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So finally the government is recommending, and will soon mandate, masks in shops. Don’t underestimate the amount of institutional opposition that has had to be overcome to get this far. British “official science” has been stubbornly anti-mask for years.
If you can think back to April, this was the dangerous message being put forward by British experts, even as it was becoming obvious that mask-wearing countries had far fewer infections https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1246119171794112519
Some public officials were forbidden to wear masks at work even if they wanted to https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/apr/30/uk-border-force-officials-ordered-not-to-routinely-wear-masks
Even people working IN HOSPITALS were being told they weren’t allowed to wear protective face-masks https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/04/nhs-worker-quit-when-she-was-stopped-from-wearing-face-mask
There’s a school of thought that anti-mask messaging was because of a supply problem. But that’s back to front. if there was a supply problem, it was because of deep-seated official scepticism. See, for example, this illuminating article. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/face-masks-asking-coronavirus/
No account of the disastrous saga of British official advice on face masks could be complete, of course, without the ineffable Dr Jenny Harries
