HallowedKitchen I am glad your parents managed to flee to safety. But I disagree with this. A free society depends on state intervention only when absolute necessity and where encouragement and guidance isn't enough. i.e. we mandate speed limits, ban children from drinking in pubs and restrict the amount of paracetamol than can be bought in one go. These measures are proportionate to the risk of doing nothing. What would not be proportionate would be to ban alcohol entirely, ban cars and make paracetamol prescription only. People will die as a result of not banning these things, but the trust in the state depends on proportionality.
The right of the individual is sacred and should never be infringed upon unless it is proven to be needed and is proportionate. Where this concept is bent, or downright broken, we begin our decent to a country from which your parents fled.
In many peoples view, including mine, many state interventions on COVID have crossed the line of proportionality, especially when evidence is far from conclusive. These include masks, curfews, scotch egg-gate and banning outdoor activity.
And now that a large proportion of the country have received their vaccines, many, including me, do not accept state intervention any longer as it is no longer proportionate. It's not just about 'a mask'.