Face coverings, snowflakes and a defence of the “nanny state”

Face coverings will be mandatory when visiting shops from July 24th. This news comes amid the confirmation that deaths among shop assistants are 75% higher for men and 60% higher for women than the general population. The fact that lives could have been saved if we had adopted this policy earlier is undeniable.

You may assume that the conversation would now turn to remorse over why we didn’t take this measure earlier, and that many would wonder why not enough of us voluntarily chose to make this move to protect the workers we rely upon to stock our shelves, sell us our petrol and chat to us as we pay for a pint of milk. The awful truth is that we are all complicit in a collective failure to protect these workers and that we, as a society, have breached their right to a safe workplace.

It is infuriating that social media is instead awash with people saying that being ordered to wear a face covering is a breach of their own rights and declaring that they will not do it. To be clear, there are those who cannot wear face coverings for various health reasons. These people deserve no judgement or scorn whatsoever. However, for those like MP for New Forest West Desmond Swayne, who is fuming at what he called the “monstrous imposition” of having to wear a covering, I am finding it hard to be empathetic.

Many of those rallying against this policy are the same people who talk of their “Blitz spirit” and like to denounce young people as “snowflakes” when others express fear or empathy for real suffering in the Covid emergency. It’s interesting how often public health measures are greeted by some parts of the population as an affront to their liberty.

Smoke-filled pubs and restaurants are now nothing more than a memory. After the Labour government brought in a public smoking ban in 2007, it became illegal to smoke in any pub, restaurant, nightclub, and most workplaces and work vehicles, anywhere in the UK. This was greeted with resistance by many, with the same arguments as we see now for avoiding face coverings. Phrases like “it’s the nanny state gone mad” were common.

But 13 years on, the facts speak for themselves. Today fewer than 17% of people smoke. Research in the British Medical Journal estimated that there were 1,200 fewer hospital admissions for heart attacks in the year following the ban. Significantly, passive smoking has fallen: we’ve seen a great shift to people smoking outside, so most children in the UK now live in smoke-free homes, and respiratory illness reported by bar workers have fallen.

Similar nanny state claims accompanied other health-related policies, including the introduction of breathalysers, the mandatory wearing of seatbelts and the introduction of limits around fixed-odd betting terminals. But all brought good outcomes. Those who talk about free choice – be it with masks, smoking or seat belts – forget that choices are constrained by the conditions of circumstances, and their decision not to wear a mask can have an impact on the choice of another person to be safer, potentially someone who is earning a living and cannot take action to avoid the non-mask wearer/smoker/drink driver.

Those willingly behaving in a way that they know will potentially harm others, in an effort to make a point about freedom, are probably beyond reasoning with. For the rest of us, wearing a mask is just another step we take to protect others.