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NEWS WEBSITE OF THE YEAR Subscribe now Free for one month Log in See all Travel Telegraph Travel Lists Which countries haven't embraced mandatory face masks? OLIVER SMITH DIGITAL TRAVEL EDITOR 25 NOVEMBER 2020 • 4:30PM 62 "Ah, Sweden. The Marmite of the pandemic" 'Ah, Sweden. The Marmite of the pandemic' CREDIT: GETTY There’s a startling lack of evidence to suggest face masks stop the spread of respiratory illnesses in the community, with the latest study from Denmark – the most comprehensive random control trial of its kind – concluding: “The recommendation to wear a surgical mask when outside the home among others did not reduce, at conventional levels of statistical significance, the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in mask wearers.” No pandemic plan put forward by health authorities – until 2020 – contained the advice: “Make everyone, even the healthy, cover their face.” (Nor did any advise governments to lock up their citizens, but that’s another story). Until less than six months ago, both the World Health Organisation and Public Health England did not recommend them, with Jenny Harries, deputy chief medical officer, even warning that they could increase the risk of infection (something seen in a 2015 Vietnamese study). In March, chief medical officer Chris Whitty summed up the stance of most rational public health bodies around the world: “In terms of wearing a mask, our advice is clear: that wearing a mask if you don’t have an infection reduces the risk almost not at all. So we do not advise that.” Since March, no new scientific studies have emerged that warrant abandoning decades of scientific consensus. We’ve seen drawings of men urinating on one another, and videos showing particles moving around a person’s head, but nothing in the realm of properly conducted clinical trials. And yet... Masks are everywhere. In Spain, France and Italy, to name but a few, masks are obli