Friday 17th December 2021
Thong on the face instead of a mask
Crew throws would-be civil rights activists from aviators
FFP2 masks very effectively prevent the transmission of the coronavirus, the protective effect of tight women’s underwear, on the other hand, is likely to be negligible. In Florida, a man has to get off a plane because he would rather wear a thong on his face than a mask. With his protest he sees himself in the tradition of the Afro-American US civil rights movement.
Because he pulled a red thong over his face instead of a protective mask, a passenger in the USA was thrown from the plane before take-off. The 38-year-old mask opponent wanted to fly from Fort Lauderdale, Florida to the US capital Washington, as US media reported on Thursday. A cell phone video shows him sitting in his seat with red lingerie on his face and then being asked by employees of United Airlines to leave the plane.
With the unusual face covering, the man protests against the mask requirement on airplanes. “The best way to show absurdity is with absurdity,” the 38-year-old told NBC2. The mask requirement is “nonsense”, “stupid” and “theater” – after all, the corona virus does not know “that we are at flight altitude”. The mask requirement on airplanes in the USA has nothing to do with the flight altitude – but with the fact that many people sit together for hours in a confined space.
The man even compared himself to US civil rights icon Rosa Parks on NBC2. The African American protested racial segregation in the southern state in 1955 by refusing to get up from a seat in an area of a bus reserved for white passengers. Change in the USA was always assumed by “normal people”, said the passenger. “Rosa Parks was not famous. She changed the course of history.”
Mask opponents often cause trouble
After the man was thrown from the plane, several other passengers left the plane, according to him. The cell phone video shows a man doing this. United Airlines praised the behavior of the crew. “The customer clearly did not adhere to the mask requirement imposed by the federal authorities,” said the airline. It was to be welcomed that the crew had addressed the problem before take-off and thus prevented possible problems during the flight.
In the USA there are always arguments about the mask requirement on airplanes. Many people reject the obligation to wear mouth and nose protection. Like vaccination, the issue is politically charged in the USA. For example, the former President Donald Trump very rarely wore a protective mask and publicly mocked himself about mask wearers. His successor Joe Biden, on the other hand, regularly appeals to the population to follow the recommendations of the health authorities on wearing masks.
The threshold of 800,000 corona deaths was exceeded in the USA this week. This is the highest number registered in the world.