In our supposedly liberal and transparent democratic country, it seems that it was a group of remote and unnamed scientists, outside of the formal SAGE infrastructure, who effectively imposed masks on British citizens. Were they well-meaning academics offering their expertise, or conflicted ideologues engaged in a global endeavour to control the masses? You decide.
The volte-face on mask recommendations and regulations by the U.K. Government and its public health experts in 2020 is one of the many unfathomable policy decisions we witnessed during the Covid era. Within little more than a month, our ministers, senior scientists and medical leaders flipped from a stance of repeatedly imploring us all not to wear a face covering in community settings to a totalitarian one of imposing mask mandates. Who was primarily responsible for this remarkable U-turn?
Based on the recent revelations from former Health Secretary Matt Hancock, it seems that the political whims of Dominic Cummings (former Government advisor) and Nicola Sturgeon (First Minister of Scotland) may have been influential. Nonetheless, the quirks of political figures are unlikely to have been sufficient to achieve a mask U-turn, and support from expert scientific advisors would have been necessary. Which academics performed this role of mask enforcers? Astonishingly, a thorough exploration of SAGE minutes – and the compilation of a decision-making timeline – during the prelude to this policy reversal implicates an obscure multi-disciplinary group most of us will never have heard of: DELVE, which stands for Data Evaluation and Learning for Viral Epidemics.
What the experts believed prior to March and early April 2020
In the early spring of 2020, the public health experts spoke with one tongue. Here are a few reminders of their collective wisdom:
In terms of wearing a mask, our advice is clear: that wearing a mask if you don’t have an infection reduces the risk almost not at all. So we do not advise that.
Professor Chris Whitty, England’s Chief Medical Officer (March 4th 2020).
“For the average member of the public” masks “are really not a good idea… people can put themselves at more risk than less… you can actually trap the virus in the mask and start breathing it in.
Dr. Jenny Harries, England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer (March 12th 2020).
The global evidence is masks in the general population don’t work.
Professor Jason Leitch, Scotland’s Clinical Director (April 3rd 2020)
We do not recommend masks for general wearing.
Professor Jonathan Van Tam, England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer (April 3rd 2020)
The experts were so clearly united in their anti-mask stance that, around this time, the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) banned the advertisements of two companies because of spurious claims that their face coverings would protect against coronavirus. This intervention by the ASA won the unequivocal support of Professor Stephen Powis (NHS Medical Director) who said, “Callous firms looking to maximise profits by pushing products that fly in the face of official advice is outright dangerous and has rightly been banned.”
Clearly, mass-masking requirements were not being considered at this time. So what happened next?
The lukewarm phase: April 7th-20th 2020
In the aftermath of the all-too-brief period of sanity – when the wearing of face coverings in community settings was recognised as ineffective and likely to do more harm than good – SAGE undertook a period of information gathering, probing the academic landscape, seemingly in search of a justification for widespread masking. Two weeks into the first lockdown, maybe they were harbouring a thirst for more restrictions or simply reacting to pressure from the media to ‘do something’. However, the expert feedback they received between April 7th and April 20th was generally lukewarm about the potential value of pushing masks on healthy people.
A report (dated April 7th) from UNCOVER – a group based at Edinburgh University – concluded from its evidence review that, “Wearing face masks in the community was not significantly associated with a reduction in episodes of influenza-like illness” and that, “Mask wearing alone, in the absence of other preventative measures, is unlikely to be effective.” The SAGE minutes of the same date also refer to the work of NERVTAG (New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group) who had apparently stated that “increased use of masks would have minimal effect (in terms of preventing the uninfected general population from becoming infected)”.
Given this converging advice that masks constituted a poor viral barrier, did the SAGE experts now accept that no further mask policies were indicated? No: two days later – as recorded in their minutes of April 9th – SAGE asked for more information, and requested that NERVTAG produce another paper on masks, “including any behavioural aspects” (emphasis added) associated with them, “drawing on SPI-B as necessary”. The membership of NERVTAG included staunch Covid-restriction advocates such as Professors Neil Ferguson, Malcolm Semple and John Edmunds. The SPI-B (the behavioural science subgroup of SAGE) would have recognised the potential power of masks to ‘nudge’ people into compliance with public-health diktats. If you were intent on seeking validation for masking people in the community, one might expect these two groups to deliver.
