Success story for general aviation: transporting plague-ridden 2-year-olds

“Family catches private flight to Austin with pilot friend after getting booted off Southwest plane when their two-year-old couldn’t keep his mask on” (Daily Mail):

A family kicked off a Southwest flight after their two-year-old could not keep his face mask on turned to Facebook to complain and were offered a private flight by a family friend.

He said his family woke up at three in the morning to prepare for their flight out of Denver, Colorado.

‘I practiced with him at least two or three times at the house and every time he threw it off, but I figured that [Southwest] would work with us on the plane because he’s two,’ Michelle Harvey said.

FOX 7 reports that Peck flew his twin-engine airplane to Denver, picked up the family, and flew them to Austin at no charge.

There are already pilot groups for flying medical patients (Angel Flight and PALS), dogs (Pilots N Paws), sea turtles (Turtles Fly Too; see also Merry Christmas to the Sea Turtles and Merry Christmas (again) to the Sea Turtles). If we assume that coronapanic never ends and that recalcitrant toddlers remain recalcitrant, could it be time for a new volunteer pilot group for transporting families who don’t want their trip to turn into a mask fight? Light planes are at their best when some of the seats are occupied by children (reasonably low in weight despite one or more years of lockdown, unlike their adult counterparts).

Readers: What should the group be called? Winged Unmasked Brats (“WUB”)? Terrible Twos Take To The Skies (“TTTTTS”)?

As Joe Biden is discovering, sometimes it is best to put children in a cage…

And, in case anyone wants to see just how effective masks (for which we will fight to the death, if necessary), lockdowns, and vaccines are against our viral nemesis, here’s Sweden (unvaccinated, unmasked, unlocked) versus Israel (fully vaccinated (older/vulnerable), masked, and locked-until-recently; source):

From the above, applying the principles of coronascience, we can infer that masks, lockdowns, and vaccines work so well that applying these interventions in Israel stops a plague 2000+ miles away in Sweden.

4 thoughts on “Success story for general aviation: transporting plague-ridden 2-year-olds

  1. We all love a contrarian graph: the one with Sweden and the UK was a classic (https://twitter.com/DrEliDavid/status/1362181460887826435).

    But this one seems to suggest several conclusions, not all mask-averse:
    – as reference to the extensive Wikipedia article on CV19 in Israel confirms, Israel operated a strict lockdown over April-May 2020, which limited (=postponed) the initial outbreak despite a population density 16 times that of Sweden (below a saturation level, infection increases sublinearly with population density: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025556413001235), like MA+NJ vs AZ;
    – whereas Sweden experienced a more fatal outbreak (worse, but not massively, than 1968 HK flu: https://mh.bmj.com/content/43/3/141) that tailed off as warmer weather reduced the spread of respiratory infections;
    – unsurprisingly the Swedish outbreak took off again as moisture was frozen from the air;
    – in Israel a further lockdown was instituted but may have confused the faithful by its use of algebra (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=COVID-19_pandemic_in_Israel&section=37; see also the Gettysburg Address: https://wronghands1.com/2016/09/16/historical-tabloid-headlines/);
    – the outbreaks followed the normal pattern of peaking in the winter, in both countries, though Israeli lockdown may again have been more effective in limiting it, given its higher population density;
    – the fall-off in both countries from the end of February can be explained by a combination of weather and increasing population immunity, the latter enhanced by vaccination in Israel, and given its higher population density.

    • Thanks for those references. While they said that masks wouldn’t be helpful, I don’t think the Swedish MD/PhDs ever questioned the effectiveness of lockdowns at delaying infection. They just said that they were unconstitutional except in wartime and that they were pointless because humans wouldn’t be able to keep them going for the months and months required (we proved them wrong on that last point!).

  2. These stories of willful two year olds not cooperating with masks caught my attention some months ago. Of my four children, two of them were difficult about keeping sun hats on their heads, and about having sunscreen applied to their faces between ages 2 & 4. And both of these children are now reasonable adults, gainfully employed, and one of them has a wife & baby. Back in April, I wrote on FB that COVID-19 will be the the hardest on parents of children about 15 mos & up, cuz even when I was a “SAHM,” I was rarely home — since wrangling kids was so much easier at the playground, at the library story hour, at the zoo, at the museum, etc., etc.. (In the case of infants & babies, outings beyond the home/yard are mostly for the parents’ benefit, e.g., shopping, and the baby is happy crawling and toddling around the interior and exterior of the home 24/7.)

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