Opinion

Fionnuala O Connor: Ignore the scoffers, wearing a mask is our civic duty

Wearing of face masks on all public transport is law in the north. Picture by Hugh Russell
Wearing of face masks on all public transport is law in the north. Picture by Hugh Russell Wearing of face masks on all public transport is law in the north. Picture by Hugh Russell

Some exposed to the public every minute of the working day will be glad, others will still scoff.

You head into a shop with elastic round your hot, red ears and specs foggy, and the man behind the counter breaks his heart laughing and says hope you’re not trying to hold us up, we’d know you anywhere. But from yesterday you can be fined if you won’t wear one on the Republic’s public transport, and Donald Trump wore a mask at last, 24 hours after Boris Johnson.

Johnson was clearly hinting at making it mandatory in shops, Michael Gove slithered around that on Sunday morning television. Boris’s emerging young rival Rishi Sunak launched his ‘half-price grub on the Treasury’ deal by serving Wagamama food with neither gloves nor mask. Go back to work, they say, shop, eat out. We’re weighing risks, we can’t decide.

Masks in crowded public places strike you immediately as common sense, or they don’t. No point looking to many political figures on this for wise and consistent advice though yes, there’s Nichola Mallon masked to push for clear announcements here, Nicola Sturgeon in fetching tartan last month.

A sizeable number are ‘can’t be bothereds’. There are also the much more impassioned opponents who say you’re dictating their personal behaviour and they won’t have that. The polite name for that class of being is ‘libertarian’.

The argument for and against will run and run, passions no cooler once aired. Unless, of course, as when smoking stopped in pubs, this turns out to be the lead-in to one of those unforeseen transformations. Remember how your coat smelled when you came home, and your hair? Long time ago.

Politicians with hang-ups, mostly male, mostly vain, are only the most obviously conflicted. You could say, and some probably do, that being masked has rarely been seen as a good thing. Robbers in oldtime comics with a bag marked ‘swag’ wore masks. The playful costumes of Venetian festival are among the few exceptions though the religious may point to that spooky garb worn in Holy Week in Spain, to denote penitence, which just reminds others of the Ku Klux Klan.

It used to be a question after a Troubles shooting, fatal or not. Was the gunman masked? Then came balaclavas. Being masked meant bad intentions.

Until now, except that some are convinced it misleads the wearer about the protection it gives and is dangerous rather than protective.

The people in your family who wouldn’t be seen dead in a mask – no, probably not a common saying at the moment – almost certainly don’t radiate the almost fevered contempt for face-covering of Trump, or Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, seen wearing a mask after testing positive.

No masks for exploited garment-workers in Leicester. Few if any for the mainly immigrant, often undocumented workers in Los Angeles factories - pushed by city subsidy to fast-track mask production. (Health officials closed three of those factories after 300 corona virus cases, four deaths.)

It will take time to become accustomed to Boris Johnson in his blue one; £2 from Poundstretcher, said the Daily Telegraph. Airborne infection, apparently, is being constantly re-assessed. Home-made masks seem as good a bet as any meanwhile and might be your most decent option.

Back in April healthcare academic Professor Trisha Greenhalgh argued for widespread face covering. There was ‘a little bit of protection’ for the wearer, she said, much more for other people. Now she says ‘thousands and thousands more are going to die’ unless covering faces becomes routine. She also says ‘Someone coughs or speaks loudly and the virus then gets into the air and it stays in that shop or in that indoor space.’

So on public transport, in shops, a mask will protect you a bit and others more. Hard to argue with that. As a loud person, wearing one is clearly civic duty. Let the scoffers scoff.