For some time now it has been crystal clear that the existence of so-called ‘mask mandates’ within the NHS is a postcode lottery.
Whether you are expected to ‘mask up’ in your GP surgery or hospital is often entirely due to the personal whims of local managers and bureaucrats. Ever since June of last year, when NHS management changed its ‘guidance’ to remove the mandatory requirement to wear face coverings as a default across the entire health service, decision-making has been left to local institutions.
As previous investigations have shown, one group of usual suspects responsible for the imposition of ineffectual masks are those who are part of Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) departments. However, as The Covid Physician describes in the Hallowe’en 2022 section of his ‘end of year’ missive, anyone who has the mojo for imposing restrictions can be part of the mask police; from junior GP receptionists to senior trust managers. All it seems to take to rekindle fear amongst the public and colleagues is an unshakeable belief in one’s ‘right think’ and virtue, combined with a total unwillingness to consider any other information or perspective.
The latest example of this masking madness can be found in the recent pronouncement of the combined Northampton and Kettering Hospitals Trusts where, because of a “significant increase in Covid, flu, RSV and norovirus infections”, masks have been reintroduced. Along with other regressive and soul-crushing measures, such as restricting patient visits, we are expected to believe that masks will “reduce infection risk”, “prevent the spread of infections” and “prevent staff absences”. Bearing in mind that none of these interventions have done anything to help in these matters in the past, why we are expected to believe that they will effect any change now stretches credulity beyond breaking point.
But then, when it comes to ‘following science’, Northampton and Kettering hospitals have a very poor track record, stretching back to the beginning of this Covid period. In June 2020, then-CEO Sonia Swart commented in her mask and face covering statement that, “Evidence has confirmed that face coverings can help reduce the risk of transmission if someone is suffering from coronavirus but not showing symptoms – if they are asymptomatic”. What that evidence might have been, users of the hospitals’ services weren’t told, but they were reassured that, even though they could be “fabric, non-medical”, these masks would “help protect them and others”. This faith in the magical properties of pieces of cloth to protect against a tiny airborne virus was reiterated in the guidance that accompanied Dr. Swart’s message, noting that surgical masks were not “necessary”, coverings such as a scarf or bandana being “acceptable”.
And so it has continued, with the hospitals reintroducing masks in July 2022 as a response to the “U.K. experiencing a very significant spike in COVID-19 cases” and the “current variants being infectious”. In September these restrictions were relaxed, only to be reimposed in October for the same reasons and to serve the same goals of “protecting vulnerable people” and easing the impact of staff going sick.
As to who is responsible for these seesaw measures, the buck seems to stop with two individuals: Fay Gordon, Chief Operating Officer (COO) for Kettering Hospital Trust, and Palmer Winstanley, COO for Northampton Hospital Trust and non-voting member of the combined hospital group’s board. Winstanley, a former British Army captain, has worked within the NHS for about three years. (Irony of ironies, the Northampton IPC department won the Investors in the Environment “Best Waste Reduction Project” award in 2022 for its “be PPE free” campaign, which concentrated on reducing excessive use of personal protective equipment.)
In their public pronouncements, similar to Dr. Swart in 2020, neither Gordon nor Winstanley have chosen to share the evidential basis for their decisions to re-inflict mask misery on their patients. Like so many NHS management mavens, they seem unable – or unwilling – to understand that there is only weak and contradictory evidence that supports a position that a piece of damp cloth offers any protection against a virus, and plenty that shows they introduce risks and harms to the wearers.
Is this determination to ignore the facts and instead continue to use a mixture of faith and hope as a means of protecting the vulnerable based on anything other than blind belief? Or is it a pig-headed resolve never to admit an error of judgement; an example of the sunk cost fallacy in action? Either way, we have to hope, for the sake of the patients of Northampton and Kettering Hospitals, that things change and these mask manoeuvres come to an end soon.
Paul Stevens is a member of Smile Free, which campaigns for the end of mask mandates and masking.
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As I’ve said before, masking is a filthy habit and terrible for the environment. Why is this still even a thing?
What’s really attractive is seeing someone wearing a white surgical mask with a dark vertical line above the nose, showing where grubby fingers have pushed up on the mask for days/weeks/months on end. Thank you for keeping me safe….
Not only disgusting but everyday I find myself picking the revolting things up off the pavement. If people really believe this is a deadly disease why are they throwing their germs around the streets of Britain?
I am constantly amazed when I see someone wearing one with the top edge underneath the nose, (A jaunty style called the ‘Chinnian’), as if the virus only arrives in the body by mouth. What kind of mentality do you have to have for that.?
Viruses can also enter via the eyes. Masks, as my mother would say, are load of old hooey.
Or ears. Or scratches in the skin.
Or eyes. Best put blindfolds on, eh.
Or a plastic bag over the head.
Full body armour is needed me thinks.
Or rolling around inside a plastic ball.
I think that the plastic face visors are even more amusing, so long as you are heavily into schadenfreude.
As I understand it, they are duty bound to treat, so you can simply refuse to wear one. They will try to make you feel uncomfortable but will relent.
Make them feel uncomfortable back. Ask them if you can have this in writing with name signed and printed, their address (or position or whatever) and what exactly they are demanding. Take a photograph of them. Tell them they’ll be hearing from you…
NHS First; Do harm – masks – jabs lockdowns
Stand in the Park
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Make friends & keep sane
Elms Field
Wokingham RG40 2FE
(near Everyman Cinema and play area)
Dead right! I find them offensive and if anyone, including ( and in particular ) health professionals wore one when speaking with me I’d ask them to remove it.
I have asked health professionals to remove their masks so that I can understand them better – post infection cognitive issues – all the hospital clinical staff did remove theirs, my GP refused as it was for my safety! Processing speech without the visual cues of lip movements & facial expression wipes me out.
The staff who did remove theirs were only too glad to do so!
These My correlation is bigger than your correlation! debates need to end. It’s unacceptable to force people to hide their faces, muffle their voices and inhibit their breathing in public, no matter who believes what this will or will not also accomplish. People who are convinced they absolutely cannot live with other people having such extreme rights are free to change their gender (insofar necessary) and emigrate to Iran. End of story.
I agree. I don’t think masks work – and the “science” backs me on that – but honestly I would not wear one even if it could be proved they did.
I will second that tof.
Seriously, what science? Whenever somebody wants to make an important looking statement about face masking, he puts some statistic together which contains the correlations correlating with what he wants to say. Pro mask people have statistics with correlations they claim demonstrate that masks work, anti mask people have statistics with correlations claimed to show that they don’t and/or have harmful effects. Nothing of this qualifies as science, it’s just two tribes of opposing sages bombarding each other and the world with meaningless numbers.
Science is observing some hithero unexplained real-world phenomenon, formulating a theory to explain it based on the observation and then designing and conducting repeatable experiments supposed to prove or disprove the theory. At least with our present knowledge and technical abilities, designing and conducting repeatable experiments proving or disproving that such-and-such a thing causes or prevents an infection with something as miniscule and omnipresent as airborne, endemic viruses is simply not possible as we cannot reset living organisms into the state they were in before the experiment started after it was completed and have no reliable way to cause presence or absence of these viruses.
Handwaiving while chanting syllables of power (or rather, wielding spreadsheets with numbers of power) is not science.
I was referring to the numerous studies which all fail to show any benefit. Call them science, call them what you like, but my point is that the case for masks has not been proved beyond a reasonable doubt, though because of the huge complication involved the whole area is difficult – too many factors.
I suggest to call them policy-based evidence making[*]. Or rather making of something which can be passed off as evidence.
[*] Ironically, the German RKI (Robert Koch Institute) claims to be in the exact business of doing that,
https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/Institut/Ausbau_zum_Public-Health-Institut/RKI2025.pdf?__blob=publicationFile
as someone accidentally mistranslated the English produce evidence, put proofs in front of someone, into fabricate proofs.
Challenge: –
Explain how a (poorly fitting) cloth mask with pores around 70 nanometers diameter, can prevent passage of virions less than 1 nanometer in size.
This was pointed out at the start of the Covid scam and likened to the use of wiremesh fences to keep mosquitoes out.
Even accepted by WHO (until the dodgy contracts and brown envelopes for flying in masks from Turkey, China etc had been signed.)
Do your best. A convincing response may win you a banana.
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This is the output of apropos man | head -n 10
base64 encoded and it’s absolutely a good as any other kind of shit someone with more fantasy than creativity can make up. Please feel free to use it as reason for or against anything you want to support or oppose.
Thing is, we never saw this public masking before the shamdemic. If this virus ever was a serious threat, it has now at any rate ceased to be. Has anything changed to make the current situation different to 2019, apart from psychologically?
Oh, we did. In the middle ages, so-called plague doctors used masks to try to avoid succumbing to the plague. This didn’t work and the practice was again discarded. Until a Chinese guy called Wu (you couldn’t make this up) managed to convince himself that masks must work against the plague in 1911 (during the so-called Manchurian Plague). This then convinced our (still) boombaby overlords that another valid and pleasingly exotic (imagine it’s from China!) alternate truth had been found and hence, we were unkindly asked (or rather, harshly ordered) to forget what had been common knowledge for the last 600 years.
They proved with the jabathon that they are not interested in the best outcomes for their patients. Quite simply, there are far too many NHS employees who think the service exists for their benefit and see patients not as paying customers but as a massive inconvenience.
Quite right.
Like those bus drivers who are happy to drive a bus but hate picking up passengers. A few are to be found in every city.
