This week, during a flight back from Europe to the United States, an otherwise friendly stewardess approached me and my row mates on multiple occasions to make us fix our face masks. She took to the intercom to remind us that federal law demands that we comply with the mask mandates lest we imperil our fellow passengers amid the deadly global pandemic. But the stewardess made an exception to the life-saving mask rule, which she permitted us to violate on a few occasions to enjoy the meal, drinks, and warm chocolate chip cookie served along the route. Still, as soon as we had licked the last cookie crumb from our lips, the masks had to go back on.
A similar policy prevails today at many restaurants, which demand that customers muzzle themselves from the front door to their tables to the bathrooms but not once they have taken their seats. Presumably the virus travels just as surely at the dinner table as it does at the hostess stand, but different rules apply to each. The virus, it seems, poses sufficient danger to merit reordering our most basic social interactions but not enough to ask that we forego a plate of tapas.--
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