There follows a guest post by Paul Stevens, who is part of the Smile Free campaign to end forced masking in the U.K., which is currently inviting signatures to its open letter to the NHS Chief Executives to remove the mask requirement from healthcare settings.
Walk into your General Practitioner surgery and what will you see? Notices demanding that you ‘wear a mask’ and people with ill-fitting face coverings, most of which having been frequently touched, reused, rarely washed and improperly stored.
By contrast, in public spaces such as hospitality venues, retail settings and transportation hubs, you’ll find a lack of signage and a marked reduction in mask-wearing. More and more, people aren’t wearing them.
It’s as if we are living in two worlds: one where we have begun to return to a rational unmasked normality; and one, in healthcare settings including GP surgeries, where we are instructed to remain featureless and compliant with the facemask diktats of nameless NHS bureaucrats.
To understand how, and why, these worlds co-exist we need to start by looking at the frame of reference within which GPs operate. As independent contractors, for all intents and purposes GPs work within the NHS; and many are members of a single body, the British Medical Association (BMA). The NHS and BMA, one guiding and enabling the other, have played major parts in establishing and maintaining masking within healthcare settings.
The NHS has been a major advocate of masking and, as published on the Government’s “COVID-19: Infection prevention and control” (IPC) webpages, its current guidance for mask-wearing within health and care settings remains that facemasks for staff and facemasks or coverings for all patients and visitors are “recommended”.
However, having made masks a recommendation – not a requirement – the Government’s website fails to establish the legal standing of the instructions and their enforceability. All that is written is simply ‘guidance’, defined by the OED as “advice or information aimed at resolving a problem or difficulty”. There is no statutory weight that compels compliance with this guidance.
As with the Health and Safety Executive’s Approved Codes of Practice, following the guidance is not compulsory and there is freedom to choose other courses of action. The IPC pages frequently contain the word ‘should’ rather than ‘must’. So: “Universal masking with face coverings or surgical masks … should continue to be applied for all staff, patients and visitors.” In effect, this guidance appears at most to be ‘soft law’, being a ‘best practice’ suggestion, but not a matter of mandatory conformity.
As for implementation, responsibility lies with the CEOs of the various health organisations, for example the NHS trusts, and the IPC pages define a series of measures, such as risk reviews, which these individuals are to ensure happen within their organisations. None of these explicitly reference the need for patient mask-wearing and, ultimately, the IPC pages state that “Organisations are responsible for ensuring safe systems of work” and they may “adopt practices that differ from those recommended/stated in the national guidance”. So long as an organisation completes an assessment of the hazards associated with respiratory infectious agents, it is free to implement its own set of controls.
In short, within the Government’s infection prevention and controls protocols, nowhere does it say that a patient or visitor must wear a face mask or covering and is legally compelled to do so.
Since March 2020, the BMA has been an enthusiastic cheerleader for Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs). From masks, lockdowns and social distancing to vaccine passports, the BMA hasn’t come across a restrictive measure it hasn’t fallen in love with. And in this regard, the doctors’ union seems to have acted no differently to other workers’ representative organisations in the public employment domain. For example:
- In July 2020 being exultant that, “after weeks of uncertainty”, the Government had “finally mandated the use of masks“;
- As part of its panicky calls in October 2021 to address what it saw as the rising risk of the NHS being “overwhelmed by growing number of coronavirus cases“, describing the Government’s refusal to enact Plan B measures – including the mandatory wearing of masks in most public places – as constituting ‘wilful negligence’;
- During the Omicron pandemonium, demanding eight measures be introduced, amongst which was the mandatory use of masks in all hospitality settings.
None of these admonishments and cries for action in favour of masking was backed by hard scientific evidence.
By contrast, business owners and leaders in the private sectors of hospitality and retail were loudly outspoken about the harm the NPIs did. For example:
- In October 2020, Tim Martin, boss of J.D. Weatherspoon, noted that the Government had introduced “an ever-changing raft of ill-thought-out regulations”, none of which “appeared to have any obvious basis in science”’;
- Later, in May 2021, supermarket and chain store bosses held what they described as “crunch talks” to “ditch mask wearing in stores” and to push for the removal of other NPIs, such as the one-metre rule;
- Earlier in that month, hospitality bosses Sacha Lord and Hugh Osmond, arguing that there was no scientific basis for delaying the opening of pubs, had taken the Government to court over their delayed opening. The judge dismissed the case, of course.
So why the differences between public and private workers? Perhaps economic impact upon workers during the coronapanic has been a significant factor. In the public sector, employment, and therefore renumeration, was guaranteed. People paid taxpayers pounds by the state did not suffer because of the Government’s measures. In fact, if we consider their working arrangements, with the switch to virtual consultations via telephone and digital, and many services rationed or even withdrawn, there’s an argument to be made, albeit an unpopular one, that GPs, in terms of their workload, did rather well. In contrast, the private sector, especially in hospitality and retail and amongst smaller enterprises, experienced enormous contractions, leading to loss of income, jobs and even closures of businesses. It can’t be surprising that, from a position of self-interest, GPs are more positive about NPIs.
And perhaps GP support for NPIs in general, and masks in particular, stems from insights concerning the efficacy of face coverings in helping protect from SARS-CoV-2? But no: the overwhelming evidence, for example here, here, here, here, here, here and here shows that masks don’t work.
Or maybe, the places GPs work are different, with people attending surgeries being ill with the COVID-19 disease? This idea fails to hold water. Thanks to their policy of reducing in-person consultations by over half at the ‘height of the pandemic’, GPs have simply not been seeing that many sick people. In fact, if you have ‘symptoms of coronavirus’ you are still, two years on from the start of this panicdemic, told in your GP’s recorded voice message “not to attend the surgery”. Then again, it may be the case that GPs are worried about asymptomatic patients, spreading the deadly virus unknowingly, to which we can say, “Nice try”: the scientific evidence for widespread asymptomatic spread is paltry. Credible hard data, for example this and this, indicate that it would be incorrect to believe that there is a persuasive case for asymptomatic transmission driving the spread. In fact, back in June 2020, the head of the WHO’s emerging diseases unit told a press conference that, “From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual. Very rare.”
