Viewed from the vantage point of the latest additions to the mountain of evidence about the lack of efficacy of face masks and their harm to wearers, that anyone – let alone a health trust – would mandate their usage to patients and staff beggars belief. But even in the early days of the COVID-19 ‘emergency’ it was clearly visible from the flipflopping guidance of ‘The Science [TM]’ that, except as a means of coercion and control, they didn’t work.
Looking back, it is quite clear that when it came to their mask policies, my employer, Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust, had little interest in patient care and staff welfare. I struggled and I was bullied, as, to my knowledge, were other staff; and I know that there were clients who missed out on the care they needed. In my view, Mersey Care was all about corporate image; it had to be seen to be doing the right thing, so it could look good in front of healthcare chiefs.
I am an experienced clinical psychologist, specialising in psychodynamic psychotherapy. I am aware of the importance of relationships and the need to see a person’s face, allowing a vast amount of information to be exchanged and for patients to feel warm and comfortable.
In July 2020, I started work for Mersey Care as a Highly Specialist Clinical Psychologist and was part of a community mental health team (CMHT). At the beginning, the relationship with my line manager, also a clinical psychologist, was a very good one.
In what was to become a running theme for Mersey Care’s mask policy, when asked about masks the response was ambiguous: some were wearing them, others weren’t.
For example, as part of Mersey Care’s standard employee induction, I attended conflict resolution training. During the classroom session, mask wearing was unnecessary. But, during the practical part, masks were required. Wishing to be flexible and amenable for my new employer, I donned one, but really struggled and felt distressed.
Thereafter, in August 2020, I had a consultation with my GP and we discussed the distress I experienced whilst wearing a mask. We agreed, given some past traumas, that I should be mask exempt. My GP explained that practices had been instructed by the Government not to issue personalised letters to people who were mask exempt, but to direct them to a Government website where people could download or print off an exemption card, which I did.
I informed my line manager about my exemption and she shared this with other managers at my hub. And for a while, there was no problem. However, in late October, the hub manager began to badger me about not wearing a mask. He seemed anxious about Covid. He implemented convoluted and restrictive rules at the hub. For example, in the staff canteen no one was permitted to eat in the company of anyone else; surplus chairs were piled in a corner and then, in an attempt to maintain this rule, sellotaped together.
My line manager started to email me about my unwillingness to wear a mask. Then she phoned me on my personal phone, outside of work hours, to discuss the matter. The following day, as I approached the hub’s staff entrance, my line manager and the hub manager, appearing out of nowhere, blocked me from entering the building; they were like bouncers at a nightclub. The hub manager was aggressive in his tone and told me that I would not be allowed into the hub unless I agreed to mask up. It felt excessive, threatening and intimidating.
I had a quick decision to make. I struggled to wear a mask, I was exempt from wearing one, and my line manager knew and accepted this. However, I had a new assistant psychologist starting work and several psychotherapy clients to see face-to-face, so I complied with their request and, taking a cloth mask from a box at the entrance, put it on.
But my compliance wasn’t sufficient for my colleagues. They proceeded to follow me to my office, with the hub manager repeatedly asking if I would keep the mask on throughout the entire building. “Would you wear a mask here? Or here?” he demanded to know. The approach was over-bearing to the point that I felt physically intimidated and anxious; my knees were shaking so much, they were banging against the top of my desk.
It was a shocking experience, unnecessary, and unsupported by any rational reality. Despite knowing I was exempt, and despite being healthy and showing no symptoms of COVID-19, Mersey Care was forcing me to wear a mask. I have always been sensible and balanced when it comes to hygiene and risk, but this was way over the top and, frankly, frightening. And now the earlier decision that I could work without a mask, suddenly changed into, ‘every staff member, exempt or not, has to wear a mask at all times, unless alone in an office space’.
Over the months, I really struggled when wearing a mask but because I had a duty of care to see clients, who really needed a psychotherapy space, I continued to make compromises with those who were wielding power over me. It was made clear that, exempt or not, I had to wear a mask or work from home. Impractical and unworkable, it put me in a deeply awkward situation, one which management appeared to have no care or thought for.
As for the clients themselves, even though Mersey Care had announced that clients who were exempt could access our services maskless, this policy was applied inconsistently and often with devastatingly bad outcomes. There were occasions when I was walking to therapy rooms with clients when nurses would approach me and demand to know why clients were unmasked. It was an invasion of privacy for people who were already struggling psychologically.
There was also the matter of people being coerced into wearing masks in a therapeutic environment. People in psychotherapy have often experienced trauma and the need for a safe space is vital. A therapist’s face can convey understanding and containment; masks impede this and they also spell danger and discomfort. A therapy room should be a safe and comfortable space. That Mersey Care persisted with this draconian mask policy for some time was extremely troubling.
With regards to my personal mask wearing, I repeatedly asked for an individual risk assessment and every time I asked, my communications were ignored by my line manager and beyond. Mersey Care even ignored a letter sent in by an employment solicitor who had advised me on the situation. No discussions, no rationale, no compassion.
Sometimes, I took the mask off. On one occasion I walked alone, for all of 10 seconds, from the bathroom to my office. The hub manager saw this. He said nothing to me, but instead submitted a datix incident report. Such reporting exists for serious clinical incidents involving staff or clients, for example those involving “falls, violence, needlestick/sharps, equipment failure and medication errors”.
As well as being disproportionate and a waste of NHS time and money, it was a staggering abuse of power and a form of bullying. The hub manager submitted two more datix reports and visited me in my office, alone, to intimidate me about this. He was like the mask police and seemed to revel in pursuing me and making me feel uncomfortable; he and Mersey Care did not seem bothered about the impact upon patient care or staff welfare. All that mattered was total compliance with mask policy.
In early February 2021, I was ordered to work from home. This was troublesome and difficult because, whilst waiting to move into a new property, I was temporarily living with my parents. I did not have a conducive home working space. Whilst some clients adapted to use of telephone or video-based therapy, some clients said they would only attend face-to-face psychotherapy and so, because of Mersey Care staff’s ruthless application of unscientific and harmful rules, they missed out on vital psychotherapy.
I have no doubt that I was being punished for being the squeaky wheel, the nail that stuck out and needed to be hammered down. At one point the chair I was using gave me back pain, but Mersey Care refused to offer me any new equipment. And upon enquiring about the cost of increased use of electricity in my home, management informed me that staff were just expected to ‘get on with it’. They simply did not care.
Notwithstanding, I adapted to home working and provided good client care. Communications to senior managers that they needed to be flexible with their mask policy elicited only a flat refusal to engage in any kind of discussion. The standard response was, “it’s the policy”. The rigidity was startling.
Eventually, after several requests for an independent assessment concerning masks, a manager referred me to occupational health. I had used its service before and it had been excellent, with caring and compassionate staff. This time the doctor assigned to my case had a cold and dismissive manner. Our telephone call lasted 17 minutes and culminated in him asking me if, so that I could overcome my fear of masks, I wanted therapy.
I worked from home until June 2022, when Mersey Care’s mask policy changed and staff did not have to wear masks any longer. However, within a month the mask rules changed again. It did not go back to the rigidity and vacuity of mandatory mask wearing, but it was “strongly recommended”. Sadly, most staff did acquiesce to this ‘request’. It seemed to me that coercion was at work here. I remember during meetings senior managers would come and tell staff who were maskless to put one on. Everyone, apart from me, would comply. At this point, my exemption was accepted. But it was sad to see managers in a mental health institution lean on staff to cover their faces. As a clinical psychologist, taught that ‘everything is relational’, it made me extremely uncomfortable seeing a colleague wearing one; how can things be relational when you can’t even see the person’s face? Masks are horrible and divisive things.
In December 2022, I left Mersey Care to start my own private practice, Wilde Psychology. At Wilde Psychology, mask wearing is not mandatory.
The author is a supporter of Smile Free, which campaigns for the end of mask mandates and masking.
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Someone posted enquiring about excess mortality, but by the time I have written my reply all of the comments have disappeared, anyway here are some figures for consideration.
The Death rate for the whole of the UK for 2020 was 1.01%. The tricky bit is then to calculate what the death rate would be in a “normal” year. The last 16 years have had an exceptionally low rate of death, so if we take an average over the last five years then death rate was only 0.91%, over the last 20 years it was 0.93%, but over the last 34 years it was a “whopping” 1.01%. All of which would give you an excess mortality somewhere between 0 to 69000 deaths for the year 2020. Either way the death rate last year was none worse than it was in the year 2003 and this year looks to be none worse than it was in 2005 (I’m Currently calculating 2021 death rate to be 0.97% unless things get a lot worse), I don’t recall either 2003 or 2005 as being exceptional as regards pandemics or plagues so who knows, wtf. I have aggregated the ONS data from England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and corrected for increase in UK population over the years.