But, perhaps surprisingly, both NERVTAG and SPI-B remained unconvinced about the net benefits of the routine wearing of face coverings by healthy people.
In the NERVTAG paper dated April 13th, titled “Face masks in the community” the overarching conclusion was: “Overall there is insufficient evidence to recommend universal use of face masks in the community.” Specifically, they summarised their policy options as:
- Universal face masks in the community: NOT RECOMMENDED
- Facemasks for all for short periods of unavoidable close contact: PERMISSIVE
- Face masks in community for vulnerable individuals for short periods: RECOMMENDED
So apart from those with significant existing vulnerabilities, these experts were opposed to mandating the generalised masking of the populace. The main SAGE minutes of April 16th reflect this conclusion, reiterating the finding that, “Evidence from RCTs are inconclusive regarding the protective effects of face masks when worn in household or community settings”, and raising additional concerns about community masking, including: supply constraints; the practicability for transport and shop workers to wear masks a whole day; and the potential to increase complacency around other restrictions (such as social distancing). Intriguingly, after echoing these research results and their reservations about imposing further mask requirements, an addendum to SAGE’s April 16th minutes commits to providing revised mask guidance by week commencing April 20th. Furthermore, within this addendum, there is an explicit action for the Chief Medical Officer to produce “a summary of recommendations on wearing face masks drawing on evidence synthesis from DELVE” [My emphasis]. Maybe they were already aware of the pro-mask cavalry coming over the horizon?
Meanwhile, the behavioural science ‘nudgers’ in the SPI-B group published their paper on April 20th in which they highlight the potential for both benefits and negative outcomes of recommending masks in the community. Predictably, they promote face coverings as a way to “demonstrate that an individual is concerned about other people’s welfare and is enacting desired social norms” – an effective enforcer of the ‘ego’ and ‘normative pressure’ nudges, to use the language of behavioural science. But, in addition, they draw attention to some of the undesirable implications of mask mandates, including the “negative evaluation and harassment of people who are not wearing face masks, leading to division which could undermine collective solidarity”. So this was far from a resounding endorsement of face coverings in the community.
Then along came DELVE.
DELVE: The mask enforcers
On April 21st 2020, DELVE submitted a paper to SAGE titled, “Report on face masks for the general public”. Given the strident pro-mask content and tone of this review – in stark contrast to previous analyses from other sources – it is reasonable to propose that this group of academics, remote from the mainstream Covid decision-making apparatus, was primarily responsible for forcibly muzzling the British people.
Citing a ragbag of highly selective laboratory and observational studies, along with wild overestimates of the degree of asymptomatic transmission and a corruption of the precautionary principle (assuming the intervention is the safe, default position), the DELVE group clamoured for the general public to cover their faces with plastic and cloth. Their intent was clear from the first sentence of their report:
Face masks offer an important tool for managing forward transmission of COVID-19 within the general population.
The core of DELVE’s flawed rationale is to ignore the consistent findings of randomised controlled trials that community masking achieves no appreciable reduction in viral transmission, ignore the widespread harms associated with mass masking, and to then make three implausible assertions:
- Assertion 1: As many as 80% of infectious people do not have any symptoms. This largely reflects a failure to recognise that an asymptomatic person who tests positive is not necessarily infectious; indeed, research suggests people without symptoms contribute very little to the propagation of a pandemic.
- Assertion 2: Droplets constitute a major mode of transmission. Yet there is a growing consensus that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is mainly spread by microscopic aerosols, so to expect face coverings to act as a barrier is like expecting a tennis net to be impermeable to sand.
- Assertion 3: Face masks reduce the spread of droplets. Even if they do, the invalidity of the two previous assertions renders this one largely irrelevant.
Based on this triad of false assertions, DELVE determined to influence national policy by proclaiming that, “Widespread use of surgical and homemade face masks among the public can have a significant mitigating effect on the spread of COVID-19”. On the back of the DELVE report, other groups with histories of pushing for tougher restrictions joined the clamour to mask the U.K. For example, a paper from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine reported that – based on their own modelling, no less – high compliance with face coverings could achieve a “modest impact” on viral transmission. On April 21st, the SAGE minutes included a statement that, “There is enough evidence to support recommendation of community use of cloth face masks.” Subsequently, on April 25th, the British Medical Association urged the Government to mandate masks for the general public when outside of their homes.
