About 95 per cent of people say they still cover their face when going outWearing a mask has become “politicised” and is no longer merely about protecting others, a government scientific adviser has said. Professor Clifford Stott, a social psychologist from Keele University, said that a key element of mask-wearing was communicating to others that people still needed to act cautiously to prevent the spread of the disease. SponsoredStott, who sits on the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (Spi-B), the behavioural modelling group that advises the government, said that masks had a “big impact” on stopping transmission but expressed regret that they had become part of a political debate. “We know, obviously, wearing masks, particularly in crowded, poorly ventilated environments, has a big impact on the levels of transmission that can take place,” he told LBC.

Source: The Times August 06, 2021 10:30 UTC