Well said. Someone has produced some useful charts (Thank you!)
This has been known ever since the 2020 peak in deaths. Even the BMJ eventually got around to publishing the ‘non-event’ data. But the fact have made no difference.
But the term ‘excess mortality’ is misleading. Mortality simply varies.
It was a normal flu season hitting upon above average dry tinder, then mislabelled and abused most deliberately, thereby further increasing overall death numbers through collateral damage, by the fraudulent and on top of that unstandardized PCR test, which couldn’t even distinguish between Corona and Rhino viruses, let alone identify the former correctly or reliably.
And that’s even official now.
For the Edinburgh, and later Westminster, inquiry; the indictment:
‘……governments, whose primary role is to protect their citizens, took these punitive actions despite the compelling evidence that these policies were misdirected and very harmful, causing palpable harm to human welfare on so many levels. It’s questionable what governments did (and now threaten to redo) to their populations with no scientific basis. None! In this, we lost our civil liberties and essential rights, all based on spurious ‘science’ or worse including, opinion, speculation, supposition, and whimsy. They just refused to listen, refused to read the data and science, and were blinded to it. Their ‘academically sloppy’ thinking and actions cost lives, and thousands of lives were cut short by their nonsensical and often irrational shutdown and closure policies.’
‘What does all this mean? These misguided policies have eroded the public trust.’
The goal of these inquiries must be a forensic analysis of government interventions, made without any coherent cost/benefit analysis.
‘Future generations will bear the cost of these decisions. Our children and younger people are going to be burdened with the indirect but very real harms and costs of lockdowns for a generation to come. Lives are being ruined and lost and businesses are being destroyed forever. Lower-income Americans, Canadians, and other global citizens are much more likely to be compelled to work in unsafe conditions. These are employees with the least bargaining power, tending to be minority, female, and hourly paid employees. Moreover, Covid-19 has revealed itself as a disease of disparity and poverty. This means that black and minority communities are disproportionately affected by the pandemic itself and they take a double hit, being additionally and disproportionately ravaged by the effects of the restrictive policies.’
https://www.aier.org/article/covid-19-mandates-will-not-work-for-the-delta-variant/
The recommendations of the inquiries should be strategic and far reaching; to include, in my opinion, guidance on extensive constitutional and structural reform of the government and entire public sector of this country. Only a federal system of government has been shown to offer free citizens at least some protection of their fundamental freedoms against totalitarian government.
It would not be surprising, given the hopeless incompetence of the Westminster government throughout this ‘pandemic’, if the Edinburgh inquiry’s recommendations include a further distancing of Scotland from the Westminster parliament.
Few will be able to argue against that, for exactly the same reason.
It would not be surprising, given the hopeless incompetence of the Westminster government throughout this ‘pandemic’, if the Edinburgh inquiry’s recommendations include a further distancing of Scotland from the Westminster parliament.
I doubt the levels of incompetence vary that much across the UK. Anyway this all becomes rather hazy if we view the government measures at both Westminster and Edinburgh as being malicious rather than incompetent.
For me there is nothing inherently better or safer in a federal system if the actors in governments are invariably corrupt, which seems to be the case across the whole spectrum of government systems in the West.
It isn’t so much levels of incompetence, as levels of malice. From that
perspective, Dungford’s standing is high. Make way for the cheap edition of Joseph Stslin, with extra wrinkles and twice the malevolence.
the green agenda seems to be blindly driven by ignorance and ideology….
Unlike nuclear fission (current nuclear power generation), nuclear fusion produces no nuclear waste and simply slows down and drops temperature when things go wrong so no nuclear fallout.
Nuclear fusion power could easily service all our electricity needs – a prototype nuclear fusion power station is hoped to be up and running within 10 years – so bye bye wind turbines etc
While we wait for nuclear fusion to come on line simply use carbon capture for fossil fuel energy production.
problems solved – simples!
The real problem is that the green agenda don’t want the problem solved – the problem is good for their agendas and some only exist for the problem – nuclear fusion will lead to extinction rebellions extinction
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/08/28/alok-sharma-fire-nuclear-industry-claim-have-banned-cop26/
https://www.diffen.com/difference/Nuclear_Fission_vs_Nuclear_Fusion
Given what we know regarding scientists, governments and assorted numpties in relation to covid 19, is there even any kind of climate problem?
