I’ve just come back from my daily bike ride around our park. Very pleasant it is, too. 24 C (75F) low humidity, a pan easterly blowing. And I notice, as I do all the time these days, that everyone is wearing a mask. As in everyone from the elderly to kids. 男女老少, as the Chinese say, Nan Nu Lao Shao. Man, woman, old, young.
And I’m wondering why. It’s certainly not “the science” since the science has told us from early on including in detailed studies part funded by our own Hong Kong government, that this is not a disease you catch outdoors. Especially when everyone is massively socially distanced and there’s a fresh breeze blowing in from the East. That is from the South China Sea and rhe Pacific beyond. You’d have more chance of catching leprosy brought in from California than catching Covid (yes, California has cases of leprosy. At about the rate we currently have Covid).
So if it’s not science it must be that people are wearing masks because they are in fear. Fear that our government has government has promoted. That every government in the world has promoted in this last year. Why, in the UK now, the government itself is so strikes by fear that it’s afraid of its own shadow. Boogie variants haunt their nightmares. Even massive vaccine success doesn’t lessen their fear.
Lord Sumption talks of this manufactured fear with Brendan O’Neil. Brendan and mates shred Boris here. I rather liked Boris once. Coronavirus has been his WW2, but unlike his hero, he has not done a Churchill. I see he’s weak and unprincipled. Not a leader. Sad! ADDED: Like Lord Sumption, Bernard Henry-Levy is appalled at the collective madness. “Psychotic Delirium” he calls it.
ADDED: Silly me. I chatted to a neighbour about this outdoor mask wearing and she tells me "it's the rules". I knew that we had to wear masks indoors. But outdoors? Turns out, yes, even outdoors in any "public place". So, I was wrong. But there's no science to that requirement, as the likelyhood of catching the virus outdoors is virtually zero. And are we on the route to needing masks all the time, because we might catch something? Scarily, maybe. Son John tells me there's some noise along those lines in the US...
