Wearing a face mask protects other people

Annemarie Field writes of the importance of wearing a face mask to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus but says she doesn’t care much for the scientific evidence (Out In The Field, Herald Friday June 3).

But understanding this evidence is important because there is otherwise no real incentive to wear one, given that they are not comfortable and as she says, make your glasses steam up.

It seems very clear now that while masks don’t protect us much they do protect other people, so it’s reciprocal.

We all have to make our own judgements to a large extent and there seems no necessity to wear a mask walking in the open air.

But on public transport, we have been given a clear instruction to wear one.

There has also been clear information from scientists that singing, shouting or talking loudly will cause more transmission of the virus if a person has it, especially if two people are face to face.

On buses in particular passengers are in an enclosed space, not able to move quickly and safely and with the sound of an engine making quiet conversation only possible with someone sitting next to you.

For the first time since early March I boarded a bus to Meads from the town centre last Friday.

It was empty and alternate seats were clearly marked as unusable to enable social distancing. At the next stop five or six people got on, all wearing masks except one man who talked loudly to the driver and the bus at large.

When the bus had started a woman sitting facing me, with a seat between us so about two metres away, pulled down her mask and shouted enthusiastic greetings to a woman sitting behind me on the other side, who immediately did the same thing, so that they were having a shouted conversation with me in the middle.

I protested and they eventually stopped but only after the first woman, rather than apologise, had argued loudly that you didn’t have to wear a mask in Sainsbury’s so what difference did it make?

I don’t see what else bus companies can do, and bus drivers can’t be expected to police passengers’ mask-wearing and behaviour: it ought to be possible to rely on people’s intelligence and consideration for others.

As a choral singer who can’t go and sing with my friends because of the risk of virus transmission, I would find it doubly grieving to be given the virus by some inconsiderate stranger shouting on a bus.