The man is kicking. There are 2.3 million people in the UK who are affected by the virus. There are a lot of Covid patients. The staff shortages that are already causing chaos in airports and other places are caused by these infections. We don't even consider deaths and Covid right now.
Our government is talking and acting as if Covid is dead. We are in a post-pandemic phase according to the health secretary. The prime minister insists that Covid is so trivial that he hasn't even thought about the issue for a while. The World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control recommend wearing masks in crowded areas, but ministers and MPs don't wear masks in the House of Commons.
The government is not the only one acting like it is over. The public is also a part of it. Life has returned to normal after the huge crowds at the jubilee and now at Wimbledon. Official figures corroborate this. According to the Office for National Statistics, the percentage of people who wear masks in public spaces fell from May to June. There was a decline in mask wearing on public transportation.
It's not surprising. People take precautions only when they are aware of a danger. When those in charge tell us that there is no risk anymore, we believe there is no need to take precautions. We need to ask about the risk to whom. Risk to yourself is the common-sense answer. There is a different story to be told. People followed Covid measures because of a sense of risk to the community during the Pandemic. Our data shows that adherence to these measures is related to communal risk.
Most people wear masks in order to keep their community safe. The reasons we follow these measures are more about social responsibility. Our belief that caution is necessary has been undermined by the government's emphasis on the personal.
Our actions aren't determined by what we think about risk. It is affected by what other people think. If we think our personal attitudes go against social norm, then social norm plays a bigger role in shaping our behavior than our personal attitudes. A lot of paradoxes can be created by this. If our actions are determined by our beliefs about others, we can all end up doing things that no one would ever approve of. People believed that others were rejecting the rules more than they actually were. People broke the rules themselves even if they believed in them. The violations became evidence that other people rejected the rules.
The government, its advisers and the opposition are important in breaking this spiral. The ability to bring people together, to help them realize that their concern for the safety of their community is shared by others, and to feel confident to act on this are some of the qualities of good leadership.
One of the main reasons people don't wear masks is not because of masks at all. We respond to being told what to do by reestablishing our independence. When we think this is a matter of us and them, it becomes even more acute. That is exactly what has happened with Covid. In a populist age, society is divided into two groups: the people and the elite.
The government and its experts have introduced Covid measures in order to protect us but they are actually trying to control us. masks are portrayed as a potent symbol of control, and if this is true of Covid measures in general, it is also true of masks. The political and scientific establishment that is proposing it is what people are rejecting.
Evidence about the risks of Covid and the effectiveness of masks won't help restore faith in the measure. If the problem is with the establishment, you're just as likely to reject the evidence about masks as you are about wearing one. The key is to create a relationship of trust between those who propose measures and those who don't. This is a matter of community engagement, working with different groups to show how measures are done for them, not to them. Taking health and safety at work seriously is part of being a trade unionist. Those who are religious want to love their neighbours.
The public and politicians need to rebuild trust in order to deal with the crisis. It's important for the future as well. There was a lot of talk of learning and building back better. Our leaders have made a concerted effort to forget the Pandemic as time has gone on. It's as if we want to forget about Covid. History is denied by those who repeat past mistakes. We are exposed and powerless in the present when we act as if it's all over. Next time, we will be exposed and powerless.
Stephen Reicher is an advisor to the subcommittee. He is an authority on crowd psychology and a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
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