//…not wearing a mask in a shop is an offence JD.//
Not if you have a “reasonable excuse” it isn’t.
//I don't like wearing the masks one bit, particularly in this hot weather, but if it makes a small difference to the number of people being struck down with this awful virus, so be it.//
The person most likely to see that small difference is you, Lady GC. You are far more likely to end up contaminating yourself by wearing one than you are to prevent anybody else from being contaminated.
//I personally don't feel my freedom has been taken away//
You are being compelled to do something which you may not otherwise choose to do, Bobbie. You cannot go into a shop or on a bus without wearing a face covering (unless you have a “reasonable excuse”). You are not free to do something that, until recently, you used to do and that’s taking a freedom away from you.
//Would you include wearing seat belts or banning smoking in pubs/restaurants as removal of freedoms…//
Yes. But before those freedoms were removed, sound scientific evidence was presented to show that the practices involved could, and usually would, result in great harm to the individual concerned and/or others around him. No such evidence has been produced to show that wearing a face covering reduces spread. In fact until recently the WHO stated as much. It also explained my concern – self contamination by the wearer. The measure is not “perfectly sensible” by any stretch.
I don’t agree with the activities taken by the mob in Peckham. But it might help offset the abuse that people who do not wear face coverings have to bear. As I explained last week, I do not wear a face covering anywhere. I have been on the wrong end of facetious remarks and rudeness. I am robust enough to deal with it – a polite request to “mind your own business, please” is normally enough. If not, the torrent of more forthright vitriol which follows has done the trick up to now. But many people are not so robust and some people who cannot wear coverings are afraid to go out. That should not happen and people wearing them in Peckham who were subject to the mob got a little flavour of what it’s like for those not wearing a covering to suffer abuse from the “maskvists” that are out there.