UNMASKING THE UK’S GREAT DIVIDE

TO mask, or not to mask, that is the question that no-one can answer in the UK.

Whether it is nobler to wear one to avoid the slings and arrows of people getting outraged at your selfishness, or to argue they just don’t work.

The UK’s response to the coronavirus could be described as shambolic at worst, and perhaps “agile” at best because the rules kept changing.

The advice on whether people should wear masks has changed almost daily, and sometimes twice in a day.

There is a new rule coming in on July 24 saying that people must wear them in shops or be hit with a $180 fine.

A clothes outlet counts, but a sandwich shop doesn’t. Even Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who has the equivalent job of Australia’s Treasurer, wasn’t sure. He was pictured wearing a mask at a Pret a Manger this week, the McDonald’s of sandwich shops in the land where the ham and cheese meal was invented.

The UK authorities said in a video on March 11, when people were dropping like dominoes with the virus that they were not that effective. Now they are saying they are a must.

I suspect that they were always the best option, but that Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his cronies were panicked that if everyone started wearing them there would not be enough for the doctors and nurses risking their lives in the National Health Service.

Now, like the rest of the UK I’m just confused. But I’m on board the face mask train because anything that can avoid a second lockdown must be a good thing.

However, there are challenges with them.

I was covering Johnny Depp’s court case this week, dutifully wearing a mask in the courtroom to protect others rather than myself.

But when a fellow reporter asked a question he couldn’t hear my answer and I had to take it off anyway. I’m going for best intentions, rather than the perfect outcome.

London still feels like a ghost town, even though the lockdown has eased significantly and there are now about the same number of cases across the UK as there are in Australia each day, despite having more than twice as many people.

The warmer – at least for Britain – weather, may be having something to do with it, but I keep hearing whispers from the business community they fear a second lockdown here too.

I’m not sure Johnson would do it, though, because they now seem to be so worried about the economy and the missed cancer checks in hospitals that were delayed because beds were taken up by COVID-19 patients.

And while some things are getting back to normal, Pret, which is having to close some outlets, has been a pale imitation of itself.

There are hardly any sandwiches on the shelves, and I overheard one lawyer on a break from London’s High Court say that the display was “grim”.

It may be some time before the sandwich shop display is full again, but I’m hopeful that the Oxford coronavirus vaccine, which had some promising results, might come sooner rather than later.

Until then, I’ll be mumbling into my mask.