Normality won’t return until schools do

From Monday, you will be required by law to wear a face covering on public transport. Paradoxically, this is a sign that the government wants life to return to being as normal as possible.

Ever since the start of the pandemic, there has been debate about whether the government should tell people to wear masks in public. The argument in favour was that it would help stop the spread of the virus by making it harder for people to pass on the disease. There were two main arguments against it. The first was that urging people to wear one could lead to a shortage of the medical-grade masks that health and social care professionals so desperately need. The second was that if people were masked up, it might give them a false sense of confidence and make them less bothered about observing social distancing.

Boris Johnson has now come down strongly in favour of masks. One secretary of state tells me: ‘The PM has really got into the face-covering malarkey.’ The reasoning behind this, the minister continues, is that ‘he wants to give people confidence and the science says it does’. In other words, the fact that masks might make people bold enough to venture out more often is now seen as a positive, not a negative. The government wants to get the economy going again to try to mitigate the damage that lockdown is doing to the public finances. But retail and other such sectors need people to feel that they can leave their homes. It is not a coincidence that masks are becoming a requirement on public transport on the day that shops reopen.

But normality won’t resume until schools return. One of the reasons the government was so reluctant to recommend their closure in England in the first place was the economic dislocation that would cause.