As a trade union rep for the Workers of England, I have spent the last two years defending our members against intrusive, ineffective and potentially injurious COVID-19 policies. Until three months ago, when the vaccine mandate in health and social care was revoked by the Government, almost all of my cases were workers who refused to take two or more injections to keep their jobs. Since then the battleground has shifted to mask-wearing rules (often involving the same employees).
Forcing staff to wear a mask for their entire working day is unprecedented in most healthcare settings. As it is now accepted by all but the shrillest of Covid zealots that morbidity of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is similar to influenza, many of the radical interventions from lockdown to face covering seem disproportionate, if not damaging.
A month ago, national guidelines for the NHS dropped ubiquitous masking in clinical areas. However, most NHS trusts were unwilling to relax from pandemic mode. Absurdly, no exemptions are accepted for face covering. And so we have had a steady stream of cases, with several members being threatened with dismissal despite valid health concerns.
In disciplinary proceedings I have challenged employers with a set of six questions:
- Do you consider masks as a medical intervention?
- Do you promote informed consent?
- Do you honour exemptions?
- Please provide evidence (in summary) that masks are effective
- Could you give assurance that prolonged mask-wearing is not detrimental to physical or mental health?
- Could you explain why masks are required for COVID-19 but not influenza?
No employers have given satisfactory answers. The first question is fundamental: if the employer were to define masks as a medical intervention, consent would be necessary. Instead, they tend to place the requirement within policy for personal protective equipment (PPE).
Trust policy documents repeatedly label masks as “fluid repellent”. For an airborne respiratory virus, blocking the projectiles of sneezes and coughs has benefit. But this will certainly not stop infection or transmission, as found by numerous experimental and observational studies of masks. Yet these devices were imposed in every corner of the hospital estate, often tyrannically, affecting patients and visitors as well as staff. My friend Sian, taking her daughter to A&E after a nasty accident, was basically told ‘no mask, no entry’ (she eventually agreed to wear a visor).
As a fellow union rep discovered, the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) does not regard the widely worn type of surgical mask as PPE. Here is a quote from the HSE guidelines for influenza:
What is the difference between a surgical mask and a FFP3 mask?
Surgical masks are plain masks that cover the nose and mouth and are held in place by straps around the head. In healthcare settings, they are normally worn during medical procedures to protect not only the patient but also the healthcare worker from the transfer of microorganisms, body fluids and particulate matter generated from any splash and splatter. Whilst they will provide a physical barrier to large projected droplets, they do not provide full respiratory protection against smaller suspended droplets and aerosols. That is, they are not regarded as personal protective equipment (PPE) under the European Directive 89/686/EEC (PPE Regulation 2002 SI 2002 No. 1144).
Therefore, there is no justification for NHS trusts demanding use of surgical masks, which do not protect against airborne respiratory viruses. But then, shouldn’t doctors, nurses, midwives and senior managers have known that already?
Dr. Niall McCrae is a rep for the Workers of England Union and a mental health ethicist.
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Morning all.
Morning HP
Top of the mornin’ to ya, HP. Blimey…you’re a bit of a night owl though!
This lady is awesome. A journalist who knows how to do journalism, Helen Joyce, talking about trans ideology in this 8min vid. I like people who tell it straight and she certainly does that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-ysKQrRMMU&ab_channel=GriptMedia
I agree, Mogs, she is brilliant and I wish there were more like her in the media and in politics. As she says, if more politicians and others grew a spine and spoke directly about this and endured the fleeting bouts of attacks etc, this would go away.
A very unpleasant but important reminder from Prof Fenton of the awful PCR tests and what TPTB saw fit to put our kids through. Looking back it’s absolutely crazy what these criminal psychopaths did to us, all in the name of ”public health”.
”Even if the PCR (or lateral flow) test had been an accurate method to determine if a person had the virus, there was never any need for anything more than the normal saliva test. But it was not just the unnecessary pain and humiliation of the test that was a problem. This type of invasive testing also led to catastrophic injuries. For example, this paper shows a “non-trivial number” of these swab tests were “associated with skull base injury”:
https://wherearethenumbers.substack.com/p/the-covid-testing-swabs-debacle
…morning mogs….
