We've had a little break from this particular theme in the current government-mandated madness these last few months, but now it's back with a vengeance, and the usual suspects have wasted no time in gleefully gloating over what good, virtuous, halo-glowing heroes they are, as they instantly whip out grubby pieces of cloth to slap over their faces upon state command.

I have seen quite a few people solemnly declare that they wear these tatty rags "out of respect for others".

Excuse me whilst I channel Marty McFly from Biff's Pleasure Palace here (when Lorraine tells him he should apply this sentiment to Biff), but RESPECT??! Respect????!!!!

This surely must be some sort of ironic joke. By obediently covering your face whenever politicians tell you to, you are displaying that you have no respect whatsoever for human dignity or personal liberty - covering the face being a universally recognised symbol of low status and subjugation - and that you certainly have no respect for logic, common sense, or science. The evidence demonstrating that masks are bad for you is exhaustive and overwhelming, and so it is a stunning indictment of just how catastrophically the national education system has failed (or succeeded, depending on what you think it's really for) that millions of grown adults actually believe that putting a piece of cloth over their face will reduce the spread of a deadly disease.

I'm sorry to be blunt, but I can't actually believe anyone is that thick. It's SO OBVIOUS such a measure would have NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER against a genuinely deadly pathogen, that I honestly sometimes wonder if I'm in the midst of some sort of tragi-comedic illusion, conjured up by the lunatic love child of The Truman Show and Jeremy Beadle, where people are all pretending they actually believe that face rags protect others from death as some sort of big, bad taste joke.

To save anyone trotting out the tedious, "well, surgeons wear masks", trope, first of all, about 50% of surgeons don't and their necessity and efficacy has been hotly debated in surgical circles for decades, and secondly and critically - SURGEONS DON'T WEAR MASKS TO PREVENT THE SPREAD OF VIRUSES. I'm sorry to shout but my patience is wearing nearly as thin as the material masks are made from WHICH IS EASILY SPACIOUS ENOUGH TO PERMIT THE ENTRANCE OF VIRUSES. Go and look up some basic virology and find out how small viruses are and you can easily do the requisite sums yourself. So, even if the mask was literally glued to your face, it still wouldn't have any impact on viral transmission, but that masks are all flimsily fitting and have huge, billowing gaps at the sides and at the top and bottom (how many times a day are you pulling it back up over your nose?), well, the whole thing is just an exercise in absurdity.

Furthermore, surgeons wear masks in professional, strictly regulated, highly sanitised environments, along with surgical gloves and other medical-grade PPE, and they very quickly and carefully dispose of their masks after use. They do not loop them around their wrists whilst they drink a coffee, or stuff them into their pockets only to whip them out for later use, or touch them with their filthy fingers fifty million times a day, all of which your average maskinator most certainly does. If you believe this is a sanitary, sciencey, health-protective way to behave, then I'm afraid you might need to borrow one of my tin-foil hats (which I made from the aluminium in your vaccines), since you have far exceeded me in the loony-tune conspiraquackery stakes.

Seriously, how can people actually fall for this?! I know plenty who say they will now never take off a mask in public again because "you never know what might be going around". Well, that being the case, can you please explain how you have managed to survive thus far, when until last year, nobody except clowns wore masks? (Somebody more impudent than I might argue that that is still the case...) Respiratory viruses have been around for all of your lifetime, and yet you've survived up until now without the mass mandation of raggedy strips of grimy material across the nation's faces?! It's a Christmas miracle!

Or maybe not...

The only purpose masks serve is as a stage prop in order to keep the theatrical 'plague' illusion going. They're to remind you you're in the midst of "a deadly pandemic", since there is certainly no genuine evidence of this otherwise (fake tests and fudged figures are not evidence), and to induct you into autocratic tyranny by degrading and dehumanising you through covering up your most unique, personal, identifying feature - your face. Arms and legs and so on are fairly uniform and indistinguishable, but your face is unique. It's what makes you, you, and physically distinct from every other individual. That's why they want you to cover it up. Obscuring the face strips you of your individuality and your uniqueness, making you blank and mute and bland, just another identikit brick in the wall. They know this. The psychology of mask-wearing is well-studied and well-understood, and you can be absolutely sure the behaviourists who populate SAGE are very familiar with it.

Anyway, I know as a conspiraquack nut-job fruitcake (why are all food-based words that denote insanity vegan..?), I'm considered an unperson who ought to be otherised, ostracised, and shunned, but the thing is... There are millions of us. We do actually matter, just as much as anyone else does, and so the "respect for others" justification of face muzzling doesn't really (Mc)fly. What about the six million (at least) people in this country alone who vigorously oppose masks and hate seeing other people wearing them? Why don't we deserve your "respect", too? Because we disagree with you? What a miserable and myopic world view. I sincerely hope nobody who holds this view dares describe themselves as 'a liberal'.

No, ostentatiously gloating over your mask-wearing has nothing to do with "respect for others"; it's just superficial and narcissistic virtue-signalling, along with a big dollop of cowardice, because you're too scared of the other virtue-signalling narcissists to have some real principles.

Never mind that "it's the law" - it's not, actually, not in the proper sense (parliamentary approval? due process? any democratic legitimacy whatsoever?), but even if it were: ‘It is a moral responsibility for every citizen to disobey unjust laws’. (Martin Luther King)

Slavery, segregation, apartheid - these were all 'the law'. Don't hide your humanity behind 'the law' - or, indeed, behind a grubby muzzle.

It's high time to show your face.