Masked anxiety

So there we had it: our first flights in over a year: to Edinburgh and back for a four-day break. The only ‘foreign’ holiday this year, as everywhere else was either booked or that plonker Grant Shapps has placed it on the red list, or the amber list, or the amber-plus list, or the oh-what's-the-point list. Or Iceland. And, yes, it wasn't lost on us that the train from London to Scotland would have been more environmentally friendly, but with exorbitant ticket prices for a family of four, plus a five-hour journey each way, we wanted to both maximise our budget and what little holiday we were actually able to get this time.

Edinburgh was, thanks for asking, very pleasant. So pleasant we got engaged there. Yes, I am now a fiancé. The things you do on holiday, eh? What was noticeable in the charming Scottish capital was, firstly, how relaxed it felt for a busy administrative city, and secondly, how well drilled everyone appeared to be under Ms. Sturgeon's jurisdiction. Call the Scots Nats upstarts if you will, but Covid-discipline was impeccably observed wherever you went, even by the vast majority of tourists. There really was precious little obvious civil disobedience when observing the still-enforced coronavirus etiquettes, both social distancing and mask wearing in shops, restaurants, on buses, and inside attractions. No one, from what I could tell, was abstaining on grounds of belligerence or twattery, and that made for a pleasantly anxiety-free time. Only the occasional tourist - who clearly hadn't received the memo - sauntered around indoor venues with their fizzogs fully on display.

You see, I’m a self-confessed zealot when it comes to observing the COVID rules. Despite having had two jabs and indeed a mild dose of the virus itself back in November, I’m diabetic and over 50, and bloody paranoid about catching this thing again (a possibility - even the double-jabbed health secretary Sajid Javid got it). 

I’ll admit that having a  compromised immune system is partly the result of my own misadventure, but I can’t help being 53. Basically it meant that the final leg of our journey back from Edinburgh, from London City Airport to home, was one tightly knotted ball of anxiety, as every carriage we entered on the DLR, the Tube and the SWR train was full of maskless Covidiots, looking back at my petrified eyes, peering over the top of my mask, as if to say “Yeah? What’s your problem?”.

To be somewhat fair, part of the problem is not necessarily ignorance but our dear Prime Minister. Ever since Boris declared 19 July “freedom day”, the wearing of face masks in England has been largely a matter of personal choice. How very doctrinal. This is despite warnings from the scientists - those people who, it would be decent to point out, know a thing or two - that easing rules on masks will reduce public protection. So with “personal choice” the most ambiguous health and safety stipulation you could make (I could jump out of a hot air balloon without a parachute or cut off my legs with a chainsaw - it’s all a matter of personal choice), it’s no surprise that anyone with an aversion to wearing masks, due to comfort, personal freedom or because being told to do something is not for them leads to people cramming onto our trains with their faces bare, breathing in and breathing out in crowded compartments with little concern for their own wellbeing and, more bluntly, mine.

This all stems from one of the few consistencies throughout the pandemic in the UK: inconsistency. And indecision. Boris Johnson appears so eager to please freedom-loving party acolytes that something as simple as mask wearing in environments where the virus can be passed with amusing ease can not be countenanced out of common sense, above anything else. It’s why London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, has deemed that masks will remain mandatory when traveling on all Transport for London services, including the Underground, buses and trains. Not that he’s been able to enforce the rule, as our journey home the other night amply demonstrated.

“I’ve repeatedly made clear that the simplest and safest option would have been for the Government to retain the national requirement for face coverings on public transport,” Khan has said. “But ministers aren’t willing to do what’s right. I’m not prepared to stand by and put Londoners, and our city’s recovery, at risk.” He has since doubled down on that view, last week calling for mask wearing to be made legally enforceable with criminal prosecutions an ultimate sanction for failure to comply. Khan’s view is partly out of the hope that a bye-law on London’s transport network would partly reduce any further spread of COVID-19, but perhaps as importantly, it would increase the confidence of commuters like me in returning to the capital for work or pleasure, giving a much-needed boost to the economy. Sadiq Khan says that 86% of passengers do observe the mask etiquette, but that means that a sizeable 14% don’t, which is a problem as scientists have said repeatedly that masks only curb the spread of the disease if everyone wears them. I think we’ve lived long enough with the Covid numbers to know what risk that represents to public health. 