It’s bad enough that people were injured, and humiliated..I just find it unbelievable that people go along with this utter crap….
A couple of days ago I posted the fact that the leader of the cycling Giro D’Italia who was winning, and not ill at all was made to do a test, and as it was positive .. was withdrawn from the race…beyond the fact that it’s plainly bonkers is the deeper message that you can be told you are ill when you clearly aren’t and have your freedom and livelihood taken away…it’s monstrous on so many levels….and people don’t seem to get how serious this is for our rights as free human beings…..?
Morning gummy, yes I saw your post. Well more fool the idiots who submit to still getting tested. What would have happened if he’d refused I wonder? None of this is rational or based on evidence so he surely would have had a rock-solid case to decline such an imposition. The problem is there’s still too many people that are compliant cowards. I mean, is this still standard procedure in other professional sports? The idiot cyclist deserves to lose as far as I’m concerned. He should grow a pair or be content with being a slave forever.
This story came up with some colleagues earlier this week, most of them cyclists, all very much of the ‘intelligent stupid’ variety, and they had managed to change the story to – “he’s got covid.”
Firkin idiots the lot of them.
It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if he had continued to race. It would have confused your colleagues no end if he had won while ‘suffering’ from the most dreadful contagion for over 100 years.
Indeed.
…but he hadn’t…. it was a ‘positive test’ only….which, after all this time and evidence I can’t believe anyone believes..it’s so fricken depressing!!
I couldn’t agree more ebg.
It’s a badge of honour for me that I never took any test, never once wore a mask and never had a vaccine. I kept going and tried to behave as ‘normally’ as possible, even though it was wearing me out. I know I’m suffering the after effects now, though, and need to snap out of it.
I remember one moron posting on Facebook that he’d taken five tests in one day. The fifth test was positive. ‘Just proves you can’t be too careful!’ the self-righteous idiot said, drooling over his upcoming two weeks of isolation, presumably paid out of my dying business’s taxes.
..yes, None of us regret not having it do we? We really should be proud…
…but some acquaintances in the pub said the other day they were both getting over a bout of Covid…they do wear it as a nuts ‘badge of honour’..you’d honestly think that they’d survived Ebola!…..it’s utterly pathetic and depressing….but even quiet little Mr Gum smiled and said..’you know it’s just a cold?’…they didn’t like that at all…
(Meanwhile I had had too much wine, so kept schtum!! LOL!)
If you have not yet found The Critical Drinker YouTube channel I highly recommended, he gets it spot on – as usual – about this badly backfiring attempt to re-write history, delivered in his usual acerbic and entertaining style. I’ve not seen a single MSM movie critic fit to polish his boots.
Agree wholeheartedly, although I also like Disparu – he calls racist cultural appropriation for what it is – and Metatron’s forensic dissection of (some of) the historical absurdities (for which he’s now been demonetised).
He’s been remonetised.
I haven’t come across Disparu: I’ll check him out.
Good to know re Metatron. Disparu often joins The Critical Drinker’s Open Bar.
LOL! Yes a brilliant ‘review’…
I like the look of SISU though..love a bit of blood guts and mayhem….
I’ve got mixed feelings about the housebuilding/green belt business. On the one hand, I live in the green belt and would like it to stay green – selfish. On the other hand affordable homes are key to happiness and well being and a successful economy. And on yet another hand, perhaps we would not need to build so many more if we didn’t have huge numbers of net migrants.
For once Sunak appears to be attempting to appeal to a section of his party’s core supporters but I think it will fail and wonder if the Conservatives would be better off targeting the working working class – those not on handouts and not in cushy state sector jobs – and small business owners.
Come to the once rural South West – there are literally thousands and thousands of new build cookie cutter houses being thrown up on what was once prime agricultural land and in quiet rural marketing towns and villages. No jobs to speak of mind you and little or no improvements to local infrastructure – roads, schooling, healthcare, etc, but still – ‘affordable’ housing all the way.
Yes good point – the change of use from “prime agricultural land” is not something I am keen on either.
Quite agree, WW. I also live in the South-West and am appalled at the seemingly never-ending housebuilding developments going on – go on Google Earth and hover over any mid-size town or large village and you’ll see the familiar signs of urban creep – bare earth, white vans, square house pads etc. It is a very rural area, as you say, and jobs are few and far between. The government’s housebuilding programme needs to be scrutinised (something like 350,000 houses a year I think) and also there need to be some sort of oversight about what exactly we are doing to the countryside because there is only a plan to distribute the numbers among all councils. At the risk of being called out as for nimbyism, there has to be a limit to building houses at some point, especially these ugly flat pack houses with tiny gardens, all crammed together and no trees or other infrastructure. In my view, they are being built for the future influx of migrants. So, you get a lot of people leaving the big cities and heading down here because they want to get out of the more concentrated cities and the South-East. I don’t blame them. Over the longer term, I believe it is a societal change mechanism in play.
Absolutely. More than 25% of buyers for the massive housing developments around Weston-super-Mare, for example (over 2500 houses in the new Haywood ‘village’ alone), are decanting from Bristol – which according to one property site is showing a net outflow from the city. Last summer I met several couples from the South East & London who were actively looking to relocate to the SW: all aiming for The Cotswolds, natch (
), but willing to settle anywhere other than The Smoke.
Similar in E Riding of Yorks: farmland ploughed up for Legoland housing that is in no way ‘affordable’.
Doesn’t fit with government’s lipservice about getting back to the office – there are no jobs round here to speak of so where are they working?
I think the ‘plan’ is to have them ‘working from home’ eventually although at present the government seem keen to get their civil servants back to the office. If the WHO get their way however, they’ll be able to declare a public health emergency even if they just suspect it. We must, of course, resist and resist we will!
“Adidas ‘Pride 2023’ women’s swimsuits appear to be modelled by a man”
Here we woke again – another brand making clothing for women that only fits men. How’s that ESG score coming along, Adidas?
They won’t feel quite so proud when their sales start falling.
“Queer Trans Project sends sex change kits to kids without parental consent”
They forgot the scalpel and the ball of elastic bands!
Fa hooksake!
“Adidas ‘Pride 2023’ women’s swimsuits appear to be modelled by a man”
Adidas is “doing a bud!”
in the above article we find:
Another advantage for the planet is that she won’t be indoctrinating her children in climate alarmism. The downside is that she may be just as busy nagging others.
One thing though: it would not surprise me if she changes her mind sometime in the future. I’m pretty sure that when I was a student actual procreation was not high on my priority list.
“I’m pretty sure that when I was a student actual procreation was not high on my priority list.”
……but the act of procreation was.
Just practice runs.
Well the bonker’s continues…..why anyone would want to live in these places is beyond me…
New York to Track Residents’ Food Purchases and Place ‘Caps on Meat’ Served by Public InstitutionsNew York City will begin tracking the carbon footprint of household food consumption and putting caps on how much red meat can be served in public institutions as part of a sweeping initiative to achieve a 33% reduction in carbon emissions…
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/nyc-track-food-purchases-meat-cap-carbon-emissions/
This comes from the same Mayor, Eric Adams, who opened up New York as a ‘Sanctuary City’…
”It has been just seven months since Republican governors at the border put New York City’s commitment to being a “sanctuary city” for illegal immigrants to the test. Already, the Big Apple has now conceded defeat.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, announced that the city will be relocating illegal immigrants across the country after months of complaints that the city’s resources were being strained.… This is due in large part to the influx of newcomers. Our shelter system is full, and we are running out of funds, staff, and space.”
Therefore, New York City will now start busing illegal immigrants to other areas of the country. It’s a far cry from Adams’s sanctimonious campaign statements. According to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and other left-wing activists, it may even be considered “trafficking”….
LOL!
