One morning last week a young man in a light-blue sport coat with AirPods in his ears and no mask on his face boarded my bus in Los Angeles and sat down. Then he looked around at all the masked faces, got up, walked to the front of the bus to grab a free mask from the dispenser, put it on and returned to his seat. It made my day.
In general I’m all for getting back to normal as we figure out how to live with COVID-19. I go to the office most workdays, eat indoors at restaurants, travel, shake hands or hug as appropriate and, yes, ride public transportation here in L.A. and back home in New York City. But I’d be happy to keep wearing masks on the bus and subway pretty much forever, and would really like it if lots of other people did, too.
For the moment mask-wearing is still required on planes, trains and other transit in the U.S. by a federal mandate that was extended a few weeks ago until April 18. Airline executives are pushing hard for that to be the end of it, and on the subway in New York City adherence to the rule is falling quickly already, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