This leaves us with only three other possible reasons for the health industry, and especially General Practitioners, to be so enthusiastic about facemasks.
Firstly, by failing to do their own research they have succumbed to the coronapanic fear and as a matter of faith accept what they have been told about mask effectiveness: in short, against all the evidence to the contrary, the average GP, who has an above-average intelligence, believe masks actually work against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Secondly, they have come to relish the additional ‘responsibility’, a.k.a. ‘authority’, over their patients that these ‘mandates’ afford them: playing the role of well-intentioned saviours of the hoi polloi just feels good. The irony, of course, is that these doctors are now addicts. They don’t want to give up their masks and nor are they going to let you give up yours.
Third, they might argue that, yes, they know the masks don’t really work, but if it reassures the patients, what harm is there? Apart from being patronising, from a psychological perspective that approach is flat out wrong: as Dr. Gary Sidley argues, persisting with face coverings will actually only “prolong, rather than lessen people’s anxieties”. (If you don’t believe Dr. Sidley, check out the mask clingers in Australia as they take baby steps towards alleviating the coronapanic.) Bottom line, as shown by the Danish mask study and the only other mask RCT conducted during the coronapanic – the one in Bangladesh (which continues to be exposed as junk science), deliberately or otherwise, doctors are ignoring the evidence that masks have little or no positive benefit to the wearer or to others.
And what of the leadership of the GPs? What have those who have been chosen to represent them within the BMA done to get their members to this point? Since March 2020, the health industry has engaged in a steady escalation of restrictions. In mid-January, despite the Government’s announcement that masks would “no longer be mandatory in public places”, we find NHS England stating that they should continue to be worn in GP surgeries, but that it was sufficient only to “encourage people to wear a face mask”. However, in an astonishing escalation from the BMA’s own COVID-19 toolkit, the GP Committee then stepped in and upped the ante, telling GPs that they could tell reluctant patients that “the law imposes on me the duty to expect you to wear a mask and on you the duty to wear one in these premises”.
Whatever is really going on here, it seems that the BMA and some of its key representative committees are striving deliberately to maintain the coronapanic and these GPs are operating according to the ‘sunk cost’ paradigm: they simply cannot face the facts and accept that they have imposed unnecessary and restrictive measures on those who use their services and, in effect, help pay their wages.
As with so much of the coronapanic nonsense, we need to remember that the problem starts with the Government and its guidance, which has been contradictory, inconsistent and, contrary to their hollow claims, highly unscientific. Until the authorities in the form of the Government, the NHS and the BMA and its various committees removes special treatment of COVID-19 in all matters and stops making it a special case, in effect treating it as being of no special social concern, people will have licence to retain constraints and take special actions.
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Easy, because he or she is a doctator or witch doctator.
Observe that these doctators never spoke out against the mumbo-jumbo presented as science during lockdown, they want a technocratic state with Trofim Lysenko or his equivalent in charge.
Observe that, long before lockdown, these bastards wanted a nanny state, they don’t believe in free will or personal responsibility.
Doctors / NHS So obsessed with masks in healthcare setting.
So completely disinterested in contents of what is in the injection vials and in making sure that patients are able to give informed consent to an injection which once done cannot be undone – in some cases with disastrous or at worst lethal consequences
“Why does your doctor want to keep you masked”
Presumably, in order to make the visit as uncomfortable as possible, so that you will move to online appointments.
That’s entirely in keeping with their modus operandi.
As you rightly imply it is all to do with CONTROL. These ‘mandates’ (I never wear one anywhere, including hospitals, and I have not been challenged; I have an exemption card handy printed in Classical Greek; if they can’t read it because they are uneducated that is their problem) are solely designed to humiliate and demean people; the object is EXACTLY the same as that used in prisoner of war camps; think up ludicrous rules (the more stupid the ‘better’) and enforce them ruthlessly.
The same thinking is behind these accursed plastic screens (I thought we were getting rid of plastic??), the idea is to transform customers into suppliants. They have been deliberately installed to hinder communication.
I try, wherever possible, whether it is convenient or not, to enter through the out door and exit though the in door and I recommend everyone to do the same. These door goons are performing a useless and worthless task.
Always go in at the outsit and out at the innsit, up the down stairs and down the up stairs; stare pityingly at maskoids and tap your forehead meaningly; pretend you can’t hear maskoid mumblings and thrust your face as close up to theirs as you can while asking them to repeat; try to jam big parcels through small apertures in the bullyplastic and get them stuck. It’s a campaign of passive resistance.
BTW, how did you and your good lady get on in your last encounter with the NHS, Stephanos?
Reading station still has big decorative screens by their escalators forcing you to walk a long way to get to the up side (with escalators you cannot use the down one to go up…) Our Tesco despite removing all impediments between their former in and out doors have not removed the ‘no entry’ on the exit, people just ignore it anyway.
How nice to see the word ‘suppliants’.
Look at any globalist event
They see Masks are for servant classes.
So do doctors who view their patients as an inconvenience.
Just amazing the general ignorance – or stupidity of much of the medical profession. How can they not understand that masking makes zero difference? Maybe they can show us all the peer reviewed RCT that show otherwise? Just as fatuous is the insistence (in Australia at least) of so many medical suppliers who insist on proof of double vaxxing to get in the door. Are these people congenitally stupid? We used to hold the medical profession and general practioners as paragons of virtue and common sense. Not any more
I asked my doctor whether I should worry that my cholesterol levels are naturally very low. He said ‘they can’t be too low’.
Then I read Dr McKendrick’s book on the Cholesterol scam and asked my doc again. He admitted he’d not read the book, and that he couldn’t suggest any studies to back up his previous statement to me. ‘It’s just something that all doctors know,’ seemed to be the shtick he offered. At least he didn’t bluster about my not accepting his advice as Gospel Truth.
