Click here to complain to Transport for London about their forced masking, adapting the points below if you like
I’m writing to you today to express my disappointment with Transport for London deciding to impose its own mask mandate.
Masking the healthy is not, and has never been, a harmless intervention.
In a democratic society, the evidential bar to justify mandating a behaviour should be set very high. Any fair-minded person looking at the evidence can see the research in support of masks offering protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection falls a long way short of this threshold.
Prior to June 2020, public health organisations and their experts did not endorse masking healthy people in the community as a means of reducing viral transmission and, in the real world, mask mandates or the lack thereof appear to have made no noticeable difference to the spread of coronavirus.
Meanwhile, the social and psychological consequences of hiding our faces from other people are profound and ubiquitous.
Humans are social animals. We need to interact with others and communicate to sustain our wellbeing. The reactions of the people we meet provide continuous feedback about ourselves and the impact we are having on our fellow citizens. Masks are a major impediment to all these human requirements and, as such, they are dehumanising.
It has often been suggested that face coverings can reassure people that they are safe to return to shops, restaurants and other community venues, thereby aiding the economic recovery. But as any psychological therapist will tell you, they won’t.
This is because masks act as a crude reminder that danger is all around. They constitute what psychologists refer to as a ‘safety behaviour’ that acts to prevent disconfirmation of anxious beliefs; continuing to wear masks will maintain fear as the wearer may attribute their survival to the mask rather than conclude that it is now safe to return to normal activities.
If people choose to wear face coverings, so be it, but this should be a personal decision for each individual, not one imposed by Transport for London diktat.