Predictably, the Government acquiesced. Commencing on June 15th 2020, masks were sequentially mandated on public transport, indoor retail and leisure facilities, and – shamefully – in schools. Failure to acquiesce to this state coercion put British citizens at risk of fines, exclusion from work and participation in everyday life. People were habitually harassed and vilified for opting not to cover their airways with cloth or plastic. Based on the timeline described above, it is reasonable to conclude that DELVE was primarily culpable for the imposition of a restriction that was both ineffective and harmful, as well as a gross infringement of basic human rights and freedoms.
But what is DELVE, this obscure group spouting half-truths and driving the mainstream mask narrative?
DELVE: membership and affiliations
DELVE is an initiative convened by the Royal Society (a U.K. scientific academy, “dedicated to promoting excellence in science for the benefit of humanity”). This learned society with such a lofty aim describes DELVE as, “A multi-disciplinary group… to support a data-driven approach to learning from the different approaches countries are taking to managing the pandemic” (sic). Apparently, the work of this group has been “discussed with and welcomed by Government, who have arranged for it to provide input through SAGE”. I do not recall this arrangement being shared with the British public at a Whitty and Vallance press conference in 2020, but maybe I missed it?
The Royal Society has been staunchly pro-restriction throughout the Covid era, and its commitment to mask coercion is demonstrated by its hosting and promoting of DELVE’s policy-changing output on its own website on May 5th 2020. True to form, the Royal Society followed this up with its own strongly pro-mask paper on June 26th 2020, within which they lauded particularly the value of masks in conveying psychological messages that promote general compliance with restrictions, lending further weight to the premise that face coverings were imposed mainly as a method of people control rather than to limit viral spread. By July 10th 2020, Venki Ramakrishnan (the Royal Society president) was telling the Guardian that “refusing to wear a mask in public during the COVID-19 epidemic should become as socially unacceptable as drink driving or not wearing a seatbelt”.
Inspection of the individuals involved in DELVE is also informative. Perusal of the membership list of its “Steering Committee” – “a high-level expert group to oversee the work and communicate findings to the Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor and his networks in Government” – reveals that many have close affiliations, not only with the Royal Society, but with other pro-restriction and highly-conflicted organisations such as the Wellcome Trust and Imperial College London (the latter being the home of the arch-modeller, Professor Neil Ferguson). Members include: Devi Shridar, Professor of Global Health at Edinburgh University, holder of a Wellcome Trust investigator award, Founding Director of the Global Health Governance Programme and with previous involvement in the World Economic Forum Council on the Health Industry; Demis Hassabis, an expert in artificial intelligence whose stated mission is to solve “the problem of intelligence” and then to use AI “to solve everything else”; and Daniel Kahneman, Professor of Psychology at Princetown University and world-renowned behavioural scientist. So these are some of the scientists who decided that the British people would be coerced into wearing face coverings: a media darling of the lockdown-and-jab-them approach to pandemic management, a fervent advocate of transhumanism, and an American ‘nudger’.
Plainly, it was not only the unaccountable scientists at SAGE who directed policy throughout the Covid era. Regarding mask decrees, the hidden technocrats at DELVE played a central role in compelling us all to cover our faces in community settings. In a purportedly democratic and liberal society, should anonymous influencers – prone to bias and corruption – be making decisions that intrude into all our lives? I think not.
Dr. Gary Sidley is a retired NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist and co-founder of the Smile Free campaign. He blogs at Coronababble.
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The shorthand to all this is that two of the principals who started the so-called “pandemic,” Jeremy Farrar, best buddy of the well known American mass murderer Anthony Fauci, and Billy Gates, mass murderer in general were behind the mask programme in the UK and across the world in general.
That’s a shocker.
But not a surprise ! I bet Susan Michie was involved before her elevation to the WHO !
Cross referencing with Laura Dodsworth’s A State of Fear, I believe SPI-B where more balanced at the beginning but gradually the more ethical members where sidelined and dropped. Similar to what happens with the more cautious members of the JCVI.