It’s actually a directive from the NHS.
The problem is that medical science changes, but regulations don’t. So a treatment which was thought good and embodied in regulation stays even after it has been found to be useless…
As right from the start, as Peter Hitchens said: “An hysterical overreaction”
Because your GP doesn’t give fuck about you
Some do, I agree most don’t.
If I had a GP like this, I’d be overjoyed …
https://tcp.art.blog/2022/05/08/puck-covid/
Yes – and a great article, from a doctor no less, to pass on to anyone who is a total covidian.
I loved this para in particular:
“Our elected abusers simply sweetened the leash and lulled us back to slumber with more contradictory lies. No tyranny this week! There is a new variant of concern. No masks mandate… except in the NHS. You may travel … to some places but not others. The jabs are a success but stop Astra-Zeneca and carry on boosting. It is unsafe to to seek medical help, but ‘Eat out to help out!’. Covid is over. No, it is not. NHS workers must be vaccinated, else the sack. NHS workers no longer need to be vaccinated. The new variants require new jabs.”
And then there is this utter gem (from GMC):
“Patients must be able to trust medical professionals with their lives and health”
Not in their wildest dreams would I trust a medical professional with either my life or health. Was in jeopardy before this last 2 years and is definitely NOT on the cards now.
Thanks for link!
You’re welcome. TCP sounds as if he’s at the end of his tether with the NHS, like Dr Sam White was/is.
Another GP, Dr. Sarah Myhill had a very long run-in with the NHS/GMC/BMA … that battle isn’t described on her website, which is http://www.drmyhill.co.uk. Anyway it seems she eventually resigned as a *doctor* and is now a registered *naturopath*. For anyone who’s able to pay, she specialises in curing or treating conditions that the NHS fails to deal with and maybe makes worse, e.g. ulcerative colitis.
People like her should also be available to people who can’t pay … that was the original reason for setting up an NHS.
Unfortunately the good ones move onto better things very fast
Yes he’s good, brilliant article a “must read”.
The answer is none of the above, and is pretty straightforward.
In Commercial practice, managers must balance risk and profit. The downside of the risk of spreading Covid is unquantifiable (and almost certainly non-existent), but the risk of being fined for not complying with government mandates is well understood. So private companies comply with mask mandates, but not with mask advice if it causes staffing or profit problems.
The State sector has no such balance. There, success and promotion depends entirely on not rocking the boat – on being a ‘safe pair of hands’. Consequently, every safety activity is mandated, and complied with.
GPs are an interesting hybrid. Though private, they are an effective monopoly. There is no downside for them in making patients unhappy – they will get paid anyway. There IS, however, a downside in not complying with NHS wishes. They may get paid less, they will certainly suffer if any investigation or legal case arises and they are found not to have complied with ‘best practice’ – even if it is optional.
Which is why they religiously follow NHS guidelines, and treat us like they do….
Another socialism problem.
It is THE socialist problem (no upside for providing a good service) – combined with the American Litigation problem (lots of downside for not obeying stupid regulation) …
There is something in this, but dentists (who are mostly private sector) also insist on masks, which is even more bizarre with them, given how they work!
They still have the ‘lots of downside for not following regulations’ pressure. Dentists and Doctors are always running sh*t-scared of the legals….
Yes, if somebody ever sued, they would have to use the “but masks don’t work” defence, which would never do!
It is very revealing that the NHS has been a major advocate of masking.
It indicates that the NHS practices include things for which there is (a) no scientific backing of a benefit (b) no proper risk analysis of the harms.
If they do it with masks, what other aspects of standard NHS practice have no health benefit and are potentially harmful?
shit tons, I imagine
Probably the majority which is why deaths reportedly fall when doctors are on strike!
Are there any really useful drugs, apart from metformin, ivermectin and other ultra-cheap, out of patent ones? The clinical trials of statins which were done independently of pharma showed no benefits.
See my post above about the mainstream MDs’ perception of cholesterol. I think many GPs are either incurious, or just lazy enough to believe the waffle they’re fed by the Pharma reps.
BOTH!!
All doctors treat patients according to the training they received in Medical School. Depending on the age of your doctor, this can vary considerably.
Agreed. They’ve lost credibility and the trust of the public for carrying on with this charade. Was there ever a bigger contradiction in terms than going to see a learned professor, a medical professional in one speciality or another, and he or she is sat there talking to you with a mask on? I think I’d accuse them of purchasing their credentials from the internet! These people are basically broadcasting the fact that they don’t follow the science and indeed wouldn’t know how to critique the scientific literature and practice evidence-based medicine if somebody held a gun to their head.
it certainly shakes your confidence in their knowledge and judgement
Yawn, just tell them you’re exempt.
That’s still playing by ze rules.
Just don’t wear them.
On Tuesday this week I had an outpatients appointment at my local hospital. I am against mask-wearing, compulsory or not, and decided to see what happened if I stuck to my guns in the hospital. I had an initial nurses check, a doctors appointment for the treatment and then a return to the nurse after an hour for another check.
The doors to the hospital still had the old “hands, face, space” stickers. Inside I checked in on the touch screen and sat down. Every other person in the reception area was wearing a mask. After a few minutes, a chap, presumably a volunteer, appeared with a box of masks and asked me to put one on. I said I preferred not to. Was I exempt? No.
He said that the reason he was asking me was that there were many vulnerable people in the hospital. I replied that masks don’t make the slightest bit of difference and I suspect he knew that. He walked away.
I was called through to my department where the lady at reception asked me to put on a mask. I told her that unless it was a condition of my treatment I would decline. She didn’t seem happy (from her eyes anyway) but asked me to take a seat. I was then called in to see the nurse. At this point I asked her if she would mind if I didn’t wear a mask. She was quite happy for me not to.
I then went through to the doctor. Again I asked if she would mind if I didn’t wear a mask. Again she was quite happy for me not to.
