Written evidence submitted by Anonymous (MRS0243)

It has been widely speculated in the media recently that the Government is “under pressure” to introduce a further unprecedented draconian control over our everyday life in this period of Covid-19 crisis, namely, the possibility that members of the public might soon be legally forced to wear facial masks in public. In response to this dreadful global pandemic, similar draconian measures have already been introduced within some European countries, and had already become normalized within the socio-political cultures of a few mainly authoritarian countries, mostly in Asia. The current thinking here is that compulsory public facial mask wearing could be imposed for a seemingly indefinite period upon anyone using public transport, and possibly also, even within our places of work. Some face mask policy zealots want us to go even further in the UK and are calling on the Government to oblige all of us to wear these hideous nose and mouth coverings if we leave our homes for any reason, or venture into any enclosed public space. Any new legal obligations around facial masking in public might be pursued as part of the understandable need to publicise and implement some broader strategy towards easing our national Covid-19 lockdown.

In this statement I want to express my grave worries to this parliamentary committee around any possible legal obligation upon citizens like me to cover our noses and mouths with a fabric whenever we are physically present within any general or specified public spaces. I also want to set out a possibly better, and socially just and equitable, alternative to compulsion in this area.

I believe that such an obligation would be especially oppressive for people who have a number of disabling cardiovascular and chronic respiratory health conditions. I am such a person. Not least, due to many decades of progressive Type 1 Diabetes, and some other non-Diabetes-related medical health complications relating to my age, my breathing and heart functions have now become compromised. Occasionally, my breathing can be laboured and I experience asthma symptoms and rapid heart beating after relatively mild physical exertions. Compounding my present cardiovascular and respiratory health challenges is my life-long hypersensitivity to sniffing any fabric that is positioned very close to my nose. I will simply struggle to breathe properly if any sort of foreign object – especially a fabric – is legally required to be positioned and secured around my nostrils and my mouth. I will also very quickly begin to experience respiratory difficulties if I am forced to wear a fabric that covers my nose and face, even for a relatively short duration. The prospect therefore of being required to wear such a fabric over my lower face for the duration of a train or bus journey, or even whilst I am shopping in a supermarket store, or much worse, within my place of work for several hours at a time, is simply terrifying to me!

My extreme physical health discomfort in relation to any unnatural obstruction of my breathing function is not an isolated concern. I have met, know personally, and held numerous discussions online with, many other people who, like me, would physically struggle to tolerate wearing something that covers their nostrils and their mouth. Apart from those of us with cardiovascular disease and some form of chronic or non-chronic respiratory condition, many others experience excessive body heat and/or sweating (such as hyperhidrosis) if wearing a face mask indoors for prolonged periods, whilst others will experience adverse psychological as well as physiological problems relating to stress and anxiety.

It is very easy for policy makers, public health experts and even some doctors and epidemiologists to call in our mass media for the blanket compulsory introduction of facial masking in public for everyone else when they personally can tolerate wearing a mask. After all, if something is okay and physically tolerable enough to them, why shouldn’t other people also be required to endure the same measures? Yet, from the standpoint of sensible public policy formulation in this area, we all need to be starting from the biological premise that it is not natural for any human being’s normal breathing functions to be impaired in any way by a fabric that is tightly fastened against their nostrils and mouth. This sort of state-enforced social behaviour, though now normalized within the cultures of other parts of the World, is actually alien to most of the western European democracies. In our society, citizens are not coerced by the state into wearing any sort of unnatural object, for alleged medical or religious reasons. And we enjoy the many socially inclusive, socio-psychological and ease of communication advantages that actually ensue from living within a predominantly open-faced society and culture. Even the onset of a lethal virus pandemic that can effectively be counteracted and defeated in other more socially acceptable ways should not be the pretext to introduce this sort of authoritarian measure into our way of life. 

I believe quite passionately that in a decent and fair-minded liberal democracy, whenever social policy and legislation is being formulated - especially hastily during a time of unprecedented (inter)national emergency - it is essential that the predicament of the significant minority with health vulnerabilities due to some underlying health conditions, sickness disabilities and/or their age is not simply swept aside. Whilst it might be true that possibly the majority of ordinary people, including most of my friends and work colleagues, might well be physically able to tolerate the wearing of a compulsory facial mask in public, there is a significant minority who will find this daily obligation extremely oppressive. Such a, frankly, draconian measure as state-enforced public face masking will undoubtedly therefore end up having a disproportionately adverse, and indeed, also a discriminatory, social impact upon people with certain medical health conditions, and many elderly citizens. As many social policy professionals will already be aware in regard to current equalities legislation, imposing blanket conditions upon everyone – even conditions that are anecdotally claimed to be ‘popular’ and might be tolerable to most people – but which nevertheless have adverse impacts upon certain people with disabling health complications, is likely to be deemed unlawfully discriminatory.