From Jeffrey A Tucker at Brownstone…
Is this finally an ‘adult’ in the room?…..at least it’s a bit of an antidote against the crazy!
https://brownstone.org/articles/judge-neil-gorsuch-speaks-out-against-lockdowns-and-mandates/
Justice Neil Gorsuch Speaks Out Against Lockdowns and Mandates
Excerpt….
”A leader or an expert who claims he can fix everything, if only we do exactly as he says, can prove an irresistible force. We do not need to confront a bayonet, we need only a nudge, before we willingly abandon the nicety of requiring laws to be adopted by our legislative representatives and accept rule by decree. Along the way, we will accede to the loss of many cherished civil liberties—the right to worship freely, to debate public policy without censorship, to gather with friends and family, or simply to leave our homes.
We may even cheer on those who ask us to disregard our normal lawmaking processes and forfeit our personal freedoms. Of course, this is no new story. Even the ancients warned that democracies can degenerate toward autocracy in the face of fear.
But maybe we have learned another lesson too. The concentration of power in the hands of so few may be efficient and sometimes popular. But it does not tend toward sound government. However wise one person or his advisors may be, that is no substitute for the wisdom of the whole of the American people that can be tapped in the legislative process.”
Thanks. Good for him.
Anyone who is interested in the Trump Russiagate story, which has now been found not only to be pack of lies and misinformation, but seems to have involved not only the FBI but also the Clintons and Obama….criminally many are saying…
This is a neat little round up of the salient points of the Durham Report…..
https://21stcenturywire.com/2023/05/16/the-durham-report-a-brief-analysis/
Something to keep our eyes on….
Craig Kelly
@CKellyUAP
AND SO IT BEGINS
The first Class-Action for the vaccine injured filed in the Federal Court of Australia
Respondents :
The Commonwealth of Australia
Greg Hunt – Former Federal Health Minister
John Skerritt – TGA
Paul Kelly – AustralianChief Medical Officer
Brendan Murphy – Secretary Department of Health
If you were misled by the “safe & effective” assurances and injured by the experimental shots you can join the class action and seek compensation from the above – see :
https://covidvaxclassaction.com.au
America is just Covid nuts…..!!
Jay Bhattacharya
@DrJBhattacharya
The Univ. of California finally ended its ridiculous covid vax mandate.
But… students who opt out of the vax ‘recommendation’ will be treated as second class citizens: masked, tested, denied “a badge sticker showing that [they] have received the vaccine.”
Enough!
Another mosaic stone that destroys the ‘they meant well but cocked up’ narrative and fantasy.
Researchers Had a Simple Test for Determining if an Asymptomatic Person Who Tested Positive for COVID Was Infectious — But CDC, Fauci Ignored ItResearchers at Stanford University who developed the test also determined that the vast majority of asymptomatic individuals who tested positive — 96% — did not transmit the virus.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/test-asymptomatic-covid-positive-person-infectious-cdc-fauci/
…this is in equal parts depressing and annoying, as those of us ‘in the know’ knew this I suppose, without this confirmation…although if it were know universally it would have saved a lot of trouble (… and confirms my Giro cycling comments!)….but of course the people who need to know will never see it…grr..
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/farmers-dont-fall-for-sunaks-sleight-of-hand/
A first rate article from TCW detailing Fishy’s underhand undoing of Brexit and his lying and deceitful mode of destroying our farming and fisheries industries.
Fishy is well and truly in on the depopulation agenda.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/tcw-the-vaccine-and-our-civic-duty-a-debate/
A dialogue between Kathy Gyngell and a British political philosopher named David Selbourne – I’ve never heard of him.
Selbourne is decidedly in the middle ranks of the intelligent stupid and is out of his depth against Kathy Gyngell.
Worth a read.
https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/meet-the-urban-7-the-bridge-from-global-cities-to-world-governance-policy-circles
Well, well well, what have we here?
The Urban 7. A little grouping of so called City Mayors who have decided to invite themselves to the big boys table and we lot can P. orf.