I’m on a flight from Los Angeles to Honolulu. The sheer number of people who are still masking, even double masking astounds me. I don’t care if people want to mask as long as you don’t try to make me play along. But I just don’t understand it. These are presumably somewhat educated people, who apparently can’t see that masking did nothing at all to stop or slow the pandemic.

For many I assume it is a political statement, which is just stupid. If you want to announce your political ideology, there are far more comfortable ways to do it.

In reality I have to think many people are just still genuinely scared to be out in public. I’m on my way to Japan to do a report about a subculture there that has become so large it has its own name - which I can’t pronounce- made up of people who literally do not leave their tiny bedrooms. For months or years.

How unhealthy is that? For a guy who spends a good deal of time in the most dirty and dangerous places on earth, it is hard to wrap my head around being so afraid of the world you live in that you lock yourself in solidarity confinement voluntarily. Or double mask on an airplane. Crazy.