At first sight, going forward, there does seem to be a seductively attractive logic to the extraordinary policy option of compulsory facial masking being considered. Although there is still no settled scientific and empirically referenced agreement on this, there is beginning to emerge a soft consensus that facial masks are helping to slow down the rate of Covid-19 transmission in public spaces. There does seem to be an ineluctable scientific logic and common sense to the argument that wearing some form of fabric that covers the mouth and nostrils does reduce the viral droplets that might be coughed or sneezed, or even transmitted through talking, from a Covid-19 asymptomatic person to another person.

However, we do also know from epidemiologists that one of the greatest risks of Covid-19 transmission is from people who unwittingly or consciously touch their mouth, eyes and/or nose with hands that have come into contact with the virus. Thus we have all been very wisely advised by the epidemiologists NEVER to touch or rub our faces with our hands or fingers for this reason.

The problem with facial mask wearing is that it significantly increases the risks of contracting the virus for the wearer. This is because the unavoidably repetitive acts of putting on, removing, re-adjusting and replacing a facial mask all involve bringing possibly virus-infected hands near to or onto the face. Indeed, through their routine usage, facial mask fabrics are also known to acquire and contain airborne virus particles, including those specifically relating to Covid-19. This fact ironically poses yet another invisible health hazard to the mask wearer, especially those who do not or cannot regularly replenish masks that might have become contaminated with this deadly and highly infectious virus whilst being worn in public. For anti-virus health protection reasons, the public would essentially need to be advised regularly to be replacing, and therefore replenishing their supply of, the obligatory facial masks. Many people within our society, including but by no means limited to those on low or scarcely any income, will undoubtedly struggle to maintain a sufficient supply of disposable facial masks. We know from a variety of official demographic equalities data that has been collated over the years that certain groups of people with protected characteristics, including people with a range of sickness disabilities, people from certain minority ethnic communities and some low-income pensioners, are disproportionately represented across a number of poverty indicators. And there will be many others, such as those with learning disabilities and those who are poorly educated and generally socially-uninformed, who will not easily understand the critical importance constantly to avoid touching their eyes, mouth and nose in their everyday relationship with their facial mask. 

Furthermore, some epidemiologists have already expressed concerns that mask wearing is creating a dangerous false sense of immunity from contracting Covid-19, a false sense of security, among many mask wearers. This is because apparently mask wearers are less likely to socially distance from others in their everyday behaviours, and in their family and social interactions. Hardly anyone now disputes that maintaining social distancing and a scrupulous attention to regularised hand-washing will be even more critical to eventually overcoming this deadly virus than introducing compulsory mask wearing in public. As many well-informed public health professionals have been arguing, in order eventually to beat this virus and ease the lockdown, there will need to be a much more co-ordinated national effort towards community virus-testing, contact tracing and appropriate medical quarantine support services. Indeed, it is precisely this shift in Government policy that seems currently to be underway.  Eventually, we will all benefit from a mass produced vaccine. And our country, indeed the whole World, will surely need to conclude rigorous international bio-security treaties that outlaw the obscene commercial abuses of livestock for food consumption that have repeatedly triggered the lethal respiratory global pandemics (like Covid-19). These deadly influenza-type pandemics to which we are all being repeatedly subjected and which are destroying our normal, democratic modes of living (even within the liberal democracies of western Europe), all seem to originate from animal welfare abuses, through which deadly pathogens are being transmitted from virus-infected animals to humans.

I fully appreciate that a large number of citizens who are medically able to tolerate the wearing of an unnatural facial covering are already doing so on a voluntary basis, and essentially for altruistic reasons because they do not want to risk unwittingly transmitting this virus onto others. If some of us can physically tolerate wearing a facial mask in public, and if many people wish to continue doing so for perfectly laudable altruistic reasons, then there should be no problem with that. There is nothing morally wrong with all of us as responsible adults being persuaded and encouraged voluntarily to continue doing our bit effectively to stay safe and healthy and help our country overcome this nasty virus. Perhaps, going forward, a decent policy compromise might be a public information campaign that gently persuades all members of the public who can physically tolerate wearing a facial mask in public to continue doing so. Under such a nuanced public information campaign, the scientific benefits that have been ascribed to the voluntary wearing a facial mask in public will continue to be maximised, whilst there will also be an implicit understanding that wearing a facial mask is not medically suitable for everyone, and it should not therefore be publically perceived as opprobrious not to be covering the nostrils and nose in public.

