AS deaths from Covid plummet, will the Scottish Government’s mask ever slip?

Even driving to Edinburgh for my first weekend away in goodness knows how long I was reminded by the motorway signs to “Plan Ahead” – apparently, I was entering a “Covid level 2 area”. Transport Scotland, like almost every other institution and organisation in Scotland, now feels that part of its role is to make us all Covid-aware.

I’m not sure how many people are sticking to the rules now. Even lockdown lovers who were outraged by the mere slipping of a mask in the past appear to be scratching their heads wondering what on earth is going on.

The NHS is under no threat. As I write this, there's been no deaths for a fifth day running from Covid, with four people in intensive care across the whole of Scotland. Infection rates have increased in some places but, of course, almost everyone who was at risky of dying has been vaccinated so the virus, that has always been a mild risk for the vast majority of the population, is having next to no impact.

READ MORE: Stuart Waiton: Lockdown is not a conspiracy – it's more worrying than that

In pubs and restaurants in Edinburgh the mask hokey-cokey continues: Stand up, mask on. Sit down, mask off. Walk two yards, on, then back off.

Mask wearing was always a minor matter in terms of effectiveness, as we can see with the relatively high number of deaths across the UK. It is also, I suspect, a mechanism for maintaining an elevated consciousness of risk amongst the public to match the precautionary principle mindset of our health and safety experts.

In the context of pubs and restaurants, the mask wearing is performative: something that keeps us in check as part of the new safety etiquette that must be enforced by hospitality managers and staff.

Walking along Princes Street, one of the more worrying signs is the number of young people who wear masks in the open air. The young are likely to be the most affected by messages of fear having been educated in the etiquette of safety from the day they arrive at school.

Safety, as sociologist Frank Furedi noted as far back as 1997, has moved from being a practical matter to a strange type of morality, filling the hole of bygone Christian puritanism and turning almost any type of behaviour into a potential source of moralising.

The logic of lockdown at the moment appears to be, “We need a lockdown to get out of the lockdown”. There is no national emergency or mounting death count and if we were to start from where we are now and introduce all the restrictions we are experiencing there would be public uproar.

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Unfortunately, we have gotten used to having our freedoms determined by a small group of health experts and politicians. There is no coherent opposition to even the maddest of the measures we face. And so, we sit waiting, fingers crossed, that the authorities will allow us to shake a person’s hand or live in a world where you can actually see the other person’s face.

New variants are likely to come and go. The experts are equally likely to take a risk-averse approach and presume the worst. Meanwhile some health zealots see mask wearing as a “new normal”, a positive outcome of the lockdown that elevates our own risk-consciousness.

Covid awareness is everywhere and the rule of safe, safer, safest continues to have a moralising dimension that sees everyone from Transport Scotland to education establishments, trade unions and even commercial radio stations pumping out the message of caution.

The performative mask wearing is a particular concern given its moralistic rather than scientific dimension. So, let’s bear in mind that the same people who think we need cigarettes to be hidden from us and the price of alcohol to be hiked ever higher are the same patronising behaviour managers who we are trusting with our freedom.

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