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Boris Johnson's government in Westminster has performed a sharp U-turn and announced that wearing face masks will now be compulsory in shops in England from July 27. While there is some evidence of a moderate protective effect from wearing masks, the whole affair says more about the chaos inside the cabinet than it does about the merits of face masks. Worse, the leap from mild advice to legal compulsion shows how little regard the UK government now has for freedom.
Back in the early days of the pandemic, the UK governments - both in Westminster and the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - took their lead from the World Health Organisation when it came to face masks. Reviews of randomised controlled trials on the use of face masks - the "gold standard" of medical evidence - seemed to indicate little benefit. In short, we were told, they were pretty much useless. Other things, like isolating if we had possible symptoms, washing our hands and making sure we sneezed into tissues or our elbows were far more important, we were told.
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