A recent study commissioned by the British government showed that there is no evidence that forcing children to wear masks makes any difference to the spread of the coronavirus. A review carried out by Prasad along with academics from Harvard and the University of Colorado came to the same conclusion. Mask-wearing changes nothing.

This is a conclusion that our political elites clearly came to some time ago. Otherwise they would not have dared to remove their masks for their evenings of wine, music and Magic. They know that it is performance. But for them it comes at little cost.

The story for this country´s children is quite different. As the British government´s study pointed out, “Wearing face coverings may have physical side effects and impair face identification, verbal and non-verbal communication between teacher and learner.” It went on to identify other “detrimental impacts” on learning. But we don´t need a government report to tell us that. Most parents will know this for themselves. I know children whose progress has been set back immeasurably by the insistence that this city´s children must be masked. One friend has a child who is having to do speech therapy. The child’s teacher is vaccinated. The child is at no risk from COVID. But the two of them have to sit in their speech-therapy sessions, at a suitable distance, both fully masked.