[clairity]

it's poor form (and against site guidelines) to question whether someone read an article. like many other npr stories, it insinuates a lot and provides a wholly and intentionally incomplete narrative to construct a solid argument in hopes that you miss the missing pieces and just nod along. it's entirely plausible that the filtration system did all the work and masking was merely performative. as others have pointed out, they completely skipped comparisons with other flights where people weren't all rigorously masked (just pick another airline in hong kong). it's hysterical, and it only distracts from the primary community transmission risk, the private social gathering, because it's uncomfortable and harder to tackle that issue instead.