COVID restrictions have been lifted and there is an acceptance, now at least, that this is a disease that is here to stay but is also one that is not a threat to society – indeed it is not a threat to the vast majority of individuals. However, despite this, a significant number of people are still wearing masks. Why?

Before the pandemic mask wearing simply was not part of our culture. Some people from other countries wore them but this was an oddity and something I think most Scots and British people also found a little odd.

Governments have been happy to promote the wearing of masks and tended to ignore any questioning of this. Whatever the scientific merit of mask wearing, little consideration appeared to be given to the wider social and cultural impact that mask wearing has. To put it bluntly, there is something quite alienating and disconcerting about masks and face covering. I think this was and is still how most of us experience and think about masks.

READ MORE: Masks teach people that freedom is to be feared

Nevertheless, some individuals, and more importantly, some institutions are struggling to give up on masks and appear to give little or no consideration to the potentially negative impact it has. There also appears to be a new kind of moral and political dimension to mask wearing so that it is certain institutions and individuals, certain ‘types’ who continue wearing them.

A lecturer friend told me that management at her institution were continuing to wear masks. I asked some teachers, and they made the same observation. Stephanie , a high school teacher explained that: “The headteacher is still wearing his”, while “the senior management team prefer to stay in their offices – it’s the new way apparently”. Another said, “Few staff are. Management are. Managers have been pretty tight in this place”. Stephanie noted that in her school, “Plenty of teachers are still wearing them, mainly female staff and of the fearful persuasion – but also a few who never miss the opportunity to virtue signal”.

Councils also appear to have picked up the virtuous baton of “safety first” and rather than follow government guidelines are developing their own risk assessment policies regarding mask wearing.

READ MORE: Unmasking the real reason for politicians' Covid hysteria, by Stuart Waiton

Dundee City Council sent a memo to staff last week asking for help with the upcoming council elections. In it they explained that: “I want to reassure you that every effort is being made to make this election safe, with risk assessments in place and although national Covid measures are easing off, we will be taking a more cautious approach. We will be asking that both voters and staff wear a mask, regularly sanitise, and observe physical distancing.”

There is a short video in the email explaining that the two-metre rule will be applied, that presiding officers will be behind screens and wearing masks, and that: “Everyone must wear a face covering”.

Just at the time when we thought we could get back to normal and start to get away from the anxieties and insecurities regarding Covid, this council has taken it upon themselves to reinforce mask wearing at polling booths. As they explain, “Your safety is our highest priority”.

Once again little or no consideration is given to the potentially alienating and fear-inducing impact this might have on some people, and it will be interesting to see if members of the public who don’t want to wear a mask are turned away from the polling booth. I’ll probably wear one just so I can cast my vote. But I know people who will refuse to do so.

Well before Covid, sociologists had already warned about the “risk society” developing in the West, one in which a loss of wider political and moral principles had created elites and institutions who fetishised safety and adopted it as a quasi-religion. Rather than attempting to develop a new form of connectivity and collective sense in society, institutions, they argued, were attempting to make a purse from a pig’s ear – taking an alienated society and elevating a precautionary approach to life as a new type of morality.

No surprise then, that it is those institutions who based their purpose on a sense of public service, like councils, schools, and universities, who are the most evangelically safety conscious. Having lost this public ethos, management and executives have adopted safety as their principle, not because of “the science” but because of their often desperate need to develop a sense of goodness and purpose that they otherwise lack. Tragically, in the process, they are simply encouraging a more fearful and diseased sense of public life.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald.