On a day when I feel like I have the entire weight of the world’s problems on my not-particularly-broad shoulders, I get a fragment of good news whilst listening to Nicky Campbell’s brilliant Radio Five Live phone-in. It gives me a real boost.
I’ve just been to Sainsbury’s for my usual early morning shop for essentials (Guardian, hot cross buns, soap) and as usual there are a minority of folk wandering through the store with largely ill-fitting masks. For some reason that doesn’t make any sense, I find myself irritated by them but downright annoyed when they wilfully ignore social distancing instructions. “Because I am wearing a mask, I am fine, so get out of the way.” But now I learn that the majority of mask-wearing is altruistic. They are wearing them for me.
The science says that with the exception of the masks worn by our heroes in the NHS, your average mask worn by the average punter makes little difference to their chances of not acquiring Covid-19 but it reduces the chances of them passing the Covid-19 to me. Hallelujah! These people are heroes.
A biologist on the radio then pointed out what was, I suppose, the bleeding obvious. If your average mask would not be appropriate for a doctor or a nurse, it would not be of much use to us, either. In which case, what’s the point in wearing them? Many who do wear them take them off with hands that could be contaminated, I have see people remove them altogether when they get back in their cars. I suspect there is a bit of psychology going on here. If we think masks will protect us, then obviously they will, even if they don’t.
As part of the end of our semi-lockdown, whenever that is, I suspect some forms of mask-wearing will be advised. Perhaps it will become mandatory. It will be on the basis that masks might prevent some people passing on the virus, or remind us to remain responsible and alert to its dangers. Public pressure will increase until the medics and scientists go down the road of recommending mask-wearing for folk going on public transport, shopping and – God forbid – going to the pub.
If masks were the answer, we’d have been told to start wearing them three months ago, or in Britain’s case, several months after every other country in the world.
Finally, I hope that these masks and other forms of PPRs are recyclable. Otherwise, we might need to wheel out David Attenborough to tell us that we’re in the process of killing everything else in the oceans that we haven’t managed to kill up to now.
