Heightening the emotion around masks, however, is a different situation: Air travel is a microcosm of community life. We are all in this together. Literally. Scrunched together in a cabin, it is evident that how we behave can and does affect those nearby. Quickly.

Nothing is private; everything is shared — even the filtered air. Out of deference to those around us, we stifle our whining to airline staff, minimize our scoots past neighbors for a stroll in the aisle, resist doing jumping jacks or — most especially — try our very best to avoid coughing, because all of this can affect others in our little inescapable airplane community.

This communal living, however brief, is unpleasant for everyone. Adding to it a mask mandate however appears to have tipped a segment of the “I am the boss of me; government be gone!” zealots of the mask and vaccine resistance into a fierce, and even violent, uncivil disobedience. The trend is bad enough to have caught the attention of the Federal Aviation Administration and, for some particularly unruly passengers, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As of Tuesday, the FAA had 1,150 reports of unruly passengers, from which 744 were related to mask-wearing.