Fly With Me

By: Larry Gordon

Here are some notes and observations about flying, which for the most part, is mostly about biding your time in airports while watching the screen near your boarding gate, waiting for any updates that will keep you waiting longer than the expected delay.

We’ve come a long way from five years ago, when you had to stand in a long line at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel, waiting for a medical technician to swab your nose with a long Q-tip to check and see if you were carrying the Covid virus.

Remember that? I’d like to say that the entire lengthy, dragged-out episode was a farce, except for the fact that about a million people died here in the U.S., mostly from Covid combined with an underlying illness that creates an immunodeficiency situation, like diabetes or heart disease.

I tested positive for Covid very early on. It was actually right after Purim of 2020. I had no symptoms other than I lost my sense of smell, which is concerning in its own right. But it was still early and so little was known about Covid that at the time my doctor told me he didn’t think the loss of that sense was a symptom. It was only shortly thereafter that we learned that the loss of one’s senses of smell and taste were one of the most common symptoms.

The reality is that for those who were ill and suffering with Covid, it was no laughing matter. But so much about how the world handled Covid was indeed sad and laughable.

Now, all these years later, there are things that we can discuss about how the authorities handled Covid that we would never have dared discuss before.

At the same time, I’m sure people who suffered from Covid would never think of it as funny, but how else can you describe it when flight attendants spent most of their flight time trying to instruct passengers on where their nose was located?

The oddest aspect of flying during Covid were the nonsensical instructions they gave us on how to consume our meals and drinks during the flight. Even more comical was how little the flight attendants knew, yet never stopped dispensing “medical advice” as if they had a medical degree from an Ivy League institution.

At the end of the day, many learned that you didn’t really need a Covid test. All you needed was one of those small white cards that said you were tested, and the results were negative, which meant you were good to go wherever you were going.

Of course, in all seriousness, that might have posed a danger to some, but on the other hand, with the passage of time, the entire matter was overblown and the way communities went about things did more damage than the actual virus itself. That would have been difficult to say a few years ago, but now it seems a little safer. Just maybe.

As time went by, the daily news conferences with Dr. Anthony Fauci and President Trump mostly took us in senseless circles, heading nowhere.

As it turns out, Dr. Fauci, who was a U.S. government employee for decades, concluded his career with a net worth in the tens of millions of dollars. That’s not so different from Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who a few years ago was dead broke. Now she’s suddenly worth about $30 million. Or Nancy Pelosi, who concluded her leadership in Congress worth over $100 million. At the same time, Omar’s mostly Somalian district in Minnesota managed to rip off the U.S. taxpayers for upwards of $9 billion. Compared to that, $30 million is a paltry sum. So why all the suspicion?

Aside from the danger Covid posed to a small percentage of the population, it made hundreds of billions of dollars for the drug companies and many associated them (like Dr. Fauci).

The most memorable aspect of the Covid debacle was how so many rules and regulations were made up as we went along. The most ridiculous one being how the flight attendants, aside from telling us how to conduct ourselves in an emergency, suddenly became advisors on the proper way to dine at 35,000 feet.

And the rules kept changing. The most fun part was how to wear the mandatory masks over our noses and mouths while we sipped our beverages or chomped on a bag of cookies during a short flight.

The flight attendants, aka “medical technicians,” advised us to lift our masks while placing the food or drink in our mouths, then immediately lower the masks over the bottom part of our faces while we ate.

Of course, if you looked around, you easily observed people cheating on this newly-invented senseless process. That is, until they were caught and bawled out by the medical advisers/coffee pourers.

Taking this to another level was the manner in which, over time, getting permission to enter Israel became big business that made a small fortune for members of the Israeli Interior Ministry and Health Ministry in the manner in which they dispensed documentation that allowed people to enter the country who might otherwise not be allowed to enter, and the ease in which this was facilitated.

The process by which a traveler could receive permission to enter the country was by first passing along anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000 to the correct person, after which an almost immediate text giving you permission would appear on your cell phone.

As time went by and only a $250 blood test was required before being granted permission to enter the country, some people who used the service told me that while your flight was making its final approach to Ben Gurion, you would receive the results of your blood test, which made standing in line and giving samples unnecessary.

On the matter of covering your face with your mask while you were eating, if you thought you could get away with just covering your mouth, but not your nose—Oh no!—You were asking for a dressing-down from the flight crew.

Indeed, sometimes entire families were ordered to leave flights because their face masks were not affixed properly. And I’m sure you remember the case of the rambunctious 2-year-old and his mother who were forced off a plane because the toddler could not keep his mask on. What can we do about those two-year-olds who just don’t abide by the law?

The entire ordeal was something to behold. People whose jobs were pouring coffee and juice and handing out cookies suddenly had the authority to decide who can stay on a flight and who needs to go. That’s a big responsibility for small people.

Now, flight delays are still being blamed in part on Covid. Either a pilot has Covid or thought he or she had it. That is still used as a reason to cancel an event that you should have attended but for one reason or another could not. There was a “Covid possibility” and that was enough.

Finally, on the subject of vaccines. I don’t know about you, but I had two and a booster. Both shots left me feeling like I was sick with the flu for exactly 16 hours, then the symptoms just vanished.

I needed the booster in order to get into Israel. There was no way around that. I went to a drug store and rolled up my sleeve. I told the pharmacist how sick the first two shots made me and asked him to please just shoot the booster into the ground. Who was going to know? Maybe he thought that someday I would write a story about that. I swore to him that I wouldn’t. 

Read more of Larry Gordon’s articles at 5TJT.com. Follow 5 Towns Jewish Times on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for updates and live videos. Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome at 5TJT.com and on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter