This morning (July 24th, 2020) I went to my local Waitrose. There was no queue, but I was bawled out by the woman on the door for not wearing a face mask. At the time, I was not even aware of the idiot legislation just passed. I asked her if she wanted to stop me going in to the store. She demurred. I did my shopping in about 10 minutes. At the checkout, I was behind a lady who had obeyed the latest idiocy, but complained about it. The checkout operator, knowing me, said nothing about masks.
Now, are “face coverings” efficacious? Anything less than a military-grade mask doesn’t protect you against inhaling the virus. The argument for wearing a mask is that it protects others. But does it? When you take the mask off, where do the viruses go? Think about that.
And if the government really thought that masks were effective to stop the virus, why didn’t they mandate them back in March? Or, at least, April, by which time entrepreneurs would have had time to produce enough masks for the general public?
As Edmund Burke said, 250 years ago: Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.