My deep concerns - from an equalities, public health, practical financial, and even from the perspective of the likely civil liberties violations - are solely related to any possible legal obligation that might end up being imposed upon everyone, regardless of their predicament, to fasten a facial mask across their nostrils and mouth. The problem with any authoritarian policy lurch towards compulsion in this area is that it sweeps aside the much more desirable and flexible freedom of choice that, as adults, each of us is presently exercising over whether we can or are unable to fasten an obstructive thing over our lower face.

Even an obligatory public face-masking policy that is implemented piecemeal and/or with some important medical health safeguards and derogations is very likely to be extremely problematic in its practical manifestations. If someone in my predicament is, for example, exempted on medical grounds from wearing one of these hideous masks on public transport, and/or when doing some shopping in a superstore, or simply when going about our normal everyday lawful business in enclosed public spaces, under any regime requiring compulsory mass compliance and police enforcement, we are likely to draw an unwelcome attention to ourselves. This new state of affairs will become a new potential tyranny for anyone who is seen in public or in the prescribed public space not wearing the obligatory facial fabric. Such a potentially oppressive state of affairs will inevitably arise because people in our position will be perceived as being selfish or socially irresponsible because we are not doing in public what other people are being compelled to do by law. This experience will be a truly horrendous civil liberty violation prospect for any citizen in my position and it will expose us to all manner of possibly intrusive challenges, harassment in public and discriminatory treatments. People who comfortably wear masks in public will not necessary understand, or be prepared to empathise with and accept, why others are exempted from doing so in enclosed public spaces. We need to avoid introducing any public policy that inadvertently ends up socially stigmatising any minority groups within the population.

Any legally enforced compulsion on face masking within certain enclosed public spaces, and even a mushrooming in localized policies and procedures that require the public to wear a facial fabric, will inevitably mean that receiving many vital services that we take for granted suddenly becomes contingent upon wearing a mask. The same inevitable linkage will emerge between social participation or inclusion within a wide range of everyday activities, and first needing to have a mask on. This sort of contingency linkage in the provision of services to which the public presently have a right to receive, or some other essential need to access, will carry some potentially very serious social justice implications, especially for people who even temporarily cannot access a safe mask to wear in the public arena. With the possible exception of certain areas within our hospitals - like ICUs, wards and close-contact medical treatment areas - which for obvious reasons require scrupulous regimes and procedures around infection control, we will risk the social injustice of ordinary people being routinely denied or excluded from receiving public services because, for one reason or another, they do not possess or cannot wear a mask in this or in that public space. For all sorts of reasons, we already have worrying levels of social exclusion within our society, and we know that some groups with equality protected characteristics are already experiencing enough social disadvantages, without now erecting yet another barrier to receiving the public services we all rely upon.    

I therefore feel quite passionately, from both an equalities and a civil libertarian perspective, that it is essential going forward that any Government-co-ordinated strategy to ease us all out of this unprecedented lockdown does not place any undue social policy pressure upon public transport agencies, our retail outlets and our employers to introduce mass facial mask compliance policies. This authoritarian measure will be especially iniquitous, however, if in its implementation it ends up, for example, working against equality-inclusion within our workplaces, or even worse, ends up preventing some people who cannot physically tolerate mask wearing from even coming into work, or operating comfortably for several hours within the workplace. Even more terrible would be any legal duty that is placed upon retail outlets, public transport agencies, publically used facilities, and employers to introduce mandatory facial mask wearing, with a draconian right to enforce compliance and impose penalties for non-compliance. We need instead to press ahead and continue with our sterling efforts through public information campaigns to educate the public on the essential need to maintain social distancing, on scrupulous hand-washing, and on the other essential personal and public hygiene activities that we are all being encouraged to do in order both to protect others and avoid contracting this virus.

In the event of any decision to publish this formal submission, I should be very grateful if my name and personal contact details were not publicised. Thank you.  

April 2020