However, imposing such rules is still reliant on enforcement. Given the number of trains and buses operating in London, most of which now are driver-only (and in the case of the DLR, driverless), restoring guards as, effectively, enforcers, on the scale required would be problematic. Transport for London has some 400 enforcement officers already, but given the prevalence for some of London’s finer citizens to carry knives, you can understand the reluctance for confrontation. This places extra pressure on depleted police ranks to enforce what is at present little more than a polite request.

Picture: TfL

The challenge for Khan, however, isn’t just safety: TfL faces a budget deficit of as much as £500 million over the current financial year, having been severely impacted by the pandemic. As restrictions ease, Khan desperately needs people back on public transport. That said, there are already signs of private car usage increasing, and second-hand car sales have gone through the roof as people spend saved cash on used vehicles to get around in.

Back in Scotland - where Nicola Sturgeon has appeared to be one step ahead of Johnson throughout the last 18 months - the government intends to continue with the wearing of masks “unless exempt for special circumstances” until at least next year. “The law says you must wear a face covering in most indoor public places including public transport,” official guidance states. “The Scottish government recommends that face coverings should be worn when moving around when it is crowded. This is encouraged for busy outdoor events.”

In England, Boris has customarily faffed on the issue, conceding that “If it’s not mandated it probably won’t do any good” and that he “expected” people to carry on wearing face coverings in enclosed spaces, which is hardly an imposition. Here, in the midst of all this, is us and especially me, the paranoid. The trouble is that the issue is now at risk of getting bogged sown in politics. One scientist worries that this will mask the actual point about wearing a face covering to begin with: “We know wearing masks, particularly in crowded, poorly ventilated environments, has a big impact on the levels of transmission that can take place,” Professor Clifford Stott, who sits on the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (Spi-B), told LBC last week. “But also I think [that] wearing a mask is also communicating to others about a sense of responsibility, and I think that’s a key issue in mask-wearing now, unfortunately. It’s become almost a little bit politicised whether one wears one or not, which is I think a shame.” Stott is firmly of the belief that masks have had a “big impact” on stopping transmission.

In truth, according to the Office for National Statistics, mask wearing in England hasn’t changed all that much in the last month since the legal requirement to wear them in enclosed spaces was dropped, with figures showing that 95% of people were still covering their face when leaving the house. Our public transport experience, however, suggested otherwise. Perhaps it’s an East London thing, as the majority of abstainers were on the DLR west from London City Airport, and then from Canning Town to Waterloo on the Jubilee Line. That degree of mask-free fellow passengers has done nothing to restore my confidence in getting out and about again. A shame after so many months cooped up at home (including three confined to the sofa following foot surgery). I’ve been desperate for freedom to return, but I won’t hide my anxiety at what I see as other people’s inconsideration and ability to comply with something as relatively simple as wearing a mask.

Perhaps, then, it’s just for me to deal with, but it does rub with me that my liberty can be curtailed by an inconsiderate few. Perhaps I should move to Scotland, where Sturgeon’s position - admittedly, not universally accepted - has at least been unambiguous. “It is my view that if a government believes measures like [face coverings] matter, and this government does, we should say so,” the Scottish First Minister has stressed. I won’t gloss over the fact that the overall numbers are falling, as vaccinations and so-called ‘herd immunity’ take effect. It’s true, too, that the R rate appears to be dipping, but with the school holidays in force, this may well be the ‘circuit break’ needed. 

Come the autumn, and the possible return of colds and flu as more and more companies open up their offices for the first time since March last year, the whole issue of travelling to work on public transport will come under the political and clinical microscope again. This, I’m sure, will put Boris’s chronic prevarication on the line.