. The paper you’ve cited relies principally upon a 1910 study in dealing with Manchurian flu in Beijing, and an “observational study” in Australia, and incorrectly says “we should not be surprised to find that there is no RCT for the impact of masks on community transmission of any respiratory infection in a pandemic.” Based upon the existence of the Danish study I cited – published after your paper was submitted, but before it was published – that is not in fact true.
As such, there is but a single RCT conducted and published on the issue of whether masks can prevent spread of infection with Covid, and it failed to produce statistically significant evidence that proposition is true. Evidence of the effectiveness of masks remains supposition, and supposition should not form the basis for coercing people to behave as we might prefer them to . . . much less to do it violently as was done here.
Indeed. Obviously another stupid conservative and Trump supporter. Unlike me, this person is probably uneducated and poor. To combat this killer virus, which has already killed over 600,000 people, people need to just shut up and wear their masks as they are told. I am way too young and rich to have some Neanderthal deplorable ruin my life by not wearing her mask! I travel a lot and am very busy, for me time is money. I seriously hope there are work and re-education camps for these people soon. I did see where certain airlines are going to relax masks for those of us who always fly in first and business. I’ll continue booking in first so I won’t have to wear one, and I’ll point at and mock those of you who do. It’s for your own good anyway.
@Mark,
The one you cited states “Limitation: Inconclusive results, missing data, variable adherence, patient-reported findings on home tests, no blinding, and no assessment of whether masks could decrease disease transmission from mask wearers to others.”
It also states: “Although the difference observed was not statistically significant, the 95% CIs are compatible with a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection.”
The study was also done at a time were masks were NOT required in Denmark. Half the test subjects wore masks during 2 months, and were exposed 4.5 hours per day outside their home to people that didn’t wear one. If the argument to not require wearing a mask is that no evidence has been found to prove that it reduces infection as a result of testing among a population that has compliance issues, then is a self-fulfilled prophecy. Surgical masks have been long touted as more effective at protecting others from the wearer than protecting the wearer.
So at most, the results of the paper you cited apply to the protection of the wearer, and not of what masks can do for a community where compliance is high. And even then, it demonstrates infection reduction even with its own limitations.
For many of us, there is enough evidence that masks benefits are worth the public requirement. Others may need 100% proof. That’s their prerogative, but at what cost.
I’m convinced that the passengers on Spirit are the In Flight Entertainment.
My only question is whether they’re obligated to pack dues to Actors Equity Guild.
@Elliot go fix my big mac combo and stfu.
@aldus That’s not the way statistics work. You can’t prove a negative and studies are designed to prove hypotheses – they are unable to disprove them due to the very nature of logic. They can add all of these caveats about why they still might be valuable, but the study was definitely able to prove so to any basic statistical standard.
So the fact remains: the idea that masks prevent the spread of Coronavirus infection remains nothing but popular supposition, unsupported by any science, despite attempts to confirm it. Many are comfortable sending armed Troopers onto planes to terrorize non-believers in this supposition, but I’m not one of them. Believing in masks is quite a lot like believing in the existence of god — we have no proof, but what do you have to lose? — and we could enforce religious observance on the same logical basis (and many places do). We have become like Iran or Pakistan but substitute belief in masks for belief in Allah, and I’m not ok with that. Feel free to believe in scientifically unproven theories on the basis that they might possibly work, but don’t force others to follow you.
@Elliott I like the cut of your jib. Well done!
@Mark: You are simply too quick to dismiss observational studies as evidence to indicate that masks are effective just because they are not RTC. Observational doesn’t mean anecdotical. You seem to want to think in scientific terms, yet you put blinders to narrow your field of view to what you would like to be true. Science requires an open mind. Comparing it to proving the existence of God is a huge stretch. Is your choice to keep ignoring the facts.
@Aldus Like Galileo, I plead guilty for wanting “to think in scientific terms.” There are scientifically accepted standards of proof that should be required to deprive people of their freedom of choice and liberty. Randomized Controlled Trials are the gold standard that government applies when giving permission to sell a drug to the public — “observational” trials won’t do. Why should we have any lower standard for coercing people to behave in ways that they don’t themselves choose, but happen to make you feel more comfortable?
@Mak
Actually, I find you “not guilty” of applying science. To be effective, a study must be double-blind and performed in controlled conditions. Any study relating to transmission rates among the general public cannot have either of those conditions unless the subjects were kept in a confined space and stayed there for the entire duration of the testing.
What can be studied very effectively and accurately is the amount and size of virus-carrying particulates, how far those particulates travel and the amount of virus contained in them. And that has been studied and masks have been shown to be effective. Period.
The fact is, you refuse to accept the science you happen to disagree with and nothing anyone says will change your mind.