Children returning to school after the winter break will again be required to wear masks in the classroom. What are the main reasons informing the Government’s decision to re-impose a restriction that is both ineffective and harmful? The education unions have again been clamouring for pupils to cover their faces, energised by either a baseless belief that such a measure will reduce the risk of teachers contracting the Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, or maybe the less altruistic desire to further damage Government credibility by causing more disruption in our schools.
Irrespective of the motive underpinning the unions’ behaviour, it is pertinent to ask why the Government capitulated so quickly to these demands when, in contrast, they have recently resisted pressures to impose other Covid-19 restrictions. One plausible explanation for this lack of resistance is that widespread masking — of children and adults — is a potent device for increasing people’s compliance with future public health restrictions and the vaccine rollout. There is a range of circumstantial evidence to support this assertion.
One of the many baffling policy decisions over the last two years was the Government’s U-turn on whether masking healthy people was an effective way of reducing viral transmission. In early months of 2020, public health experts repeatedly informed us that donning face coverings in the community was not recommended. In March 2020, Dr Jenny Harris(England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer) was unequivocal when she stated, “For the average member of the public, masks are really not a good idea” and that “People can put themselves at more risk than less”.
Professor Jason Leitch (Scotland’s Clinical Director) was equally emphatic in April 2020 when he said, “The global evidence is masks in the general population don’t work.” Strikingly, in December 2020 — several months after mask mandates had been imposed in the UK — the World Health Organisation (WHO) published a document titled, Mask use in the context of Covid-19 with the conclusion that, “There is only limited and inconsistent scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of masking healthy people in the community”. Many contemporary public figures spread a similar message.
So what could possibly account for their abrupt conversion to a pro-mask narrative in the early summer of 2020?
Clearly, it was not in response to the emergence of robust scientific evidence showing that face coverings significantly reduce viral transmission. On the contrary, a review of 14 randomised controlled studies, published in May 2020, concluded that masks did not significantly lessen the spread of influenza in the community, protecting neither the wearer nor others. If they were not informed by new science, one can only speculate about alternative explanations. Several factors are consistent with masks being deployed primarily to enhance compliance with the Government’s Covid-19 interventions.
It has been well established that the Government’s behavioural scientists have played a central role in shaping the national Covid-19 communication strategy by recommending a range of psychological “nudges” as a means of promoting people’s acceptance of restrictions and the subsequent vaccine rollout. Ubiquitous mask wearing (by adults and children) significantly enhances the effectiveness of three fundamental “nudges” used within this campaign. First, the exploitation of fear to promote compliance with Government diktats has been well documented. As well as being one of the restrictions fuelled by fear, masking people in community settings is also a powerful way of perpetuating fear. Acting as a crude reminder that danger is — purportedly — all around, face coverings will also hinder disconfirmation of anxious beliefs, preventing the wearer from concluding that our communities are now safe enough to re-engage in a normal way. A self-reinforcing restriction would strongly appeal to our ethically-compromised behavioural scientists.
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