Feels depressing to be posting on this thread/that we've got this thread/that johnson's fucking shower are taking us down this path. Anyway... I don't want try and set out some counter agenda of what would be the best control measures, that ship has sailed and we're in a channel defined by tory backbenchers and their potential votes of no confidence. Can you fucking imagine public health could be driven by that. But on masks, I'm horrified about what they've come to symbolise. Instead of a measure of our commitment to others, particularly the old and medically vulnerable, media and the dominant politics have made them into a symbol of big state oppression, the new world order and God knows what else. Ditto, the most sensible things in a pandemic - testing and isolation - are being eroded to the point where people are being actively encouraged to work with Covid.
But it's not just the specifics, it's the mood music and the creation of a mindset where doing the socially responsible thing becomes an unlikely choice. I was on a local train yesterday, with constant e-banner instructions to wear face coverings - out of the 20 or so people I saw, only I had one on. It's as if the government's own behavioural nudge experts had been given the task of reducing compliance with control measures. Going in the shops now I'm beginning to feel self conscious about wearing a mask. That's what we've been reduced to. Vaccines help, of course they do, but for so many elderly and vulnerable people this, literally, anti-social strategy limits their lives, increases anxiety and threatens their health. Oh well, no such thing as society.