On a recent journey on the London Underground my eye was drawn to an attention-grabbing poster on the train wall proclaiming, “Face coverings may help you travel with confidence.” Why is Transport for London (TfL) continuing with this misleading and counterproductive style of pro-mask messaging?
Perhaps they should display other posters suggesting its passengers wear a garlic clove around their necks or to whisper the Lord’s Prayer if it helps them to ‘travel with confidence’. Such random statements would make as much sense as the actual TfL announcement – repeated on its website – giving passengers unasked-for permission to cover their faces with cloth or plastic.
Of course, in a liberal democracy, people should be free to wear a mask on the underground if they so choose, or – for that matter – dangle a pungent onion-like plant under their chins or recite Christian invocations. But TfL should not be promoting face coverings as if they were an effective means of reducing anxiety about the prospect of contracting respiratory viruses. In a rational world, this underlying message would rightly be characterised as ‘misinformation’ by the Government’s official fact-checkers.
Let me explain.
Leaving aside the existing robust evidence base that concludes that masks are both ineffectual as a viral barrier and associated with a range of harms, it makes no psychological sense to suggest that their habitual wear will reduce fear of infection. As described in a previous article, masks – on a commonsense level – will act as a crude reminder that we are all potential biohazards; hardly a reassuring perspective. But an additional effect will be to discourage the wearer from concluding that the world – including the London underground – is now safe enough to return to. Routine masking will be a powerful ‘safety behaviour’ that prevents disconfirmation of anxious beliefs. At the end of each uneventful day, the masked passenger will be prone to attribute their survival to the multi-holed contraption stuck across their nose and mouth, interpreting each illness-free day as a near miss: I got away with it this time, but who knows what would have happened if I hadn’t worn my mask.
So just like a garlic clove around the neck will not weaken beliefs about the existence of vampires, and reciting the Lord’s Prayer will not weaken beliefs about the risk of falling into the clutches of Beelzebub, face coverings will not reduce conviction in beliefs about the dangers of lethal pathogens. Donning a mask before entering the Waterloo line might transiently reassure some residual victims of the Covid fear-mongering campaign, but in the medium-to-long term the behaviour will needlessly perpetuate anxiety.
All things considered, the TfL poster would have been more accurate to declare, “Face coverings will ensure you travel in fear.”
Dr. Gary Sidley is a retired NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist and co-founder of the Smile Free campaign.
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