Masks and other talismans against ‘unnecessary illness’
Focus on individual conduct shifts attention from the structural failures of the National Health Service.
It is curious that, while individuals today are often denied responsibility for the running of their own lives - deemed unfit to make decisions about how to raise their children or what to eat - they are at the same found to be responsible for questions such as the pattern of seasonal illness or even the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. The larger and more intractable the problem, it seems, the more it is found to be a personal duty to do something about it.
With the National Health Service in crisis, the British public is urged to do all they can to avoid ‘unnecessary illness’ - such as wearing masks outside, avoiding crowded places, staying home when sick, and getting the latest booster.
This focus on individual conduct shifts attention from the structural failures of the national health service, which was on the verge of collapse every winter even before it was further weakened by the terrible decisions of the past two years (putting off all operations, reducing GP services, sacking care workers who refused to be vaccinated).
Social-structural questions are depoliticised and reduced to a question of individual behaviour, as if people are only getting sick because they are not being sufficiently ‘careful’.
Of course, measures such as masks and yet more boosters have all the effectiveness of charms against the evil eye, and indeed their function is in some ways similar. Like the talisman to ward off misfortune, masks and other measures transform problems of social and natural reality into a mystified personal ritual.