The mask-o-meter of fury

I hate masks, and I’ve written about them many times, including here and here. Never previously compulsory in a viral outbreak (because they don’t curtail them), they were mandated in many places in 2020 not for reasons of public health but because a) they set an alarm off in people’s brains, telling us we are in an ‘emergency’ situation, b) they pushed compliance - you became one of the ‘good’ ones when you wore one, c) political and public health leaders could look virtuous in public by wearing them, d) petty authoritarians throughout society could be brought on board with anti-covid measures and e) they made an enormous amount of money for companies that manufactured them.

They are a social, psychological, health and environmental catastrophe. They have set the human race back decades. Those who would say “oh, it’s a minor imposition to pop one on when you go into a shop” were totally and utterly wrong, because the ‘drip-down’ effect meant that they would be worn in places where they weren’t mandated, and for far longer than they were mandated - for months, for years, perhaps forever. The abnormal has been normalised.

Thus you can't walk the streets of any city in today’s Britain without seeing ignorant and/or cowardly and/or selfish people wearing them (albeit in fewer numbers than before), in what has become the most visible scar of the deranged, sinister and counter-productive ‘fight’ against the virus over the last three years. And, boy, it enrages me - on a sliding scale, something like this marking system below. See if you can empathise with it…

1 - Not too bothered 

In the street, an old woman with a folded mask on her arm or in her hand

2 - Mildly perturbed

In a shop, an old man with a mask over his mouth

3 - Slightly irked

Someone who's clearly a foreign tourist wearing one

4 - Rather annoyed

In the street, an old person fully masked up

5 - Bothered

A really, really fat person wearing a mask (losing weight would offer considerably more protection against serious illness than masking)

6 - Not happy at all

On a bus, a twenty-something in a mask, or a masked parent with her child

7 - Extremely irritated

In the middle of the countryside on a ramble or bike ride, coming across masked people of any type 

8 - Really bloody angry

Out round town, a twenty-something masked up

9 - Super-angry

In an airport or train station, a family of four, including children, all masked up

10 - Raging with fury, brain about to burst

Outdoors, parents, masked, with young children, also masked. The Freudian Devouring Mother (and Father) doing their helpless children mental and physical harm for absolutely no good reason

There are just so many levels of ridiculousness involved in people still wearing masks; in most cases, they are doing the wearer more harm than good and, in Laura Dodsworth's words, the individuals wearing them are walking billboards advertising danger. I admit that I’ve said harsh words to many who’ve been happy to ask ‘how high?’ when the government has asked them to jump. I can’t help it. I know my real anger should be most directed towards the craven and mendacious officials who made the rules in the first place and generated an intense state of fear to make folk go along with them - and it is. But few are blameless in the tragedy of the last three years.