Queue you.

Some six million people fly every day. And, coming through Toronto’s Pearson Airport, it often feels like they’re all in your line — for self-service arrival/departure kiosks, for ticketing, for customs, for baggage drop-off.

That’s in the best of times. These are not those.

At a future date, when the COVID-19 pandemic has been brought to heel globally, we’ll look back and recognize what we did wrong, what we didn’t do rapidly enough, what risks were flippantly ignored or — conversely — what provoked an unnecessarily panicky response.

Flying, except maybe for those who can travel first class, was already a miserable experience for most of us.

But there really is no excuse for the pandemonium and heedlessness that has been occurring in heavy-transit airports around the planet, especially well after everybody had become keenly aware of the virus and the threat of exponential contamination.

Pearson is the 13th busiest airport in the world. Upwards of 1,500 incoming travellers in the customs hall at one time, crammed together, doing the zombie walk in endlessly winding queues, was always a formula for fiasco. With the landing of international flights now diverted to only four Canadian airports, there’s little relief in sight.

“We have been holding planes,” says Tori Gass, spokesperson for the Greater Toronto Airport Authority. “We’ve been doing that for several days.”

Meaning aircraft waiting at the gate to disgorge passengers, in rhythm with the flux of arrivals being processed inside.

Anyone who’s come through Pearson’s two terminals in recent days, however, can be forgiven their roiling anxiety. Scores have taken to social media to express their frustration and worries, particularly over the lack of scrutiny and screening for arrivals.

No sanitation stations or the devices don’t work or they’re empty.

Staff unable to move the queues forward in a sensible manner — for instance, failing to distribute self-reporting questionnaires from the end of the line, thereby creating bottlenecks closer to the customs booths.

Clearly ill individuals — in one case, a child vomiting into his mother’s hands, as a fellow traveller reported to the Star, with no official intervening, the poor woman left to appeal to strangers for help.

Thousands and thousands of travellers emerging from Pearson who may have been exposed to infected passengers because there’s no distancing on a plane and no two-metre spacing in queues. Piling into cabs, Ubers, airport shuttles, buses, the Union Pearson Express train.

An unknown number who may be infected but not yet know it.

Taking that infection home. Contaminating family, contaminating friends, contaminating strangers with whom they have come in contact. There are no six degrees of separation anymore to even attempt tracing lines of exposure. As public health officials said on Tuesday, there are increasing signs of “local transmission” — people who haven’t been abroad, including the 77-year-old Barrie man who has become Ontario’s first (known) coronavirus death. Ontario, one of just three Canadian provinces which has now declared a state of emergency.

A slice of airport life: On Sunday, March 16, 1,205 carrier planes landed at Pearson, according to airport’s flight data site, from all corners of the world, previous to the federal government tightening border restrictions that now deny entry to most non-Canadian citizens or permanent residents (travellers from the United States still excluded from the ban.)

Debbie McNaughton was among those arriving at Terminal 3 after a weeklong vacation in Cuba.

“We were crammed in like sardines,” she tells the Star of her experience in the customs hall. “And you have to breathe, right?”

Invisible droplets.

McNaughton, 60, described, via email, the prudent steps she attempted to take while in Cuba — there were no alarming public health warnings before she left — and in-flight returning to Toronto.

“We used every precaution we could think of while travelling. Hand sanitizers, wipes, wiped down everything around and on our plane seats on the way there and back, never touched a handrail, used material between our fingers to hit any elevator button, etc. We felt very safe while in Cuba and tried to protect ourselves the best we could.

“Our landing at Toronto Pearson Airport was a whole other story!!”

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The flight landed shortly at 6:20 p.m. and she proceeded to the kiosk machines. Only a dozen were available.

“I thought that odd since I was just there at the beginning of January of this year and we were sent to a much larger (hall) with about four dozen machines. We never touched the screens with our bare hands and used sanitizer when we were done anyhow. Then we were ushered down the hall and ended up in a very large room… with dozens of kiosks. We were lined up out the door… as we passed all of the empty kiosks.

“This was where the real hell began. The queues were zigzagging back and forth, between all the rows of kiosks, back and forth.” Then another bedraggled queue for customs — only seven booths open despite a dozen flights in the same quarter-hour.

“We understood the whole ‘social distancing’ thing going on in Canada, but this was the complete opposite. They forced us to be rubbing and bumping into hundreds of people to… get to security. I had read earlier that day that Pearson was equipped with more hand sanitizers and measures to protect us. Complete bulls-.”

There were two in the entire area; one was empty, the other didn’t work properly.

The lines moved sluggishly as agents asked every passenger if they had any symptoms and distributed information pamphlets. “That damn handout could have been done by one of the employees while we were in line for 105 minutes.”

McNaughton, who lives in London, Ont., has now self-isolated for 14 days.

“If I do get sick, I am almost guaranteed it would be from my time in Pearson Airport and not my week in Cuba.“

Really, it’s incredible that only one Pearson employee (that we’ve been told) has thus far tested positive for COVID-19.

This is not how to control and contain. Flattening the curve? Flattened by it, more like.

As of Tuesday afternoon’s public health briefing, Toronto has had 108 positive results, with more than 2,000 tests being done daily throughout the province. Across Canada, as of this writing, 440 identified cases.

What’s the point of shutting almost everything down, limiting gatherings to no more than 50 people, when the vehemently contagious virus is just waltzing out the doors at Pearson?

Stop it at the source, surely. At least do a better job of it than Pearson managed this week.

Overshoot if necessary, out of an abundance of caution. Except… too late. Because it will get a whole lot worse before it gets any better.

Correction - March 24, 2020: This article was edited from a previous version that misstated the number of passenger terminals at Pearson International Airport.

Rosie DiManno is a columnist based in Toronto covering sports and current affairs. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno