‘If you don’t like a mask, you’re not going to like a ventilator’

It is compulsory to wear face coverings in shops from tomorrow.

The coming out precipitates an interesting thought about rights and responsibilities.

The need for masks to prevent further spread of Coronavirus is seen by some as a sensible precaution - I know I felt the obligation to wear one when meeting my family for first time.

Others see it as as an infringement of their personal freedoms, particularly when recommendation has moved to enforcement.

In making a decision to wear a mask, the question will be what price freedom?

The freedom to spread the virus to others, to increase the likelihood of more deaths, more routine operations and treatments delayed in NHS, more reImposition of lockdowns and more disruption to jobs and education?

Those in Wartime fought, often at expense of their own lives, to give us the freedom to choose, when their freedoms were curtailed .

So our right to choose comes with obligations to others also.

I am not yet confident to remove mine, when in confined spaces, where social distancing is not feasible, not to protect me, but my family.

The government has not helped us make these important decisions regarding masks witha lack of decisive action about when and where to wear them and in what circumstances and, more importantly, deciding whether such measures are mandatory.

Ministers making contradictory statements has not helped either, and different approaches from various parts of UK confusing also.

However, we cover our mouths when about to cough don’t we? And while, from personal experience, wearing a mask not the most pleasant of experiences, it is a price I am personally prepared to pay to protect those who have supported me so magnificently.

That is why I have so much admiration for front-line workers who have to wear personal protective equipment for hours on end.

We have choices and in making them consider what price our freedoms and responsibilities in doing so. My mind is focused when I see the comment ‘if you don’t like a mask, you are not going to like a ventilator’.