‘The (IPCC) AR6 summary paragraph A.1 upgrades IPCC confidence in attribution to “Unequivocal” and the press release boasts of “major advances in the science of attribution.” In reality, for the past 20 years, the climatology profession has been oblivious to the errors in AT99, and untroubled by the complete absence of specification testing in the subsequent fingerprinting literature. These problems mean there is no basis for treating past attribution results based on the AT99 method as robust or valid. The conclusions might by chance have been correct, or totally inaccurate; but without correcting the methodology and applying standard tests for failures of the GM conditions it is mere conjecture to say more than that.’
‘The errors they made come from being experts in one thing but not another, and the review process in both climate journals and IPCC reports is notorious for not involving people with relevant statistical expertise (despite the reliance on statistical methods).’
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/08/19/the-ipccs-attribution-methodology-is-fundamentally-flawed/
I agree, unfortunately the reality is the climate change theories ”the science says” have taken over from science….
carbon capture followed by nuclear fusion solves the problem for the climate change theory and those of us who live in the real world
then maybe we concentrate on the actual problem, polluting our land, sea and air with plastics etc and the destruction of the natural environment by over population human activity – but seems Bill gates has this in hand with his death jab global roll out…
Carbon, essential for all forms of life, is just silly.
The is no climate ‘problem’ except in the ‘other world’ computer models used by fanatics. All except the model run out of Moscow use the same ‘amplifier’ which is not based on scientific fact nor has ever been experienced in the real world. This model term has the CO2 increase somehow amplifying the ‘greenhouse’ effect of water vapour. Without this term the models would only show the same sort of gradual increase in average global temps that have been recorded since 1850, ie about 1C. Of course ‘average global temp’ is a construct that is meaningless. But even here its not maximums that have increased , its minimums that have , we are experiencing a world shattering very slight increase in MILDNESS.
This ‘amplifier term’ is climate change’s SARS2 PCR-test; without it the whole thing falls apart.
The latest IPCC nonsense has reintroduced the discredited ‘hockey curve’ as its running out of real events to scare.
….
no but there is a problem of a belief in a climate problem – thats the problem that needs solving
debunking the strongly held beliefs of a devout worshipper of a religion (climate change) is almost impossible – nuclear fusion will be clean safe limitless energy – the green lobby no longer have an argument and the rest of us can get on with life – problem solved
And don’t forget the oceans will become less alkaline (thus, moving in pH from alkaline towards neutral, aka acidification)
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/08/26/boris-heres-why-net-zero-emissions-by-2050-just-arent-worth-it/
Nuclear fusion is like the climate tipping point, it is always ten years away.
love your negativity – energy from nuclear fusion will be a reality – carbon capture solves any climate change theoretical worries until then – problem solved
Yes it’s been only ten years away for most of my life.
Commercial nuclear fusion has been predicted to be 10 years away for quite a few decades now…
It is becoming increasingly the case that much of the incisive analysis of this fake pandemic is missed on the daily sceptic. You don’t see any critical analysis from Mcullough or Bhakti or the other brave highly credentialed rebels regarding the vaccines.
Is it that TDS doesn’t come across this information or is it that TDS is actively avoiding it?
As a result I find myself spending more time sifting through the avalanche of research dispensed on Robin Minotti and Mike Yeadon Telegram channel rather than this site. Here I spend most of my time reading the reader comments which are fast outpacing the site in their relevance.
Here is a recent podcast from Mccullogh found on Telegram (I highly recommend those in a similar frame of mind download the AP and join the above mentioned channel. Also access to info about protests and like minded groups)
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-mccullough/vaccinated-becoming-persons-SGE3QIBasCf/
Thank you for the links. This site is very careful not to criticise the ‘vaccine’ roll-out , obviously been told to behave by offcom etc.
Interesting that a search on goggle produces no results whereas duckduck is positively verbose.
This is Mrs Bee’s favourite channel too.
She became a sceptic much later than me, but now is even more sceptical than me.
I went off Telegram because it was eating away at my phones storage capacity, but I hear they changed that.
When people believe they have absolute knowledge with no test in reality this is how they behave – the deaths of four million people was not done by gas – it was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance …
Bronowski (The Ascent of Man) on Auschwitz & Science
Somehow relevant and a warning maybe to where once enlightened and free western nations appear to be heading once again … authoritarianism, despotism, tyranny.
A two minute video worth watching and a reminder of how an unyielding doctrine led to the deaths of millions of people …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jl2w3xYFHQ
I just shared this link but my post has disappeared. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/spains-supreme-court-rules-against-using-vaccine-passports-restrict-access-public?s=08
I can see it