Masks are awful, but essential
The advice around masks never made sense. It was bizarre that we were strenuously told to believe they didn’t help protect wearers – as well as curbing spread – when doctors and medical staff wear them for just that reason. They clearly offer a barrier to germs and yet via baroque reasoning, we were somehow told that that barrier didn’t count.
But now that – four months later – the powers that be are finally admitting that we should all wear masks for self-protection as well as to not pass Covid to others, there is still confusion.
Why must we wear them in shops when we can’t in restaurants or pubs (where eating through a mask would be difficult and unpleasant)? Should they be mandatory or discretionary?
Can we trust in people’s common sense and decency to wear them? There is clearly no consensus about this at the top.
Masks are absolutely vile. Every second that one is on my face I feel like ripping it off; stifled and oppressed as little beads of sweat quickly develop between nose and mouth.
But if we are to have any hope of living life without social distancing in the pre-vaccine period then they are clearly essential in as many enclosed spaces as possible; they have been demonstrated to slow the spread of contagions and the sense of security they offer both to wearers and those around them is just as vital. We are still a tremulous nation; the horror of March and April scorched deep, and we need all the reassurance we can get that it is safe to poke our heads back above the parapet and save the country from total economic ruin.
I am willing to embrace masks in the short term, in the hopes that they will not linger on in British life for a moment more than necessary. They’re a bore, they’re horrid – but I’d rather the discomfort of a mask than a new wave of virus.