Opinion | Coronavirus crisis: why wearing masks in panicking Hong Kong makes us more miserable

Studies have shown we recognise happy emotions from scanning the lower half of other faces and negative feelings from the top half. In a city where everyone is wearing a mask, the emotions that register these days are panic and anger

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Street cleaners wait in line to receive free face masks in Hong Kong on February 14. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 11:00am, 17 Feb 2020Updated: 11:00am, 17 Feb 2020

I’ve worn a mask every day for the past month. The first few days I’d forget it in the morning. I’d stand in the lift and look at myself in the mirror before suddenly realising, “Shoot! My mask,” and then I’d make my way back upstairs, awkwardly smiling at the guard as I pass by him again.

But, by now, it has become routine – phone, keys, wallet, mask. I tie little loops into the strings to keep the mask tighter around my face. I pinch the wire around my nose and pull the fabric down over my chin. Ten hours a day I’m anonymous. Expressionless. Shielded in baby blue.

It’s been days since the last time I saw a new face. Instead, what I see now are layers of polypropylene. Rows upon rows of faces hidden behind masks. All pulled up to the rims of glasses, to the bridge of the nose. Hundreds of pairs of eyes, but not a single cheek, lip or nose. A rare few nostrils do escape the grip of the mask – usually on a young child whose parent has yet to notice or a commuter who is asleep, mouth agape.

I look around me, at the various shades of surgical blue and wonder what it does to a human to not see faces, except for a select few, for weeks at a time. Studies have shown that we recognise happy emotions from scanning the lower half of other faces, and negative emotions from the top half.

And so, amid a sea of masked faces, it seems to be mostly negative emotions and germs that are floating around. There’s a constant feeling of panic, a fear of shortages of everything, and a daily rain of bad news. And worst of all – a lack of humanity.

Xenophobic sentiment and increasing anger at the government have marked recent weeks. As the epidemic worsens, we seem to be losing the last vestige of our humanity whenever we put on a mask. It’s much easier to fight somebody over a roll of toilet paper if you can’t see their face.