When will you remove your face mask?
If your last instinct before leaving your home is to check your pockets for keys, wallet, and mask, when will you remove your face mask for the last time?
You’ve seen them, perhaps you’re one of them – the people who wear a face mask when alone in a car or those who when outdoors and nowhere near a shop or public transport choose to wear a mask. For some people, face coverings are now a fashion accessory or a clothing necessity.
The other day I stood in Guildford’s pedestrianised high street waiting for a shop to open. I watched as adults with young teenagers strolled along with faces covered. It’s now become a familiar site to see people wearing their masks when there’s not reason to do so. They’ve chosen to keep them on when they left the location in which they are required or simply put them on ready for entering such a location. Others may wear them out of habit and don’t take them off out of laziness.
I’m sure they’re like most other people in that they’re decent folk just trying to do the right thing but I can’t get used to this and I don’t think we ever should.
Twenty months after the words coronavirus and Covid-19 entered our everyday vocabulary and became the most widely discussed topic on the planet there have been numerous studies about the effectiveness or otherwise of face coverings in reducing transmission.
Whether you’re an advocate for face masks or not you’ve probably by now found a report that backs your point of you and perhaps you share the link to that report whenever you engage in any discussion online.
The question I would like fans of face masks to answer is:
At what point will you feel ready to remove your face mask for the last time?
What’s the criteria that needs to be met? What will give you the assurance? WIll research prove to you they are pointless? Are you waiting for the government to give you permission? Or do you need to hear that viral transmission has dropped to a certain threshold?
We’ve all got used to seeing people wear masks of different types and in various ways.
- Masks worn under the nose
- Grubby, unhygenic masks
- Masks worn only for the cameras
- Cloth masks and other non-medical face coverings
Even if you’re a strong advocate for face masks you must surely agree that all of the above will do absolutely nothing to stop the spread of the virus.
Then we have the disadvantages of wearing masks:
- Inhibited communication particularly for those who have suboptimal hearing ability
- Slowed and inhibited education among schoolchildren
- Loss of facial communication for young children, toddlers, and babies with knock-on effects on their development
People will continue to advocate the wearing of masks even if you present them with evidence that they don’t have any effect on transmission and may actually be harmful.
SAGE & SPI-B – Changing the way you behave
The work of SAGE and SPI-B in 2020 has been so successful that it’s going to take a long time for people to un-learn what the’ve been frightened into believing. They changed the way people behave and without reversing their work it will be up to the people themselves to undo what was changed.
Successful risk management involves: multiple layers of protection; a combination of physical, social
and psychological measures;….….With face coverings, we have seen from other cultures that these can be embedded into social norms.
SPI-B: Sustaining behaviours to reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission
30 April 2021
Is This Mass Formation Psychosis?
According to some medical professionals we are in the middle of a mass formation psychosis. The use of lockdowns (social deprivation), daily or frequent news bulletins spreading alarm, anxiety, and fear, and the a single solution offered by an authority (vaccines) combine to keep this juggernaut going.
That’s not to say that the virus doesn’t exist. It’s just that vaccines have been chosen as the only method of beating the virus. Any alternatives, even if the evidence exists that they are effective and even if qualified people support them, are ignored or even dismissed as misinformation.
How did India or Bangladesh manage to avoid the worst of the pandemic? Was it the nasal cleansing and the use of Ivermectin?
Why aren’t we, in the West, concentrating on methods to prevent hospitalisation and treat people at home?
Bring Back Handkerchiefs!
There was a time, not so long ago, when a gentleman wouldn’t leave the house without a clean handkerchief in his pocket. This would be available to him whenever he needed to whip one out to catch a sneeze or a cough. I think it’s time we reintroduced this garment. It’s extremely impolite to spread droplets from coughs and sneezes but virus are so small that the same material is unlikely to capture them. They’re in the air we breath and as we know much of that escapes through and around the face coverings.
Bin the mask, carry a handkerchief.
