Of course you can. You can still carry the virus and pass it on. There is also no proof that you cannot catch the virus or another strain of it again. Get over it, forget your vanity, put on a mask and do your bit to protect others.
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I wear a mask all day at work. Itās a pain in the arse. I am not going to wear one in my private life unless required to by law because on the evidence I have seen I think itās pointless for me to wear one.
Iām just glad you are not my medicin. Does that also apply in your case to any surgical procedures you conduct because I tell you this, Iād be out the door in a flash if you didnāt give me the confidence about your concern for medical hygieneā¦ 
in edit: just seen your response to @anon57427786 which crossed mine. But I still say that you are displaying a rather odd attitude to health issues as a doctor by not setting an example in your personal lifeā¦
still, that said, I suppose itās no different to my old doctor in the UK when I was in my teens telling me not to smoke whilst drawing deeply on the fag drooping from his mouth 
There is strong evidence that re-infection does not occur from the fact that there have been no reported cases of re-infection despite the fact that many millions of people have been infected in the last 6 months.
You really donāt understand the issues do you?
I wear a surgical mask all day at work & don an FFP3 mask & other PPE when necessary for Aerosol Generating Procedures (AGP) eg CPR. I wear gloves & a plastic apron when interacting with any patient. I scrub up & use aseptic technique for procedures requiring sterility.
What I donāt need to do is wear a mask while walking along the street or doing my shopping.
And where did you make that clear?
Thatās rightā¦ typical arrogance from an āI am holier than thouā doctor. Iām past counting the number of quacks who have killed themselves self medicating because āthey know better than us mere mortalsā whilst walking on water. If I knew you as a doctor of medicine whilst out shopping and saw you not wearing a mask, my confidence in your judgement would diminish in an instant.
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If you really do work in a medical situation that worries me a lot. Itās you who seems to be lacking the basic knowledge.
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You believe that you do not need to wear a mask for your sake and obviously feel too important to need to do so for the protection of others. You are putting other people at risk by your lack of understanding.
perhaps the protection and concern for others has been dropped from the Hippocratic Oath or you missed that bit in your trainingā¦?
I fail to see how you can be so sure that you have recovered from the illness to the extent that you are no longer capable of transmitting virus to others, or relapsing.
Is there enough empirical evidence to convince you that you are immune to further Covid infection, or incapable of infecting others? I am pretty confident that I developed the illness in early March:
Sudden onset of incapacitating lassitude and weakness, shortness of breath, tachycardia, ankle oedema, sneezing and rhinorrhoea, loose stools, severe headache, stiff neck and back pain, sense of impending death; I have never felt so ill in 82 years. I lived alone for 3 months.
I always wear a mask in closed spaces where I might encounter others at less than 1.5 mĆØtres and observe careful hand hygiene at home and outside.
I am not convinced I may not be still capable of infecting others. The mask also advertises to heedless others that the risk of infection still exists, and that they should have due concern to prevent its spread. Many in our town still do.
Many responsible people do the same. My wife and I are both nurses with 100 years of nursing experience between us, including work in Africa where infections are endemic.
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You cease to be infectious at most 14 days after symptoms start (hence the 14 day quarantine). There are no reports of re-infection so once recovered from proven COVID-19 you can be sure that you are not a risk to others but unless you had your throat swabbed while symptomatic for the antigen test or subsequently had a blood test for antibodies you cannot be certain whether you had the disease or not.
I said that you didnāt understand & itās clear that you donāt. For me to wear a mask in the street or while shopping is pointless. Itās not protecting me or others.
Are you saying that no-one should wear a mask? Or is it a good idea for everyone to wear one except those who are confirmed to have had Covid-19 and who fully recovered at least 14 days ago? How will we know who they are?
Care to explain? I am pretty sure that I have read an awful lot more of the evidence on the subject of SARS-CoV-2 transmission & mask wearing etc than anyone else participating in this conversation.
Oh FFS grow up. Youāve dug yourself into a pit with your quackery and I wouldnāt trust you to stir my tea. Are you really a doctor? Because as matters currently stand, the way you are behaving in this thread is akin to a spoilt brat spitting his dummy out 
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It could stop you getting a fine when it becomes mandatory, or are you going to argue the toss with the police?
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cāmon @anon88169868 spit it outā¦ I see youāve been chomping at the bit 
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Itās voluntary.
To be fair to Nigel he seems to be happy enough to wear PPE at work when the risks are higher.
Is it worth wearing a mask at present? Nigel and I have disagreed about this in the past but I think the figures are getting to the point I might be more inclined to agree with him.
The ONS figures (which I have my doubts about but they are the only data set in town as far as I know) suggests that 1 in 3,900 individuals within the community population in England had COVID-19 at any given time between 22 June and 5 July 2020.
France currently has about the same official daily new case rate (5-600) so I think we can apply the data to both countries.
The ONS data looks at a 2-week period but I donāt think the evidence is that virus is shed for the whole of the 2 weeks - in fact most mild cases seem to last about 7 days and you are infectious from maybe 48 hours before symptoms develop so up to 9 days. That said we think that a lot of cases are asymptomatic (estimates go up to 80%) and, although we think people without symptoms can shed virus I am not aware of any data which says for how long. Between that and the fact that someone who is symptomatic should self-isolate from the onset of symptoms (and will probably feel too ill to interact with society anyway) so I am going to pick a somewhat arbitrary 7 days infectivity.
Thus we can say that the odds of each individual that we interact with at random being infectious is roughly 1:7800 (give or take and including the caveat that the ONS figure is an average and densely populated cities are going to have higher risks than sparsely populated rural areas)
So, if I walk into a supermarket with 100 people inside I have a 1:78 chance that one of them could pass the virus on to me, lets round that up to 1%
It is now clear that airborne transmission is more important than we first thought but between the fact that Iām not going to spend too long in the supermarket and might not get very close to any infectious individual 1% chance of someone in there having Covid is not 1% chance of me getting Covid - probably 0.1% but I donāt really know.
There is evidence that face coverings reduce infection - but you have to keep the absolute risk in mind which is probably pretty low at the moment and I think that you could make the argument that it is low enough not to bother - but equally I think you could make the argument that, as things open up and people spend more time in shops - and in higher risk situations such as bars or restaurants where you spend a much longer time insisting on masks might help to keep the risk down to an acceptable level.
In the street, Iād agree. Iād also agree if that if you are the only one wearing a mask it is a bit pointless (and why I donāt bother outside work at present). But the question is more about whether everyone should be told to wear one.
No Nigel the 14 days quarantine is to cover the incubation period. The period to cover infectivity was the 7 days self-isolation.
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I donāt think youāre wearing it properly Nige 
There is no downside to wearing masks and potentially a lot of upside - itās a no brainer.
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