Masks and Social Distancing During COVID-19

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter of the book addresses the most widespread (and controversial) COVID-19 measure: social distancing and wearing of the masks. Social distancing, that is, keeping distance between people in public spaces and decreasing the number of social contacts, was one of the first health-related measures that were introduced in March–April 2020 in most countries. However, the strictness of these measures, as well as government’s understanding of how the virus spreads, varied a lot. In some countries, people were asked to keep their distance at 2 m from each other, in other countries one-meter distance was considered to be enough. Moreover, open and closed spaces were not treated equally; in Switzerland, for example, people were required to keep distance in open spaces like parks, but not in closed spaces like supermarkets. In Belgium, April 2020 legal acts actively discouraged people to wear masks. This chapter aims to present an overview of legal responses to the health requirements, that is, how European governments integrated the medical advice into the exceptional measures. Secondly, this chapter seeks to map and classify these responses against infection levels, death count, as well as country-specific system factors. Finally, it aims to reconstruct the public response to mask wearing, a highly controversial measure in numerous European countries.