“there are far too many NHS employees who think the service exists for their benefit“
But that’s just it – it does (like all other nationalised industries)
The article’s photo helps me identify seven idiots I hope I need never meet, let alone depend upon in any way, let alone for my health and wellbeing (mental and physical).
About to break into a high energy “Jeruselama”, routine by the looks of it.
I’ll be honest, the stupidest thing I saw today was when I went to an exhibition and outside the loos was a sign that read, “Please use before entering the toilets”, next to a big bottle of hand sanitizer. I’m fairly certain you wouldn’t have seen that pre-Covid and it just seemed to sum up the Clown World, topsy turvey reality that we all unfortunately must deal with. But not a single muzzle was spied ( not even on the 3 chahuahuas being pushed around in a buggy ) so that was a reasonable trade-off.
Maybe it was the modern version of the old engineers joke that you could always tell an engineer, because they were the ones who washed their hands before having a shit.
My GP surgery in Wales still insists everyone wears a mask when coming into the building, and the reception staff are pretty aggressive about enforcing the rule.
I’m not sure, though, whether the nurses and doctors in the surgery could refuse to see a patient who refuses to wear a mask.
And even if in theory they shouldn’t refuse, I’m not sure what a patient could do to force the issue if they were refused an appointment in practice.
Has anyone on this site challenged such GP rules successfully where they live?
Absolutely.
Tell ’em you are exempt.
That should suffice.
I remember two instances where I had to go further, both in the District Hospital.
The first was the kind official who said that without a mask I must stand 2m away from her screen. I, of course, complied but made a performance of not being able to hear / understand her. She tired of this dumb show before I did.
In the other instance, I was curtly reminded that “We do have Covid cases in here, you know!”, to which I responded “Well, I never! Who would have thought it. Sick people in a hospital! Do you also have ladies who are pregnant and due to give birth, in another ward, perhaps?”
She didn’t persist.
Many thanks for your reply, and I’m v impressed with your determination to resist this particularly stupid ‘health’ measure!
It’s happening again because only a very small proportion of the general public read beyond the headlines, which are produced by institutions that refuse to tell the truth, presumably because they fear they’ll lose their funding (by Gates/Soros/whoever).
I have now written twice to the CEO of Bedford NHS Trust (David Carter) asking him for the rationale behind forcing people to wear masks in hospitals and GPs surgeries and………..
Surely the sunk cost fallacy with regard to all the PPE that is still unused and being stored somewhere – what better way to get rid of it than persuade everyone that they need to use it?
The Mask re introduction is just an excuse a cover if you will excuse the pun for an NHS that is so incompetent, so utterly self absorbed in keeping itself fully stocked up with tax payers cash, without supplying anything other than a 3rd world service, it has cunningly found a blame. Us, If we don’t wear a bit of cloth over our faces when entering its hallowed halls of death, we are the ones responsible for its inability to perform, the bit of dirty cloth on your face is according to the NHS the best medicine, the cure all and preventative for all diseases, and if not worn then its our fault that the system is breaking down.
We own the NHS, we decide, its unfit for purpose, its management structure and people couldn’t manage a sh– flow in a sewer, so deny them their excuse, refuse the cloth covering and sue those who have the temerity to treat us as saps.
Typical NHS behaviour. Two pig ignorant administrators in positions of such authority that they can make bovine faeces decisions in the total absence of any empirical evidence and absolutely nobody with the relevant clinical expertise can challenge these thickos.
This must be why “the NHS is the envy of the world” Ho, feckin ho ho.
Surgeon tells it like it is…
Save the image I posted below. And bookmark this
https://brownstone.org/articles/studies-and-articles-on-mask-ineffectiveness-and-harms/
“More than 170 Comparative Studies and Articles on Mask Ineffectiveness and Harms”
The tale of the young lady on GB News this week who has hounded by 11 hospital staff members, threatened with being dragged out and the police called because she refused to wear a silly mask with 650-micron holes in it. (A micron is a micro millimetre, or one thousandth of a millimetre)———–The virus is only 5 microns so will and does easily pass through the mask. Imagine throwing 100 snooker balls at some scaffolding. Sure a few balls may hit a pole but most will go straight through. ———–We now live in age where “official science” masquerades as “science” and it is used in a kind of scientific dictatorship where no questions are permitted, and we must simply obey. Just like the “official science” regarding climate. The climate we are told is changing due to humans and that is the end of that discussion. No questions are permitted. Even when the facts don’t fit the theory, which is mostly all of the time, we must all pretend that they do, or we will be dragged out into the street in the case of the young lady on GB news, or have not a rag left on us because we are “climate deniers”, one of the most truly unscientific and infantile terms ever.
Just refuse. My GP receptionist asked if I would wear a mask and I said no. Nothing more was said. At a hospital for tests, the letter said masks must be worn, there were signs everywhere saying they must be worn and everybody was wearing them. I didn’t and nobody said a word. Be brave otherwise the government wins.
FOIA request for their so-called evidence, me thinks.