If masks were effective and necessary then it would have been logical to mandate them in March. But think back and consider what a big ask that would have been and the push back against it. Now, after months of fear inducing propaganda and media coverage we've been softened up to the extent that probably a majority of people will blindly obey like sheep without question.
So now we find ourselves muzzled without even being told why - in terms of measurable metrics - which conveniently means there's no exit strategy. Infection levels have reduced whilst we've all been shopping without masks. In the areas I'm monitoring we're almost at the point of a whole week without a new positive case.
The doom & gloom merchants told us that visiting the beach would cause a huge surge in cases, it didn't. They said street protests would cause a surge, they didn't. They predicted a surge when the pubs opened, it didn't happen.
My back of envelope calculations tell me that at current infection levels it'll take me 50 years of Sainsbury's trips before I encounter an infected person. By next week it'll probably be 75 years. Sadly, in the world of reality I'll probably never get to meet my infected person because one or other of us will have died first from other causes.
So whilst many people will be bowing to the irrational request to muzzle up with an ineffective face covering to protect themselves against an infinitessimally small risk, I am not a sheep.
There's another way of looking at it, but one that I don't think will appeal to people here, and that's that the government really didn't want to impose face coverings, and back in March there wasn't sufficient evidence that it was appropriate. But as time has gone on the evidence has improved and now on balance they think it's necessary.
One of us has missed the point of masks though. Infection levels are now fairly low in the UK, but there's still plenty of it around and the evidence suggests that infection rates are no longer falling (and before anyone says it's because of more or better targeted testing, this comes from random sampling). There is a considerable risk that infections start to rise again (to the point that what's true now - you are very unlikely to become infected - is no longer the case). The idea of masks is to reduce spread so that we can carry on going to shops etc. without this happening. Yes almost everyone wearing a mask isn't infectious and need not do so, but we don't know who that is. Every time I've been through airport security was a waste of time because I've never tried to bring a weapon or bomb onto a plane. But I still had to do it (and the difference with coronavirus is that I can't actually be sure I'm not infectious) As for the exit strategy - that would be when the government has confidence that face coverings aren't needed as part of the precautions to prevent coronavirus from taking hold again, which doesn't just depend on overall infection levels but on how good we are at preventing an outbreak getting out of hand.
The idea seems to be to gradually open things up without infection rates rising - if they continue to drop (as you seem to think they will, and I hope you're right) then the government can afford to relax restrictions more - either letting people do more things or let them do them without masks. If we got to the point where the country was fully opened up and infections were still dropping, you seem to think they'd want to keep masks a requirement because they like teling people what to do. Maybe you're right, but I don't think so.
There won't be any sort of backlash against this unless it causes people to stay away from shops, takeaways, cafes etc in such numbers that loads of them go bust and large numbers of people lose their jobs.
Then and only then can I see some of the "masks everywhere even in your own house you murderer" types starting to wake up to reality. Even then it's not certain.
There's no reversing any of this. The government is drunk on the power of it all. They now literally control every tiny detail of our lives. How many people you can have at a wedding, whether you can sing in a church, the number of people you can have in your own house and what relationship they have to be to you. And every single one of these "freedoms" they have graciously given back to us can be removed on a whim at a moment's notice and we can be returned to house arrest.
You are seeing current events in a very different light to me. What makes you think that this is what's motivating the government?
Indeed, it's deeply sad to see that as the government give us our freedoms back (to be removed again at short notice of course!) they need to find another way to make life more uncomfortable and prevent a return to the old normal where they had no say in what we did. It's obvious that there's no strong evidence out there for mask wearing being effective yet as I've yet to see a single piece in this 1,300 post long thread. There must be a secondary objective behind the mandation of masks (anyone like to take a guess?)
In my opinion, it'll soon be all indoor spaces apart from the home, and pubs/restaurants/hotel rooms (but if you go to the bar/toilet/reception, you'll need to put one on). I can, much to my dismay, see us becoming a masked society.
Do you consider the evidence in the article I linked to yesterday to be too weak, or have you found flaws in it? (I haven't read it properly so don't take a view, but I don't dismiss it either).
From reading these pages you would gain the impression that there are protesters on the streets demanding masks be worn. Now perhaps I'm just lucky but the outrage at the instruction to wear masks seems far far louder than those who were saying they should be mandated both before and after the announcement. My Facebook seems fairly quite on the subject (both ways) and I've not spotted anything particularly strong one way or the other in the media. Indeed the loudest voices I've come across are the those who are leading the anti-mask crusade on this very Forum! So where are you all seeing the "locktivists", "coronaphobes" and "muzzlers" calling so loudly for masks?
Yes I'm a bit puzzled by this. When I go out, I don't see the streets full of a cowed, compliant population, all dutifully following the pedestrian one-way schemes and carefully maintaining a 2 m distance from each other. I feel as if I'm living in a very different world to some of the people here.
).