At least five NHS trusts in England have brought back mask requirements due to Covid’s autumn resurgence and some are also reimposing social distancing guidelines with threats of future of visitor bans. The Mail has the story.
Sites in Suffolk, Essex and Gloucestershire now require all visitors to wear face coverings when in their hospitals. Some are also asking patients to wear masks and reimposing social distancing guidelines, in scenes reminiscent of the earliest days of the pandemic.
Although coverings have been sentenced to history in daily life, trust bosses have argued that hospitals are “not the same as a supermarket or a restaurant”.
Patients on wards already tend to be very unwell, meaning they are particularly vulnerable to the brutal effects of Covid and other respiratory infections.
Stricter rules – including visitor bans – could be brought in over the coming weeks if virus rates and admissions continue to trend upwards, health chiefs have hinted.
Some academics have already called for a widespread return of face masks in public settings, in order to thwart the spread of the virus this winter. But the Government has made no hint that a return of pandemic curbs are on the horizon, even in the face of spiralling cases.
The Princess of Wales was pictured wearing a covering today while surrounded by masked NHS medics during a visit to the Royal Surrey County Hospital’s maternity unit in Guildford.
Hospitals were told to move back to pre-pandemic practices in June, ushering in one of the final stages of No. 10’s ‘living with Covid’ plan.
Guidance set out that masks could be brought back in healthcare settings to reduce the spread of the virus, if local infection rates increased. Decisions were left in the hands of local health chiefs, as opposed to blanket rules.
The U.K. Health Security Agency guidance still sets out that all NHS medics should keep wearing masks when working with Covid patients and those vulnerable to the virus. All confirmed cases should also be masked when in hospital.
Latest surveillance data suggests Covid is on the rise in England, fuelled by what experts say is the combination of a ‘back-to-school’ effect and waning immunity against infection.
Is this supposed to be living with Covid? Have they not noticed yet that the masks and distancing aren’t achieving anything?
Worth reading in full.
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Everyone, just research what your rights are *legally* and shove the facts as they stand in their masktard faces. As long as you have the law on your side you need not comply with this perpetual p*ss-take theatre. Civil disobedience is the only way.
https://www.hartgroup.org/the-facts-about-mask-requirements/
Absolutely. Declare “exemption” – they should not be allowed to challenge it. If they do, advise them that they can expect a letter from your solicitor.
I hope I don’t have to burden the NHS again but if I do I won’t be wearing any damn masks. Certainly I could claim an exemption but I will not under any circumstances.
It’s a big fat ‘No’ from me.
Hux merely by being a living human you are exempt from having an experimental NPI forced upon you. NPIs are a ‘medical’ intervention, therefore if you do not wish to undertake that medical procedure, you are exempt. You’re not claiming to have a health condition. All of us are exempt from any medical intervention if we say so.
Amen to that!
When masks were mandatory in supermarkets etc. I always used to claim exemption even though I wasn’t exempt. However when organisations insist that people mask up although it isn’t a legal requirement claiming exemption seems like the wrong response as you’re not telling them that you disagree with their policy. However it’s a difficult dilemma as I wouldn’t be keen on not seeing a relative just to make a point, and the members of staff who have to enforce rules they may not agree with shouldn’t be put in a difficult situation.
Precisely! I got through 2.5 years of mask madness by simply refusing to wear a face nappy. I was challenged three times. Twice my answer that I had an allergy was accepted without further comment. I was unfortunately, thrown out of one store. They actually asked what I was allergic to. I replied; “Stupidity.”
For once, I wholeheartedly agree with you. We need mass civil unrest, and every act of defiance emboldens others.
Peaceful civil disobedience. Peaceful being the operative. They can send in the heavy mob to quell unrest, harder to do with peaceful civil disobedience.
For now, yes. At some point blood may have to be spilt though; sadly, no totalitarian regime has ever been toppled by lots of people holding hands.
I hear you, but the very thought of going back to “put a mask on” / “I don’t have to” and the ensuing bullshit that you probably know of first hand, is abhorrent
There are clearly some incompetent NHS managers who should be sacked.
Chris, you win the award for understatement of the day.
Ah, the burden of being brought up an Englishman. I worried the statement was a bit too strong.
That’ll be the vast majority then.
The irony here is that the same Health Service managers will actually be working from home, imposing these new restrictions whilst shamelessly avoiding the inconvenience and discomfort they are causing to the patients visitors and their own staff. It’s really no surprise that morale is so low in the NHS….
“Covid is on the rise”
Oh for goodness sake stop using the mad language of the enemy
It may be technically accurate to say that the number of people infected with whatever the current most prevalent respiratory virus is but it’s a meaningless statement without context
I’m annoyingly on my third flu/cold since May though only the first bout was anything more than a minor inconvenience. Were some of them related to a novel virus? Maybe- certainly some of the symptoms were a bit odd compared to other stuff I’ve had in years gone by, but unvaxxed me and Mrs ToF have survived to tell the tale
As I was reading the article, something struck me, that I hadn’t really thought about before. Up to now I had focused on the nonsense of perfectly healthy people having to restrict properly breathing in and out so that some fear-riddled people could feel safe by strapping their security blanket about the mouths of everyone in the vicinity.
