The master said: the mask makes the man
A cultural tradition in many Asian countries, the wearing of masks due to the coronavirus pandemic has produced uproar and flagrant disobedience in other nations across the globe.
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The master said “wear a face covering.”
The master said “people are born the same but become different by learning.”
The master said a lot of things - each utterance interpreted more often than Hamlet over the years - yet this particular truism held its weight through all the philosophical schisms of the warring states and into the present day. Just how much learning does it take to make people different? I made like the master and headed out on the vox pop trot.
- How old are you?
- “”
- What is your ethnicity?
- “”
- Who would you vote for if there was an election tomorrow?
- “”
- Would Confucius have asked us to wear masks?
- “...”
At first, confusion clouds the eyes of the unexpecting as they stare down my mic. A socially distanced on-the-street is harder than I had expected. Perhaps it’s my mask they can’t hear through.
- Confucius. The Chinese philo-
- I know Confucius.
Cue polite departure of interviewee. I begin to wander along Euston Road towards campus and make a snap decision to change the tack of my questioning.
- Age?
- “”
- Ethnicity?
- “”
- Politics?
- “”
- Would Confucius have taught his disciples in masks?
- ...“”
Most of the unsuspecting student body did not interpret my inquiry literally. Responses ranged from the nonchalant to the nonsensical, but all quite wrongly presumed my question related to the here and now of our libraries and lecture halls. By and large, the demographic fruits of my foray into the world beyond lockdown quarters proved little beyond the results of a Pew investigation conducted in June: white, conservative males are the most likely to avoid face coverings, while ethnic Asians of just about every identification are the least.
At the beginning of the year, it was Asian students and their protective habits targeted for violent remonstrance in major Western cities like London and New York. A Japanese friend of mine was verbally abused for his mask wearing while walking through Regents Park. Clearly putting on a mask is not Confucian - tolerance for sweaty chins is, however, divided along cultural lines.
In East Asia, mask wearing is a commonplace and has been for some time. Even before SARS broke out in 2002, people owned masks to wear out when suffering with a cold or flu - to enter a subway car or board a bus while sick without one has long been considered an abuse of public health. Since that outbreak, their use has expanded south into Thailand, Malaysia and other parts of Southeast Asia while in China the roiling banks of smog common across major urban areas are (somewhat) diffused by a wholly ubiquitous sea of n95 respirators pouring from the doors of commuter trains. Masks are available to purchase in every corner shop on every corner of every street in every city across North Asia. Estimates vary, but pre-Covid era disease transmission across these regions is estimated to be 30 to 60 per cent lower than would otherwise be expected were pieces of material not preventing the splaying of diseased material into the air. That is in “peace-time,” with only symptomatic sufferers regularly covering up. Applying even those numbers to our Covid-19 situation, the result is one person dying instead of two - or zero instead of that one.
Nonetheless, even standing knee deep in that prevailing tide when I lived in Beijing, I found it extremely difficult to break my own mental stigmatisation of putting on a mask. I owned a packet of them when I arrived - through friends and colleagues I owned a whole cupboard-full by my departure - but strapping fabric to my face never came to feel natural. I am a liberal white male! So I understand the mental block. That very slightly, possibly racial, sense that somehow you are losing a little piece of yourself into something larger.
Unfortunately, right now we are facing an unspeakable evil that has killed and maimed and ruined economies with a ferocity we all thought only investment bankers possessed. A sweaty chin and smelling your own breath are small prices to pay for the lives of those around us. Research has shown a properly worn n95 mask can protect from 80 per cent of particles as small as 0.007 microns - tiny even compared to Covid-19. When the question is between slight discomfort and the life of an innocent, the question ceases to pose itself.
In much of Asia, regulation prescribing enforced mask wearing has clearly proven an effective method of disease prevention mostly because the native populations of these places have consistently and unanimously acted on the advice. In London, I am constant witness to more people flagrantly disobeying the rules than otherwise - as though the government has asked for voluntary participants in some new Boris Johnson-scheme to inflate the surgical markets. We offered our sanity and our freedom to help bring down infection rates during lockdown. Now we’ve been entrusted once again with countless lives and the health of the nation, please do not remove your mask in the library or appear to seminars in an ineffectual mask. I am no master, but I say: we are all born the same and by learning, we can become just that little bit more similar once again.
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