I had an hour to kill in the hospital coffee shop. About 50% of the customers were sat eating and drinking without masks – but the rest, extraordinarily, were taking their masks on and off to drink coffee or eat cake.
A quick trip back to the nurse passed uneventfully although I did feel a slight passive-aggressive look from the receptionist who by this time probably had me down as a trouble-maker. But clearly staff have been told not to get into arguments with non-mask wearers.
So, what’s my take-out from this? It seems to me that the hospital executive is using its junior staff to impose a mask policy which they and the medical practitioners know is pointless, other than to continue a state of fear and compliance amongst patients and junior staff.
My worry is that mask-wearing in hospitals has now become institutionalised and eventually it will be compulsory (or as near as possible) to wear masks in hospitals at all times. Some people clearly enjoy it – wearing a mask in a hospital makes them feel like an insider – it’s a badge of pride and puts them on the good guys side. But communication is hopeless, several times i had to ask someone masked to repeat themselves, and I think that for many patients it just makes sick people feel even sicker.
The sight of staff & patients approaching the hospital entrance with a bit of cloth tucked under their chin before using their dirty hands to lift it over their mouth or nose as they enter makes this nonsense even worse.
Hospital visiting hours are now as regimented as I assume the USSR’s hospitals were.
Each patient may only have one visitor per day for a limited period in the afternoon or early evening.
This isn’t a bloody acute hospital where people’s lives may be in danger. It’s a community hospital where my friend’s gone to convalesce while his home is modified; he had a major operation and will be permanently weakened/disabled.
I am rather torn on this. Having been an inpatient in hospital, drugged, in pain and wishing for oblivion, it was really annoying to have streams of people coming in at all hours of the day causing what can only be described as a disturbance. You either have to put up with them parading past your bed having a good old nosey, or have the curtains closed permanently. I think there is nothing wrong with how it was in the past with perhaps two hours in the afternoon and two hours in the evening, and a limit of 2 visitors per bed.
Of course it would also be a help if the NHS did away with the outdated notion of wards (I mean, how Victorian can you get) and built hospitals with mostly individual or twin rooms.
It’s as if the NHS is a totally outdated idea that failed miserably.
Your observation about people enjoying it and making them feel like an insider has occurred to me too. When you think of the number of hospital soaps etc there are on TV these days, I bet a lot of people feel important when wearing a mask, as you say, they might be an insider as far as anyone else knows
Has the NHS turned into this?
I never ask ‘the masked’ to repeat themselves I ask them to remove their mask as I can’t understand them if they refuse I walk away. The most number of people I have been able to ‘demask’ at the same time is 3…in a pharmacy, I enjoy the challenge and it makes dealing with these zombies a little more bearable.
My own anecdotal experience: while nearly all staff and visitors at our local hospital wore masks, and there were large piles of masks made available near the main entrance, nobody objected to me walking around the hospital without a mask and at no stage did I feel treated differently – and I’m good at picking up that sort of thing. The reception staff were not wearing masks, although they were behind a fixed screen.
It’s telling in Clarence’s story that it was the receptionist and the volunteer who pushed for masks, and the actual medical staff didn’t mind at all. This was my recent experience at a GP surgery. Maybe the continued requirements are all about stopping the mask-hypnotised receptionists and other non-medical staff from kicking up a fuss?
This is the same in many counties. It is as if the medicla professtion understand that Covid can only survive in a health-centre/hospital.
I always got the impression that it was the decidedly non-medical front-desk staff that drove this sort of thing, presumably because their information input is exclusively via MSM.
Many doctors probably went along with the nonsense for an easy life.
Last time I visited a hospital (about three weeks ago) nobody said anything about my lack of mask, and even some of the porters etc were without masks.
There is a very simple solution to this and other unsatisfactory aspects of the GP (dis-)service.
Adopt what France and other Euro Countries do, introduce a per patient/per treatment tariff. Since GPs are independent contractors and de facto ‘private’ providers this is easy enough to do without provoking the frenzied screams from the ‘no-privatisation’ loonies.
So everyone gets a GP card with a chip on it with patient’s name, DoB, NI number. Govt issues a GP tariff, say £25 for a consultation, enhanced fee if GP does something else like lance a boil.
When seeing the GP, the card is placed in a card-reader connected to NHS High Command, and GP via their computer enters a treatment code. The GP is then paid the appropriate fee.
AND. Rather than tie patients to a specific GP, allow patients to go see a different GP if they don’t like the service of one or can’t get an appointment that suits them.
So. No see patient, no get fee. No give good service, no get patients, no get fees.
This isn’t difficult – even the French can do it.
Of course GPs won’t want it and will howl, but so what?
“So. No see patient, no get fee. No give good service, no get patients, no get fees.”
See patient, jack up number of treatments and interventions make a fortune.
Piece work was how dentists were paid on the NHS to start with – until the ‘drill and fill’ culture brought an end to it.
It’s really difficult with service work to get the balance right. Unfortunately it is difficult to ‘shop around’ in any meaningful way with services. Hence why lawyers don’t really feel the pressure of competition.
Standard misconception of healthcare abroad.
Austria, Germany, Holland,Switzerland,France, Singapore, Japan Australia all operate some variant of Social Insurance healthcare.
It makes it easy to shop around.
It removes the GP as gatekeeper.
Thay are all better at providing 1st world healthcare than the NHS.
Its really easy to get the balance right as long as youre prepared to copy what works elsewhere, whilst ignoring the socialists and union racketeeers.
Anti-science twits.
Me and the Mrs got texts from our local surgery, which we never go to, out of the blue: “WEAR A MASK IF YOU COME AND SEE US”. That crap has come out of our bloody tax money. Treat the sick you wasters.
Notice it’s an IF not a WHEN.
Masks are a constant and prominent message stating, You Should Be Anxious and Compliant. Masks are certainly not about public hygiene. Think of masks as wearable propaganda.