Its clear to me that they simply went fishing for ‘evidence’ until they found what they wanted, and then declared the science Settled.
I’m still not clear whose hand was up whose backside – were SAGE doing the bidding of their political masters, or were their political masters being led a merry by dance by SAGE either just gone mad on power or following orders from Satanists overseas?
It was always obvious that masks were purely performative but well done Mr Sidley for untangling that particular web.
Indeed, an insightful deep dive by Dr Sidley, but yes – however the instruction came about, the purpose was clearly insidious (outside the fact masks are essentially useless. Even Mr Science himself.. St.Fauci agreed until he received the memo). They were simply a tool used by the powers that be to facilitate the mind control in those moments the masses weren’t receiving the Op. Mockingbird control transmission. Those who complied genuinely thought the world had changed (critical thinking was forbidden) when they’re dutifully reminding themselves to reach for that symbolic muzzle each & every time they ventured out the house into the big, wide dangerous new world (and dutifully placed it back in their coat pocket once they got home spreading ALL the contaminants everywhere – and back on their faces the next day. One could argue that “advice” caused an unnecessary continuation of infection)
Good to know that my utter refusal ever to wear a mask, and the several arguments it got me into, was a two-fingered salute to the charlatans, criminals and sad excuses for human beings mentioned in this article.
It’s the Season of Goodwill and all that, but my God I detest them.
Same here; happy Christmas!
Same to you. I’ll be downing a wee dram this evening, raising the glass to all sceptics.
Goodwill Hunting?
The Royal Society is clearly as dodgy as all the rest of these pharmafia supporting journals & quangos. How else can they eat? Or buy private eduction for their saline children?
The membership of DELVE (DEVEL) {see MHRA (HARM)} is clearly made up of the brown nosing subordinates of Billy and Burner Phone whose raison d’être was solely the uptake of the jabs.
Unthinking zombie-like compliance (thanks to Goebbelsian levels of propaganda) was set in train by the mask mandate. Get that through at all costs was the mantra and it will unlock compliance further down the line, where it really matters.
Mandating masks ‘for the good of society and keeping grandma safe’ was TOTALLY necessary to the PLAN. A sine qua non. Accept masks / masking you’ll accept ANYTHING.
This was global, planned and a stepping stone to GENE THERAPY COMPLIANCE.
DELVE was given this job. DELVE and its evil unscientific output has led to unprecedented death and misery & its members are up to their necks in it.
Great article. More delving please.
Royal Society motto: ‘Nullius in verba’. (Translated ‘Nothing on authority’.)
Yeah right.
Another hitherto respectable institution down the pan, like so many other institutions taken down by charlatans, frauds and cowards.
I’ve never worn a mask. Unfortunately, throughout the ‘mask sentence’ I was in regular need of NHS “diagnostics” shall we say. Did I have some ding dongs about masks with NHS staff. I never backed down though. Bastards!
I actually did wear a mask, a proper one, when I was pulling the old fibreglass insulation out of my loft space. But imo that doesn’t count.
I hope other forum readers will forgive me, but I really didn’t want that fibreglass in my lungs.
I grant you a pardon. Peace be upon you.
Many thanks. Although Peace isn’t Upon Me – I hate the bastards. .
Diapers were inevitable. No science supports the shit catching rags of course. None. The whole point was fear. The diapers are akin to a swastika band on your arm. Denotes cult membership. Sufficiently terrified. The face anus wrapped were of course also sufficiently stabbed, keepnig abreast of the latest stabbination, doing ‘their duty’. The diaper confirmed their religiousity, their terror at the 0.03% IFR flu. That is why I hate them. I confront them. I laugh at them. The are f*ing idiots and the elite, SAGE, DELVE, MORON, whatever alphabet agency of irrationality, know that. Fear not science was the goal.
I recall reading the Royal Society paper. It was manifestly obvious that they started with the premise that they wanted everyone to mask up and then wrote a paper to support it. The evidence cited in the paper emphatically did not support their conclusion. I pretty much lost all remaining faith in science at that point.
Pure test of compliance and subjugation of society as the quote from SPI-B “demonstrate that an individual is concerned about other people’s welfare and is enacting desired social norms”
The mask travesty goes beyond any one country.
Jaap van Dissel, a professor in infectious diseases, was head of the Dutch Outbreak Management Team. From day 1 (March 2020) he advised against masks, on the grounds they did not work, that people would be likely to be more careless if they wore them and would be touching their face far more often. In May 2020 PM Rutte mandated face rags for public transport, Van Dissel made the public point that this was a political decision and he maintained that masks did not work. This type of public contradiction is not common in NL.
From that point on certain politicians pushed and pushed for face rags – among them, then health minister De Jonge, primary school teacher, and the mayor of Amsterdam, a former journalist and former MP. They were doing so on the advice of a group calling themselves the ‘Red Team’, who were openly undermining the OMT. The leader of that group was the former head of the Dutch public health authority, the RIVM (Van Dissel was then and still is the head of the RIVM). Again, for a former head to so publicly undermine a current head of an organisation is not common in NL, simply not done.
Van Dissel carried out a study, citing numerous studies that masks did not work and maintained his position. Then newspaper articles started appearing in foreign press saying how the Dutch were not masking up and how bad that was. Dutch politicians in general and PM Rutte in particular do not like bad press abroad, they are more concerned about what foreigners say than their own citizens, whom they clearly hold in contempt. By November 2020 it was decided that people would be forced to wear face rags indoors in shops and the like as of 1 December 2020. On 1 December 2020 the RIVM website still stated that masks did not work and were not recommended but were now mandatory.
An openly political decision, in direct contravention of the Dutch constitution – something the health min. confirmed, stating it was worth a short, that the violation of constitutional rights was justified on the basis of “no harm, no foul”. The courts accepted that ridiculous ground for violating the constitution, claiming the government was acting on the basis of evidence and expert advice (both glaringly untrue).
Belgium had a mask mandate and strict lockdown between March 2020 and December 2020, contrary to more relaxed NL next door. The Dutch death rate per million was (still is) half that of Belgium. The real question is who was behind this? We know the why – picking on tiny Sweden was one thing, but with NL taking a similar tack and proving that all the measures made no difference, this had to be stopped or the whole game would fall apart. What caused the outrageous and unwarranted u-turn on a policy that was evidence-based and had proven its worth between March 2020 and December 2020 to the hysteria-led, fundamental rights abusing voodoo that followed?
Clearly the effort to get everyone muzzled was global and highly coordinated.
With regard to their use on public transport, it looked like a copycat job based on the culture of using them on certain crush-loaded metropolitan lines in Japan, e.g. the Tokyo underground system.
These were psyops in an undeclared psychological war. Therefore war crimes. These people deserve a short trial, a hemp loop to applied C3, a long drop. Sorted.
Great detailed article. I’d never heard of DELVE. Yet another slithering parasite slipping silently past the democratic gate.
Should also be remembered that the WHO did a u-turn as reported by the ex-BBC health journalist Deborah Cohen, who tweeted that sources had told her that the relevant WHO technical committee had rejected masks but were overridden for political reasons.
The WHO report was a joke. Anyone who actually bothered to read it could see clearly that even after the pressure the support was reluctant, to say the least.
After a long preamble stating the lack of evidence for masking, they gave three possible, very feeble, rationales for masking one of which was that some people in poor countries struggling financially could make some extra income from selling masks. Kid you not.
It will take years to fully digest the storm of madness that was unleashed on us.
Would love to have tape or video recordings or unredacted email exchanges that reveal where the orders came from. Somewhere, surely someone has been careless.
Based on this article, DELVE didn’t decide to mask the British public. DELVE was just the committee created and used for that purpose when it seems NERVTAG and SPI-B couldn’t come up with the scientific rationale for masking.
It would seem that some of the people within SAGE would simply not take no for an answer. Who? And who was pushing them?
I’m afraid the answer to the question of who decided to push face masks remains unclear.
Great investigation.
Mask mandates were always solely about introducing a modern day Gessler hat and its humiliation and division of the people.
How anyone can still take such organisations and people serious with regard to medical competence and advise is beyond me.
Just the photo of the two senior UK health people with ridiculous cloth masks should suffice to revoke their licenses.
Not to speak of total mor*ns, who advised to wear and wore two of them on top of another….
And that farcical show when they switched to making political and pseudo-patriotic statements via the design of their cloth masks must surely go down as the confirmation of what they were really for and the pinnacle of medical idiocy.
What I would like to know next is who the heros were who sneaked in the self-exemption option in the UK, and why the ‘great’ British public was so frightened to make use of it.
I never wore a mask and never had a problem, not even in a hospital.
Some of us made use of it. I guess they are competent Civil Servants (there are a few of them), and the online publications were quite useful. Also, there was a British Standards Institution (BSI) document that gave short shrift to the whole idea for the general public back in 2020.
That said, the concept of “self-exemption” is essentially enshrined in existing Acts, such as the Human Rights Act 1998, which is anglicisation of an EU one. The sleight of hand by the politicos was creating the impression that it was a kind of licensing scheme, which it never was. Even to the extent of some quacks stating that they wouldn’t grant one (because they couldn’t, and was not their job to do it, in effect).
A great piece of investigative journalism. Thank you.
Very interesting. Thank you for helping to untangle this web of revolting criminals. As for the image at the top of the article; how pitiful to see two trained scientists sold out, with ridiculous bits of fabric on their face like something from the middle ages. I hope they forever feel the shame of having sold their souls and their principles, experience and ethics to a bunch of globalist charlatans.
Selling your soul means you never feel shame
an expert in artificial intelligence whose stated mission is to solve “the problem of intelligence” and then to use AI “to solve everything else”
Unfortunately, I’m too much of a dumbass to tie my shoe laces but I’ll build an artificial intelligence – that should be easy enough! – which will tie them for me!
Yeah baby. Mind boggles.
Doesn’t that picture of Whitty & Vallnce make you feel ill
If anyone needs someone to talk to we meet every Sunday.
Stand in the Park Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Make friends & keep sane
From 1st January 2023
Elms Field (near Everyman Cinema and play area)
Wokingham RG40 2FE
We’ve always been at war with Eurasia.
“Throughout Britain’s response to the Covid-19 crisis, a lobbying group known as the Independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (“iSAGE”) served as a key driving force behind the government’s most draconian lockdown policies.”
https://expose-news.com/2022/12/11/isage-or-indie-sage-is-a-shady-lobbying-organisation/
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Blair’s Institute for global change was found to be lurking and giving ‘advice’…
This is murkier than you think.
A shadowy group called “Masks4all” has been promoting masks internationally since early 2020.
https://masks4all.co/about-us/
They describe themselves as a “MOVEMENT FOR POPULATION-WIDE USE OF HOMEMADE MASKS AS CRITICAL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT AGAINST COVID-19”.
They seem to be based in California, but according to their website many of their founders are Czech academics. Needless to say, one of their founders is a “Young Global Leader with the World Economic Forum”.
https://masks4all.org/founders
Just seen your comment after mine about Masks4all ! I, personally, think they were the main drivers of getting the WHO and then governments to mask us up.
Many thanks Dr Sidley for lifting up the stones and uncovering all the nasty stuff hiding underneath. Why in any god’s name were these pond life given the time of day, let alone allowed to influence Government policy?
The answer to your question DBB is that our government are not in charge of government policy.
Unless already done, it sounds like an FOIA request is needed for all communicative between DELVE members, and into and out of DELVE, regarding all covid response measures, including all internal & external reports/studies/etc. consulted or referenced.
Because in the UK we can dispel the mask impositions with the magic words “I am exempt” all it shows is a way to weed out the fearful, the compliant, and the virtuous. Personally I found lockdowns a lot easier to deal with than mask madness – both the imposition itself and how it emboldened strangers to act as enforcers. A very shameful chapter in our civilisation.
This was especially frustrating while in Europe as over there we couldn’t refuse without risking fines and being helpless as parents who couldn’t prevent our kids (primary school kids!) from being muzzled all day.
I’m glad to say that the maskophiles are definitely now in the very small minority.
I thought much of the political pressure in 2020 came from a small group of tech-savvy individuals (presumably with an agenda, probably money) called Masks4all. I’ve not heard of DELVE before. Any connection?
Lot of money in masks. Billions of them were produced. Getting governments to mandate the wearing of them was a key step in the marketing plan. Thinks: ‘Who are the people who must reverse their stance on mask-wearing, and how much do we need to pay them to do it?’
There should be more transparency.