The Anti-masker Bubble

Science Denial and Conspiracy Theory all in one

Anti-masker. Another neologism with its genesis in the US, that is now on the rise in the UK, as we belatedly adopt the same minimum safety measures that have been in place across Europe and elsewhere for months. But who are the anti-maskers, why are they determined to ignore the science and wealth of evidence from other countries on the efficacy of these measures? And why has the simple issue of wearing a mask for twenty minutes at the supermarket been blown completely out of proportion and politicised?

Anti-masker has a ring of other recent terms, such as birther (someone who maintains Obama was not born in the US), 9/11 truthers ( who maintain that the World Trade Centre atrocity was a false-flag operation), climate science denier, science denier or even simply denier (someone who believes climate change isn’t real or a hoax). Looking at the posts on social media, it seems that one follows the other in a surprising way, so some anti-maskers are also climate deniers, and even extend in some cases to resort to the same sort of justification.

Given the medical and scientific consensus on the effectiveness of masks in combination with other methods to mitigate the risk of contagion, you would think it would take some considered effort to find that tiny minority of contrarian health professionals, debunked…