Freedom day
July 9, 2021•217 words
When face coverings become optional in the UK on 'freedom day', the 19th July 2021, organisations may choose not to enforce it on their premises. Since masks protect other people as much as the wearer, then if a vulnerable person wants to visit such an organisation, their risk is raised unduly because other people won't wear masks. Spaces such as cinemas, galleries and so on will also no longer have to enforce social distancing, further increasing the risk, especially to vulnerable people1.
Today, such people are free to visit cinemas, go to galleries and so on, as is everyone else, at the tiny cost of everyone having to wear a mask. After the 19th of July they will not be free to do that unless they want to run a much higher risk of dying. This is a funny definition of 'freedom'
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It's also clearly the case that organisations which do not enforce face coverings and social distancing are choosing to discriminate against vulnerable people. Of course that will be defined as 'not discriminating' by our very wonderful government who get to say what the rules around discrimination are. How convenient for them that black people, for instance, seem to be statistically more vulnerable to CV19 and will thus tend to be excluded without actual 'discrimination'. ↩