Covid wasn’t noticeably bad for most of society. There wasn’t enough effect materially for people to really be burdened by it. Groceries still got delivered. The electricity stayed on. Everything was more or less the same. Masks were introduced to keep the message in people’s minds constantly. For anyone paying attention this was obvious. Same for the airport/aircraft mandates. Masks were critical in maintaining the illusion and to force people to keep playing along. Masks are a constant reminder in maintaining a population in a state of anxiety & uncertainty.
Masks state ‘Eat Shite: it’s good for you and tastes delicious’.
ot 7 million migrants registered with gps since 2010. But dont worry because our great leaders have recruited or trained the number of gps to cope and built the required amount of surgeries. Plus all the extra schools and hospitals and public facilities they have put in. Its just so suprising why people are struggling to get appointments and everyones overall quality of life is dropping.
Whilst it may not be ‘compulsory’ the venues in question either harass you to the point of relations breaking down or they simply say that you must leave the premises. I never wear a mask at the GP’s surgery or at the hospital outpatients but boy have I had agro over it.
I’d be tempted to then ask them, “When did you ever wear a mask prior to 2020?” Their response will presumably be “I didn’t”. You say, “There you are then. Countless flu seasons survived sans mask!” If they persist just ask for the scientific rationale. That should stump them because there is none! LOL
I should think that the response will be along the lines of “Covid is a deadly virus and not at all like ‘flu”. As for any sort of rationale, scientific or logical, forget it.
The NHS and all its works is, as we know, a cult or religion. It has High Priests and Panjandrums, and the adherents, as in other religions and cults, are required to be supplicant and obedient. As a token of this, the chosen device here is a “face covering”.
The whole thing is a enormous mash-up of Mad Max, “Conan the Barbarian” and the Snake Cult, with an admixture of “Quatermass-The Final Chapter” with its Planet People. Add a soupçon of “The Midwich Cuckoos” and the horror is complete.
“Covid is a deadly virus and not at all like flu.” In which case you respond, “So why did you take your Covid jabs?”, because it’s a safe assumption that they have right? Or you could respond, “Yeah it’s so deadly that here I stand before you, alive and well despite being unjabbed.” There’s many ways to react under these circumstances and every way will run rings around these automatons posing as human beings because they have nothing but lies and dogma to go on. Nice movie references! lol
An astute covid zombie will reply with “You’ve been very lucky that you didn’t encounter it so far!” to that, based on one of the most ludicrous corona lies, namely, that it’s possible to avoid encountering an airbourne virus which has been in community circulation since some time in 2019.
Fatality rate for under-70s was 0.05%. Source: Prof. John Ioannidis. The vast majority of us are under 70, including GPs, their staff and most though not all of their patients.
One of my frustrations with medics is that I see most of them as deeply-flawed human beings, who don’t seem to know as much on the basics of diet, exercise and staying healthy as I do. Nor have they picked up on COVID’s ‘low mortality’ … in the UK government’s own words, Mar 2020.
When I was doing a science degree ~50 yrs ago, the medical students seemed especially flawed human beings! Old saying … ‘an alcoholic is a patient who drinks more than his doctor.’
As was touched on further down in regards to funding GP’s, perhaps they should be paid by how many patients they actually see rather than how many are on their books. Also if people voted with their feet and refused to grace these ridiculous venues that insist on mask wearing maybe they would get the message but to do that the funding regime has to change and alas that is highly unlikely given the politics of the people responsible for this.
It appears to be pretty well established that the bulk of GPs are just robotic yes men that will go along with any government diktat no matter how retarded it is and administer any substance to humans no matter how noxious it is.
They are nothing more than drones that respond to government programming.
Ivor Cummins put out this recently where an industrial hygienist, an expert in masks respirators, filtration etc explain very plainly that the idea that any mask including N95 can filter out a particle the size of the claimed virus has zero scientific credibility.
https://odysee.com/@IvorCummins:f/ep.-141-the-ultimate-ppe-expert-with:6
What I find hilarious is how many of these masked muppets within these healthcare settings are vaxxed? And yet apparently they haven’t managed to put 2+2 together! So next time some stroppy little article gives you attitude for refusing to comply with such a ridiculous rule, ask them if they’ve had the much-lauded ‘silver bullet’ that is the Covid jab. If they say they have then just ask them “then what do you need me to wear a mask for?” That should shut them up because there really is no rational way of answering that without looking like a right wassock!
Doctors are in the game for the money and the prestige.
They know that to step out of line, ask difficult questions or to refuse to implement government mandates will cost them their lucrative position, so most shut up and go along with it.
You don’t have to look too hard to find out about the damage that vaccines cause children but the Docotrs get paid for pumping them into kids so they just do it.
You don’t have to look too hard to find the harm statins cause along with a lack of benefit but the Doc’s have targets to meet so they throw statins about like smarties.
Then there is polypill the programme to get older people onto so many ‘preventative’ medications they rattle when they walk, sure the evidence shows polypill causes more harm than good but fu[k the old people the Doctors have product to shift and bonuses to secure.
Sure flu vaccine has been shown to have zero efficacy in the old, but who gives a shit, the government want that stuff pumped into the elderly so they are gonna get some.
Aside from the obvious need for trauma surgeons, I surmise that, on balance, we’d be healthier if we abandoned allopathic practitioners altogether.
I reached level two sometime ago: full doctor avoidance, nothing to do with face masks, everything to do with the inability of Doctors to ever actually cure anything.
They aren’t really in the “curing” business…no repeat customers to funnel towards Big Pharma’s poisons
It could be a ‘thin edge of the wedge’ problem.
That is, medics in the UK (and elsewhere) have ‘staked their reputation’ on the standard set of Covid assumptions (facemasks, social distancing and vaccines), and if they say that ‘facemasks are no longer required‘ in a healthcare environment when there clearly are large numbers of cases of Covid in the country then people might start asking whether there was any need for them all along, and from there it is a short step to questioning all of the Covid measures — and we can’t have that happening.
