I've noticed over the past couple of months that the wearing of face masks has become a very polarized left/right issue - almost similar to the situation in America.
One only has to have a look at parliament - on the government side only a handful of MPs are masked up, whereas on the opposition virtually all the MPs are masked.
I've also noticed this on my university campus - with many student groups campaigning around the university, most sports groups / nationality groups are not masked (outside!) whereas the environmental campaigners, Marxist society and LGBT groups are all fully masked.
Perhaps it's not such an issue that the right isn't wearing masks, but more that left-leaning groups are going rather over-the-top on the mask wearing.
Does anyone have any ideas as to why this is the case? I find it rather unsettling and sad to be honest.
It is a culture war, 100% no doubt about it.
But it is
not simply left vs right; indeed it is much more authoritarian vs libertarian.
The people
really pushing masks are the far left authoritarians, but there are right wing authoritarians who push for masks too.
I know lots of moderate left people who are totally against masks.
The centre left is not pro mask at all.
I agree it’s starting to become politicised, however I’m not sure this has spilled over to the wider population, where I think we have a proportion who are obsessed with them, a proportion ardently against, and a wise section in the middle who were prepared to give them ago but have become increasingly unconvinced of their value to the point where they’re prepared to defy request to wear them (such as by the likes of Khan).
I think most people are
not keen on masks but will wear them if forced or made to feel extremely uncomfortable if they don't wear them.
The ones pushing it are in a very small minority.
It's definitely become a political/virtue-signal issue.
I'm less sure it's a left/right issue.
Agreed.
Because people responding to online polls about what rules they think other people should follow don't consider that those rules should apply to them.
Indeed; these polls done by the sort of people who have a lot of spare time at home who are very keen to say what they think ordinary hardworking people should be doing.
If there is supposedly a public demand for mandatory mask wearing, then why is a large majority of the public not already wearing them?
Even on TfL where mask wearing is a condition of carriage, the majority do not bother.
The only time a majority wears them is where there is an expectation that the majority will be wearing them and that they will stand out by not wearing them. But as more and people realise that flimsy loose fitting masks don't cut the mustard and make no difference to infection rates, the numbers are dropping which in turn gives others the confidence not to be masked.
The pro-maskers are hopping mad right now; they are infesting social media going on about how few people are wearing masks and therefore we should all be told to wear them.
As it happens, this (English) Government is one of the few to abandon mask mandates, so the line to Tweet is that they are reckless and consigning thousands to early deaths, unnecessarily.
There are numerous others abandoning masks. Hungary, Norway, Denmark. Sweden never mandated them. Places like the Netherlands have mostly abandoned them with only a few settings remaining. Even mask-mad Portugal (where masks are seen as a panacea and no social distancing or any other measures are done, based on my last visit) is dropping mask requirements in many settings with more expected to follow.
Of course Drakeford wants to continue with masks because a) he is a loony left authoritarian and b) because it is the opposite of what the Conservatives have done. I find it most amusing to see Wales has really high case rates.
It's because there's a strong overlap between the kind of people who worship the NHS and who think we should all wear masks everywhere for all eternity. Those people tend to be on the left.
The far left, yes. You can often identify these people on Twitter as they tend to have cold heart symbols in their display names.
My impression is that while the vocal elements of the left/right have indeed strongly taken these positions, they are not aligned with the people they represent. Left-wing London has pretty low mask wearing as compared to rural places, especially considering that the latter are less crowded anyway so there is less imperative.
I agree; London is a predominantly left leaning place but it is also libertarian leaning and masks are more about authoritarianism than the left; indeed masking is not a sign of 'the left' at all as the vast majority of centre left people I know are against mandatory masks.
All of these countries, all of these experiments, and still the only things they say they work are low quality mechanistic trials… they are more a dystopian symbol of the pandemic, than an effective public health measure.
When I see someone wearing a low quality standard mask of the flimsy, loose fitting kind, I think they are either:
- mislead/misguided
- afraid of being judged if they do not wear a mask
- a virtue signalling authoritarian
Of course there is no way to know which of these applies, but the fact we are in such a position is very regrettable.
In contrast if I see someone wearing a tight fitting effective FFP2/3 mask, I assume they are immunocompromised and want additional protection on top of the vaccines, which is understandable.