Sunday 20 June 2021

Unmasked

 A reader has written to ask me if I have stuck to my resolve – expressed in this post from last year – to resist the government's mask-wearing edicts. The answer is, mostly, yes. If it's a question of putting on a mask for a very short time, e.g. when entering a restaurant or popping into some mask-insistent shop for a few minutes, I'm not going to make an issue of it. However, I'm not going to suffer the entirely pointless discomfort of wearing a 'face covering' while doing a supermarket shop – still less while doing anything outdoors. The science (not to be confused with The Science) has not changed: no reputable study has shown that mask-wearing has anything more than a marginal effect on Covid transmission (similarly, no study has shown that Covid can be transmitted from contaminated surfaces, and yet hand sanitising is still being enforced on a huge scale, library books 'quarantined', etc.). Mask-wearing is clearly little more than a ritual observance that reassures the anxious and terrified – which is no reason at all for mandating it for the rest of us, in any circumstances. If people want to wear the things, that's fine – though the masking of toddlers and young children strikes me as a kind of child abuse – but the legislation is in essence arbitrary. 
  I have only been challenged a few times, and then weakly, for not wearing a mask. My usual response is to point to my chest and say I have breathing problems (which has a grain of truth in it); officials who know the law will know they can't question anyone about exactly what is wrong with them. The main thing, I think, is comportment – well, comportment and age: it probably helps to be older. As I am 6ft 4in at full height and can pass for 'distinguished', I have an inbuilt advantage, but it is still important to stand tall, to cultivate the air of a respectable senior citizen rather than a troublemaking refusenik – and, important this, to appear lost in one's own thoughts: this deters people from approaching. Keep the gaze focused on the middle distance and don't catch anyone's eye, at least if they look at all unsympathetic, and you should be fine. 
  My correspondent writes that she sees people driving around on their own in their cars, wearing masks and gloves. So do I. It is a sign – one of many – of the state of irrational fear to which the government's panic reaction to Covid has reduced much of the population. Many people will continue in that state of fear whatever happens next – 'Freedom Day, if it ever comes, will be wasted on them. But the rest of us should not be corralled into an anxious, anonymised, atomised and alienated future for no good reason at all. 
  By the way, the 'mask' I use when obliged to, is a slip of patterned silk with ear loops – about the most breathable option, and no more ineffective than other models. I recommend it. 

5 comments:

  1. “ it is still important to stand tall, to cultivate the air of a respectable senior citizen rather than a troublemaking refusenik – and, important this, to appear lost in one's own thoughts: this deters people from approaching. Keep the gaze focused on the middle distance and don't catch anyone's eye” - what troubles me is that this is exactly the behaviour that became a habit for me when living in Communist countries (although I was young then, so not the ‘senior’ part). To have to resort to any behaviour, rather than relax, is too great an imposition.

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  2. True, Zoe – but it saves me from hectoring and harassment, and it's only necessary in particular mask-wearing scenarios. Once back on the street, I"m happy to catch anyone's eye (well, almost anyone's)...

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    1. The Hungarian market stall holders have returned to their original mode with compulsory face masks, which is to hook one of the elastic loops over one ear and let the entire mask hang below the ear as a single rather large dangling earring. During the winter the death numbers were so grim that the entire country was temporarily cowed into taking masks seriously - anything that might help. But that was then.

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  3. Mask-wearing behaviour is the imposition I wish to end. By ditching my mask I am hoping to contribute in a tiny way to bringing that about. There are certain practical difficulties about how to conduct yourself if you choose to do this AND wish to avoid confrontation and other unpleasantness.
    No, it’s not comfortable choosing to leave the herd and trust your own judgement, but I believe it necessary now and am grateful to Nige for this encouraging and helpful blog.

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  4. We are not alone, Karen – far from it. I'm seeing more and more shoppers without masks these days – none of them making a point of it – and this seems encouraging. Also many people, from taxi drivers to doctors, who acknowledge that mask-wearing is completely pointless.

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