But are they going to insist on wearing masks all throughout the summer months? In which case it smacks even more of some anti-science ‘psyop’ and is even more of an absurd insult to anyone’s intelligence. Your regular Joe Bloggs normie may well comply with muzzling up during peak flu season ( he’s a BBC-lover and all-round ‘good citizen’, Joe ) but are people really not going to start asking questions when they can attend the pub, cinema, restaurant etc in Aug, like normal people who think nothing of going ‘face-commando’, but have to mask up to sit in the hospital/dentist waiting room? It’s like some weird-ass parody or a social experiment on a national scale!
And the end point is that it is masking in medical settings forever
There are people, without the benefit of higher and further education, and who appear to lack common sense with regard to even simple concepts such as risk-assessment and value-for money, who can be swayed by incessant propaganda.
To them, it goes like this: Go unmasked > Become infected > Develop symptoms and/or test positive > Die. Inevitable. They have no concept of natural immunity, and many of them cannot visualise the microcosmic nature of viruses.
I don’t think it has anything to do with higher or further education – a lot of Covidians have degrees; some have PhDs. It seems to come down to whether people think for themselves or just accept what they are spoon-fed by the MSM and government.
Has anyone tried scorn and mockery?
Frinstance, you could suggest to the doc that a surgical mask is the equivalent of a homeopathic mask. “Should I buy a army-standard respirator, doc, or rely on this homeopathic remedy?”
Don’t be so quick to diss homeopathy. Can be VERY effective and non-harmful.
Arnica for example – a wonder treatment for almost anything.
Wonder why Big Pharma doesn’t like homeopathy?
I’m afraid homeopathy doesn’t work in randomised controlled trials, although it may have a placebo benefit.
If RCTs are done well, by honest scientists, they’re a valid way to tell whether a treatment is effective.
Of course, if RCTs are carried out by crook outfits and ended early, for no good reason, they’re a way to get fraudulent EUAs.
Any scientist running an RCT looking at homeopathy risks ending his career if his published results are supportive of homeopathy, as Jacques Benveniste discovered.
People need to just stop conforming with absurdities, like complete brain dead idiots. It reminds me of this simple experiment. See at the end, the woman has totally been re-programmed. It’s that simple and efficient, what they’re doing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8BkzvP19v4
There are two more options here
The latter would especially suggest itself. Any easing of Corona restrictions happened despite the vocal protests and fearmongering intended to pretend it of the WHO. The WHO is also paying for Facebook ads urging people that they should wear tightly fitting masks in public and should refrain from meeting other people indoors for as much as possible and should – under any circumstances – stay away from crowded indoor settings.
One should also keep in mind that the mophead did not set us free, he only allowed us some days off in the sun until another dangerous variant arrives. Should another dominant Sars-CoV2 variant arise while all the perpetrators are still walking free and the official fairy tale regarding how necessary all of this was still stands, the caravan of restrictions and lies used to justify them will immediately start moving again.
Next you’ll be telling me the public will buy an eternal war on drugs or terror!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFjLFqESxY0&t=31s
Would your doctor recommend one of these face masks to protect you from asbestos?
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/particle-sizes-d_934.html
Asbestos 0.7 – 0.9 microns
Viruses 0.005 – 0.3 microns
It’s not the size of the virus that matters but the size of the aerosol droplet that bears it.
Don’t weaken a good case with a lousy argument.
Incorrect. majority of virions are aerosols and not bound up in a large droplet which can be caught by a mask.
Dont try to undermine a good argument with assertions which have been disproven multiple times elsewhere.
Do GPs still get a bonus for each jab they give? If yes then thats the answer to the question, GPs are just money grabbing merchants. I understand that the reason there are a lot of women GPs is that they can work 3 days a week and still be on £60k plus pension.
I am re-reading the history of aspirin by Diarmuid Jeffreys published in 2005. In this book he devotes a chapter to the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919. He discusses the measures taken and the death toll. One set of measures adopted by Australia included masks, closing schools and the prohibition of public meetings. This had absolutely no effect on infections. He also reports of one couple who lived in a lighthouse 6 miles of the coast of Tasmania, hadn’t seen anyone for 3 months but they still became infected, thus demonstrating that distancing doesn’t prevent infection.
Apparently, 80% of Inuits who became infected died.
Between 50 and 100 million people died across the world.
You may also like this
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2130424/
“An outbreak of common colds at an Antarctic base after seventeen weeks of complete isolation”
The mask issue is pathognomonic of a wider problem.
GP reform has been badly needed for years. It got off to a bad start when the GP medical mafia screwed Bevan after the post War setting up of the NHS.
They have been performing the same trick ever since.
The 2004 contract was a debacle but Blair was involved so no surprise there.
The reforms now needed are massive.
The ridiculous self employed status has to go and they must be made employees of the NHS.
A £100 prize to any reader who knows anyone “self employed” who has no debtors to chase, no delayed debt; a gold plated State pension; no VAT to levy and collect, or no bills to pay from their own private funds; none of their own capital at risk, no competitive firms to lose business to, no advertising costs, no cars or vans to provide to their employees, no equipment to fund from own bank loan etc etc. The list is endless.
Wish I had had these ‘perks’ after 32 years of self employment. My £100 is safe for sure.
Oh, nearly forgot, no weekend service or Bank Hols service to provide but the customer has no choice but to return… not a likelihood in the private sector.
Nobody doubts the primary reason for clogging up the A&E service on weekends.
And yet they still think they are above criticism and most ( but not all) act like good Govm’t lackeys – as their pensions depend on it.
A lot more patients per Doc nowadays ? Is that the main problem I hear?
OK – lets do something about it.
Stop training so many foreign students and fill Medical schools with UK citizens.
Far too many females are trained of whom most end up working reduced days a week.
(For many understandable reasons). 50% should be the maximum.