The sentence about confirmed cases in hospital having to wear a face rag got me thinking. So someone who is poorly enough to be in hospital, let us say they are in fact there because of respiratory problems – is now forced to wear a chemical-drenched made-in-China rag impeding their already laboured breathing and lessening their oxygen intake even more? Sounds more like a form of torture to me than health care.
The simple fact is, hospitals are always rife with all sorts of bacteria and viruses, being, after all, by definition a place where sick people gather. There is obviously a greater risk of catching something when you’re there, particularly if you are poorly, but that is unfortunately the nature of the beast and has always been accepted as reality up until 2020.
It’s an interesting fact that more people get sick/die in hospital than anywhere else.
Lol.
So, best avoided then.
Copyright to the great Joseph Heller, Catch 22 on that one…
Indeed. The Foegen Effect only makes things worse for people already infected, by concentrating and incubating the virus further.
As a patient last year, I didn’t have to wear a face rag in the ward, only in transit to another part of the hospital. I expect otherwise it would have slowed down nursing observations. Quite often when using the ET finger device (phone home!) I had to do a couple of deep breaths before the nurse was happy and moved on.
Re reduced breathing – my thoughts exactly.
It’s quite common for certain hospitals to experience the odd outbreak of certain infections in Winter, leading to some wards being closed to visitors and so on. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/norovirus/ this one being a regular resident, by the look of it.
I just got over a pretty horrid cold, which felt almost exactly the same as the covid infection I had in June. Neither of these episodes were any different than what we’ve all endured for time immemorial, and which we’ll continue to endure while humans are still allowed to roam the planet. I did get vaccinated, but well over a year has passed since my reluctantly received second shot, and I’ve resisted all of the endless booster coercion we are still subjected to in Canada. What is amazing to me is that virtually everyone has now experienced something similar – the same severity of covid (or a cold) whether vaccinated or not, masked or not, hand sanitized or not, “shielded” by perspex screens at the shops or not, [insert any other theatrical NPI] or not. Yet most cannot shake their belief that some or all of these utterly foolish and societally damaging things are giving them protection.
It’s just too tempting for all the organizations that stand to benefit (demands for new funding, reduced workload or a sense of moral superiority because of their brave work on the front lines) to continue the theatre. And many otherwise sane people get a little visceral thrill from the idea that something SERIOUS and IMPORTANT is happening around them.
There is no difference between the fatality rate of jabbed & unjabbed. There have been countless articles referencing government data from various countries demonstrating this, including data from Canada.
In the EU all cause mortality is higher this year than 2020 & 21. In the EU there have been 65% more covid deaths this year than 2020.
Yep, I’m fully aware of this. At best the vaccine is a placebo, but more likely it causes lasting damage to our immune system. Parents here are still being gaslit into jabbing their six-month-olds.
Well, if I were an in-patient in my local hospital, which is in the above list, I would refuse to wear a mask. What exactly could they do about it?
Just to add that my ‘frightened elderly friends’ (80s) who were coming out of their shells a bit have now retreated back into full 2020 covid mode, because they are convinced they will both die if they catch it. There must be many thousands of people like this. It is so sad.
And lemme guess, they are all fully jabbed and at least double-boosted by now, and still scared. It’s a pattern. Those who should theoretically be the least scared (that is, if the jabs actually were worth a crap at all) are, interestingly enough, the most scared of all.
Yes, they are fully jabbed and due the next one soon. One of them has become so frail in the past two years I wouldn’t be surprised if another jab kills her.
You could try to tell them the following: This year, my parents again visited me (for the first time since 2019). They’re both 83 and triple-perforated. They both caught COVID while in the UK, ie, tested positive after they developed stronger cold symptoms when they were back home. Both recovered without any difficulties within less than two weeks.
That’s the brutal effect of COVID mentioned in the article.
Trouble is, that’ll only convince them the multiple perforations worked. Else it would have been much worse.
These mask rules need to be completely eradicated, root and branch, lest they grow back.
Brutal picture. Makes the woman in yellow look like a cousin of Cruella Deville. I assume she is someone important, right?
I like this man a lot. 10mins of common sense. He reveals how the Israeli Ministry of Health even states that masks have no scientific basis and are only a psychological tool of compliance. Also legislation which exempts government officials from wearing masks but not the plebs.
https://odysee.com/@QuantumRhino:9/Let's-talk-about-Masks–A-message-from-Israel:6
Reversion to type as soon as keywords are mentioned: Michie’s cold fishlike hands are all over this…
They injure us with their jabs, kill our elderly by unsigned DNR orders,damage our children, all to protect their funding and careers, defund the Police! Defund the NHS its not interested in patients welfare it has become a political organisation drunk on its own power.
Still got the pro-masking song up where I work (“no mask on your face, big disgrace”).
A little (alternative) music with supper, yes (cf. Broken Journey)?:
“Your hiding all your smiles baby
Look like a twit
Messing up your teeth now baby
Itchy itchy itch
And it’s hi ho filthy maskers
Go and wash your face now baby
Mask plastic in the oceans
It ends up in your fish. Oh it’s obvious.”
hi ho silver lining instrumental at DuckDuckGo
This being based on nothing but the ONS bullshit guesstimate which claims that the national COVID infection rate must be identical to the rate of positive PCR tests among 100,000 randomly selected people.
Disappointed in Kate. I thought more of her than this bullshit virtue signalling nonsense.
She looks more like Jacinda…
Just an observation (since I live in the area covered by one of these “trusts”, and hail from another:
In the north and west, masks for patients and visitors; in the east, masks for visitors only.
What piece of convoluted idiocy to explain the difference?
In the file picture, a lot of bare-armed females – presumably lathered up their arms with gel?
Any answers?
After 2.5 years of this, they should now be able to provide real world data that these NPIs have a benefit.
If they can’t, a robust ‘no’ should be the answer to any of these.
How can we stop this nonsense.
Pure theatre. Time for Truss to stand up and call them out.
Where is the Right Dishonorable Chris Whitty?. I smell Jimmy Hoffa
Or Martin Borman…
Neil Feguson revealed as one of the Wellcome Five…
Sir Patrick Vallance in the metaphorical equivalent to a submarine to South America…
Not going to happen. We are over it psychologically. Hubby flew to Germany last month, everyone told to don their face nappies, only compliance was from the crew.
Brilliant.
I hate confrontation, so on my visits to the doctor and then the consultant in the past 10 days, I just smiled sweetly and walked past all the ‘YOU MUST WEAR A MASK IN THIS AREA’ signs, ignoring them completely. I did offer to put one on for the masked doctor, though said I’d prefer not to (I really hate confrontation), but he was dismissive and didn’t seem to care. At the hospital, the receptionist took one look at my unmasked face and promptly removed hers, saying she was too hot. The consultant did not wear one himself. A big smile seems to help in these situations
Good news. These days, the dentist I use only wears them, along with eye protection/close-up lenses etc, when using certain tools, but not when doing routine check-ups. The last time I went there, a couple of months back, one of the receptionists wore one, the other didn’t, nor any of the other patients.
“Is this supposed to be living with Covid? Have they not noticed yet that the masks and distancing aren’t achieving anything?”
More to the point WTF are they still using a known fraudulent test which is as useless as it is spurious.
We’ve got to say NO to this nonsense.
I took my Partner to Bedford North Wing recently for a routine blood test. Masks everywhere! Anyway queued up at reception, everyone masked apart from me and said Partner. Got to the front immediately asked by non masked receptionist behind screen “where are your masks?” To which we reply “don’t wear them” Partner says exempt . “Anyway” say I “government restrictions have been lifted since March”. “They haven’t here” says she to which I say “well there’s no statutory requirement to wear masks”. “ Don’t argue with me” she says, trying to provoke me. Obviously with an eye on the notices warning people about abusing NHS staff forgetting it’s mostly the other way round! “I’m not” says I “just telling you the facts”. Partner gets annoyed with me for supposedly being aggressive towards receptionist. They are so clever at dividing people makes you very cross. Incidentally just before we got to the front said receptionist walked out from behind her sanctuary and put a mask on then walked back and took it off just before she sat down. Insane. Just before we ambled off, the receptionist mumbled something about if we don’t wear masks then her colleagues will get “Covid” and they won’t be able to come into work. I suggested they stopped their fraudulent testing which went down like the proverbial! It’s the gift that keeps on giving!!
Absolute madness. Please tell me I’m not going crazy.
“Please tell me I’m not going crazy.”
You are not. I salute you. Don’t forget, a position as hospital / doctor’s receptionist always used to be seen as a a fast track to the SS. Tackling one of them buggers is almost over and above the call of duty.
Thank you my old man used to call doctor’s receptionists dragons.
masks and social distancing can fuck off the visiting is truly evil, my dad had a heart attack in feb and it was so distressing not to be able to visit especially for my mum she would normally just be with a family member all day
They’re not going to give up, are they.
Everyone talks of exemptions but by claiming an exception, you are joining their game of ‘Let’s see who’s allowed rights today’.
“No I don’t wear one” is the only answer, with a further point that if they want to live in a society where everyone covers their face, they should piss off to Nigeria and join Boko Haram.
Hear, hear.
I work in one of the hospitals mentioned in the article. The motion is very daft and detrimental to the patients. Do authorities want to say that so called vaccinations don’t work?!
That photo is hideous. Princess Kate should not be there, masked up, being photographed with those other idiots.She’s perpetuating the myth.
It looks like they are ramping up hysteria in readiness for more ridiculous Covid nonsense.
Waddaya mean; “Masks have returned?” For those of us who refused to partake of Mask 1.0, Mask 2.0 ain’t likely to gain much traction. Bring it on.