Attract full timers – ie 5 day week-ers” or pay back a proportion of your training fee pro rata. Ditto for males of course if they return only a small % of the taxpayer investment.
(Student fees only cover a small % of training costs.)
Controlled immigration is part of the mix too. Yes, that which cannot be mentioned in political circles.
Allow Docs to become private practice GPs after, say, they have given a 10 year return on taxpayer investment in the State sector.
Private GPs could be financed by insurance with tax relief given on premiums.
This would relieve pressure on the NHS GPs by giving public a choice of service. My guess is that they would soon open 7 days a week.
Will political will and civil service competence prevail to carry out major reform? Unlikely.
Will we moan and put up with it in the great British tradition?
Yep – we will all get what we deserve.
Many other good idea reforms are out there – just ask the NHS staff themselves.
There have been several Doctors posting on here submitting genuinely constructive opinions on covid and the general dreadful state of the NHS/GP relationship.
No, don’t ask the members of the cult, you’ll just get tinkering at the edges.
Its a flawed concept from the very start.
Just do a root & branch copy of a successful 1st world system in one of the following countries, Germany, France, Holland, Singapore, Austria, Switzerland, Japan Australia.
Pick one & copy it, no changes allowed as it will just allow the poison to weasel back in.
At my last visit to a GP, more than 10% of patients were unmasked. The doctor did ask me why I did not wear one. I said I had asthma. Job done, but I would have preferred to have given the REAL reason. My dentist’s surgery has never questioned my naked face – excellent surgery. This article has given me useful information – thanks.
delete
It seems as if health care settings focus entirely on illness rather than patient well being in general, and think that if a certain measure can reduce the risk of infection, even if the risk was minute in the first place, or the measures are unlikely to have any real effect but look good on paper they must be implemented.
As an example, long before Covid, my G.P. practice removed all their magazines from the waiting room claiming they presented a risk of infection (presumably if another patient sneezed/bled all over one of them then you licked the pages). I’m sure a lot of other G.P. practices have done the same. The cult of health and safetyism started years before covid and has merely carried on/got worse during the nondemic.
The situation is the same in Australia.
As a long time GP, I can see several reasons for this.
1/ GP’s have high IQs, but don’t do much research.
Their training and personality characteristics make them good at memorising whatever they are taught and following orders.
Most “vaccine” sceptical patients have a far greater knowledge of the jabs.
2/ The medical bureaucracy has been completely taken over by authoritarian Marxists, and are pretty well motivated by power.
3/ Big Pharma has a huge role in the information that gets disseminated to doctors.
Masking is part of the fear campaign, and goes hand in hand with jabbing.
Submission – it defines you as ‘ill’ and in their power !
My wife is a former A&E Sister and Nurse Lecturer.
She’s used to telling Doctors what to do because beyond their specialisation, they don’t have a clue.
GP’s have a great breadth of knowledge, but, understandably, their depth on each subject is limited.
Thank’s to her, I have a great deal of autonomy with Doctors as I know better than they do how I feel and have done some research as to what I can do about it before I visit (NHS web site only). I’m never dogmatic but I usually wind up getting what I know I need. It’s a bit of a prescription formality really.
I have only been stumped once in the last 40 years, as were several Doctors, with a skin condition. One GP eventually examined me and instantly recognised an unusual form of eczema. Mild cortisone cream, job done, never reappeared.
I have written to them over the covid period and accused them of neglect (as per the BIRD Group standard letter) so they know how I feel about the whole thing.
Next time I visit I will be giving my GP both barrels personally.
Dictator?
Oh! Sorry, Doctor.
Easily confused.
I think it is unfair to blame government. Few people in government have expertise in these matters. Government should take advice from experts – but there weren’t any, not anywhere in the world. The medical profession has been wrong about everything in this matter from the start. My abiding memory is of an RAF orderly doing swabs outside RAF Lossiemouth in a gale, his billion pound piece of PPE (a short plastic apron) streaming in the wind and the rain. It was hilarious,
Doctors get contracts from the Government. They need to virtue signal upwards to keep in Government good books.
Remember that doctors don’t get paid by you directly (they get paid by your taxes ultimately), but they do get paid directly by some faceless officials in Whitehall.
You the patient can’t point to a cheque you wrote for their salary but Whitehall can.
Doctors now put good relations with government above good medical practice.
It’s bringing their right to independent self-regulation into question.
I wouldn’t allow them to self-regulate any more after the Covid19 disgrace.
But revocation of Royal Charters is not something that the General Public ever get to vote upon….
It’s about time that they did.
Spoke yesterday with GP Surgery and our discussion strayed into who at the practice was responsible for reviewing and researching to ensure correct information was passed to patients with regards the messaging to vaccinate, mask and distance. The response shocked me – they rely on the appointed person for the PCN to disseminate the information. Asking where the information was I was told they don’t have any. I pressed further – why were they not looking at the data and studies themselves and making their own assessment – they were still being told to quarantine at home if testing positive for Covid so comply more readily and now they’re worried for their CQC registration if they are not seen to be following the guidance
I have to have an injection each month administered by my practice nurse. I’ve known her ans some of the other staff 30 odd years and consider them friends. She told me that if I want continue receiving my treatment I have to wear a mask. If not I won’t be allowed in the surgery. She knows my view but (and partly agrees with me) but the doctors insist on enforcement.
I could (and probably should) complain or change surgery but I would only get the same elsewhere. So sadly I comply. However, I wear it on my chin in protest and that suffices.
I suspect all staff in all surgeries are under the same pressure.
You might add why does your hospitals, pharmacies, outpatient clinics of all types want you to stay masked? Of all the places who should no better medical and health facilities are making grave errors are this one.
I have not worn a mask yet and have rarely been challenged. Just tell these public sector parasites who they work for.
It’s the arrogance of doctors that gets me. I never wear a mask but when absolutely forced I use a plastic transparent face shield. On the one recent actual visit to my Doctor I wore a shield. When I appeared in his room he took one look at me mumbled something and left the room to reappear 30 seconds later and without saying a worn dangled a face nappy in front of me as if to say if you want to have this consultation take off that silly shield and put this on.
Not to intimidated I said, but that’s not going to stop a aerosol borne nano particle, why do the medical profession insist on the use of something that is scientific nonsense? His rather patronising reply, I think you have been reading a bit too much nonsense on the Internet!
Doesn’t exactly instil confidence in any diagnosis of my medical condition if he actually believes those ridiculous things work.
I was at a hospital yesterday. When I checked in the receptionist, masked and sitting behind an enormous screen, refused to talk to me until I was masked and had used hand sanitiser. And I mean that he actually confirmed that he wouldn’t talk to me until not only was I wearing a mask ‘but you’re going to have to sanitise too’ with a triumphant look on his peaky little eyes.
After having a good grumble and citing some studies, I pretended to squirt my hands, registered and then went to the waiting room which was full, and I mean full, of huge labels saying sit on this sanitised chair, don’t sit on this and wear a mask, which the lone, elderly, terrified occupant was dutifully doing.
So, yes, I believe that they are enjoying the control and/or it’s to do with defensive practice and stupid managerial decisions to negate risk.
There was also a poster which effectively said that you’d better hold onto your children because the hospital does its best but you never know who’s out there.
Very therapeutic.
I suggest if anybody is due to go into a healthcare setting where they know they’ll encounter hassle ( or complete refusal of care ) if they don’t behave like a member of a cult, to go in armed with one of the many scientific studies listed in this article. I’d also print one off demonstrating the known harms of mask wearing too, for good measure. If they refuse to acknowledge it then you definitely know they’re blatant science-deniers and their bullying tactics have nothing to do with any kind of virus. What’s the betting the so-called “healthcare professionals” won’t even be familiar with the study you choose to show them? You’ll be no doubt demonstrating that you are more clued up than them! https://brownstone.org/articles/more-than-150-comparative-studies-and-articles-on-mask-ineffectiveness-and-harms/
And it’s not just Doctors it’s happening in my Vets as well, bloody signs everywhere which my Partner and I just ignore and nobody says anything! What I simply can’t get my ahead around is (as the article says) these people are meant to be of above average intelligence and yet they can’t (or don’t want to) see what’s in front of their eyes. It drives me crazy.
It’s not only the NHS; my podiatry practice insists on masks too, though I get the impression that this is led by the receptionist (these women, at the surgery too, seem to be in the grip of a power trip). Also my chiropractor, who won’t even allow patients to use the loo. However, my dental practice is mercifully free of this unscientific and harmful dogma. I had wondered before I attended, if they would somehow rummage around beneath my mask. Again, a receptionist there still covers up. It’s almost always women of course. My hairdresser lost me as a client after almost 20 years.
To be honest I’ve been to hospital and the doctors surgery recently more than once and not worn a mask. I’ll never wear a masks again, what would be the point when they achieve nothing? I’ve only ever been challenged twice.
The first was at Wickes when the Manager was teaching the staff what to do about customers not wearing a mask. I simply said “I have an exemption” and he was a bit pissed off but recovered okay. Point proven
The second was at Pinderfields Hospital when one of the volunteers told me I had to wear a mask. I said “No I do not”.
I watched an old MoI film about wartime Coastal Command crews. Due to the constant roar of huge aero-engines, all verbal communication was by shouting point-blank at each other. Seems a world away.
I attended a bone density scan appointment just now at a well known orthopeadic hospital on the border with Wales. Tick box exercise every 3-4 years due to a condition I have. The hectoring and threatening language of the appointment invite referred to Covid precautions and that masks MUST be worn and face shields were no substitute. I wrote explaining that I had a lawful exemption under the regulations which required face coverings in settings including healthcare which had expired 27th Jan. If they believed they were entitled to continue to demand compliance I required a copy of the risk assessment within the meaning of MHSAW1999 s3 (1)(b) that concluded that
Needless to say I had received no response. I expected to meet a challeng when I walked into the main entrance, past at least 8, 2 sq m posters demanding mask wearing sanitiser use etc and a dozen check-in screen stations all switched off. The pleasant lady at the reception took my details and the 3 other staff I met dealt with me promptly and courteously. They were masked; I was not and during the friendly conversations this was not mentioned at all. Walking out I encountered 2 other outpatients both of whom were unmasked. At least as positive an experience with the NHS as anything precovid apart from my sympathetic feelings to those who may have been in some discomfort (from wearing these things 24/7) or not as the case may be.
Both doctors and patients are part of the problem.
Most patients are relieved when I tell them to take off their masks and that they are only good for decoration.
The formal complaints to my bosses have lessened in time, but it has been a bit of a grind fighting such ignorance.
I was visiting someone in hospital recently where mask wearing is demanded. At the end of the day I walked past an ordinary swing bin in the main entrance overflowing with blue face nappies and lots on the floor around it. So my question is this: if the virus is so deadly that it requires everyone in a hospital to wear masks all of the time; why are they not regarded as hazardous waste? It’s about time that NHS staff did the nation a favour, and stop being complicit in this charade.
One false assertion in this piece: “by failing to do their own research they have succumbed to the coronapanic fear and as a matter of faith accept what they have been told about mask effectiveness: in short, against all the evidence to the contrary, the average GP, who has an above-average intelligence, believe masks actually work against the SARS-CoV-2 virus”
The average GP does NOT have above average intelligence. Their acceptance as an article of faith that masks work is irrefutable proof of that. Above average IQ would have, by definition, catalysed curiousity, compelled independent verification and the courage to refute the junk science. The average GP has proven themselves to be no better than highly skilled monkeys.
Why? Because most are conformist pricks!
Same here in Australia.
The totally unscientific and, I suspect, completely political, covidiots in charge of the AMA and RACGP are now calling for more restrictions, including masks.
It’s very obvious that they’re completely incapable of actually reading a proper scientific paper, despite their high standing in their organisations.