On a recent journey on the London Underground my eye was drawn to an attention-grabbing poster on the train wall proclaiming, “Face coverings may help you travel with confidence.” Why is Transport for London (TfL) continuing with this misleading and counterproductive style of pro-mask messaging?
Perhaps they should display other posters suggesting its passengers wear a garlic clove around their necks or to whisper the Lord’s Prayer if it helps them to ‘travel with confidence’. Such random statements would make as much sense as the actual TfL announcement – repeated on its website – giving passengers unasked-for permission to cover their faces with cloth or plastic.
Of course, in a liberal democracy, people should be free to wear a mask on the underground if they so choose, or – for that matter – dangle a pungent onion-like plant under their chins or recite Christian invocations. But TfL should not be promoting face coverings as if they were an effective means of reducing anxiety about the prospect of contracting respiratory viruses. In a rational world, this underlying message would rightly be characterised as ‘misinformation’ by the Government’s official fact-checkers.
Let me explain.
Leaving aside the existing robust evidence base that concludes that masks are both ineffectual as a viral barrier and associated with a range of harms, it makes no psychological sense to suggest that their habitual wear will reduce fear of infection. As described in a previous article, masks – on a commonsense level – will act as a crude reminder that we are all potential biohazards; hardly a reassuring perspective. But an additional effect will be to discourage the wearer from concluding that the world – including the London underground – is now safe enough to return to. Routine masking will be a powerful ‘safety behaviour’ that prevents disconfirmation of anxious beliefs. At the end of each uneventful day, the masked passenger will be prone to attribute their survival to the multi-holed contraption stuck across their nose and mouth, interpreting each illness-free day as a near miss: I got away with it this time, but who knows what would have happened if I hadn’t worn my mask.
So just like a garlic clove around the neck will not weaken beliefs about the existence of vampires, and reciting the Lord’s Prayer will not weaken beliefs about the risk of falling into the clutches of Beelzebub, face coverings will not reduce conviction in beliefs about the dangers of lethal pathogens. Donning a mask before entering the Waterloo line might transiently reassure some residual victims of the Covid fear-mongering campaign, but in the medium-to-long term the behaviour will needlessly perpetuate anxiety.
All things considered, the TfL poster would have been more accurate to declare, “Face coverings will ensure you travel in fear.”
Dr. Gary Sidley is a retired NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist and co-founder of the Smile Free campaign.
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Because the mayor, unions and sponsors are pushing the globalist agenda. Fear, restrictions, coralling us, prepping for their next crisis.
Just say no.
There’s more of us than them.
Exactly. There is an enemy waging war on us on multiple fronts.
Fear, control and compliance – that’s all that masks are about. Nothing more.
The disparaging reference to the Lod’s Prayer was quite unnecessary and thoroughly distasteful.
Grow up.
I didn’t find it offensive, just inaccurate. Evil exists, and it’s hard to cope with this truth sometimes, and hard to combat evil in oneself. I imagine for believers reciting such prayers is a form of self reinforcement to give you strength for the struggle.
The poor analogy reveals more about Dr Sidley than anything else.
He is signalling strongly that he falls into the category of person that thinks that traditional religion is a bit of an irrational mind virus. On a par with belief in vampires.
It’s one of the flaws of excessively rational minds.
He’s correct.
Well, many things are ‘mind viruses” or purely mental constructs.
Democracy, free speech, bills of rights, money, many important things are nothing more than mental constructs that only exist because enough people believe in them and would cease to exist the moment no one believed in them any more.
To suggest that all these things are equivalent is not very smart.
Belief in vampires hasn’t really produced much. Belief in christianity has produced empires, cathedrals, amazing works of music to name a few things, and of course some bad things too.
Belief in money has produced civilisation.
To lump together all the things that humans make up in their minds is really rather stupid.
Absolutely so. It’s the lack of any empirical evidence for the existence of ‘God’ (other make believe deities might exist) that makes rational people into atheists’
I’m possibly excessively rational and not religious but it seems to me ironically that dismissing traditional religion as a mind virus is a bit irrational, and not overly helpful either.
You are right. It is ignorant and stupid. Undoubtedly a Christophobe. No reference to magic totems of the Muzzies or Hindus of course. So bien pensant is Dr boy.
Religion = non-evidence based belief, blind Faith in what the High Priests say – exactly what caused the CoVid panic and fuels the Climademic.
There was nothing disparaging in the mention of the Lord’s Prayer. Quite the reverse.
who is the Lod?
Really I don’t think God will mind at all, I think he is probably more concerned with the evil being done in his name by the leaders of the church of England, the Government and the industrial medical complex to be worried about a humerous comment on a prayer.
Can I just go right ahead and blame Khan for this too? Yes I think I totally will. Show me a masktard and I will show you someone who is multi-jabbed and a complete package Covidian, a fully paid-up member of The Cult of Insanity. This guy totally nails it;
https://twitter.com/_aussie17/status/1682891463229849600
We still have ASC students still wearing masks for fear was indoctrinated into them and the poor lvs are still worried!! I blame the phyco nudge units and those in charge like Khan for dehumanising. Unkind to the vulnerable not giving them confidence the opposite is true.
I quite like the idea of wearing a garlic clove around the neck actually. It would allow me to easily identify other garlic wearers and doubles up as a useful addition to my evening cooking.
“I can tell one of them thar Anti-vaxxers a mile off on the Tube. They got that kind of furrin smell to ’em. I jest shoot the varmints on sight.”
If Labour gets in, I wouldn’t be surprised to see London get statehood and a first minister – it has pretty much twice the population of Scotland after all. This is all moving in the direction of London becoming a permanently-left-wing city-state in the UK with its own far-left legal system that can be used to influence the rest of the country, even if the rest of the country votes right of centre.
This all goes back to the Blair/Campbell/Mandelson era of creating a left wing ‘shadow’ administration in our institutions and devolved assemblies to make it impossible for any elected genuinely right-of-centre administration ever to be able to function successfully again without an extremely messy, controversial clear-out, which will be fought in our (left wing) courts.
Masking is something London will try to make a cultural hallmark, trying to persuade people to mask up every winter. London is in the grip of a neo-liberal, cultural Maoist hybrid and we should all fear that.
Of course, the EU wants to have a seies of semi-autonomous subordinate statelets so it can domonate, in the way Kenneth Clarke said he wanted Westminster to resemble a county council.
It ain’t a healthy atmosphere down there
All that brake dust
In purely common sense terms quite sensible
A face nappy would make no difference against the particulates. You’d need a breathing mask.
Whether that’s true or not, I seriously doubt that’s the motivation for the poster. Also I’d need to see some stats on the absolute risk reduction that wearing one of those “face coverings” would bring me- it would have to be pretty substantial before I would even consider a face nappy. I don’t really care if masks “work” or not against Covid either – I won’t wear one.
They could add another note or two on the poster – e.g. ‘Made in Japan’ (it’s probably a copy cat idea from the equivalent service in Tokyo), or even ‘see a psychiatrist’.
So there are just over 900,000 CCTV cameras in London, presumably to aid in crime and terrorism detection. Not much use if mask wearing becomes the norm due to mayoral coercion. Mask wearing by healthy looking young to middle aged men in a busy “multi-cultural” city should be treated as a suspicious activity as far as I am concerned. Among the general population it should definitely be treated as the act of stupid and paranoid people.
Spot on. Being stated at by someone in a mask is deeply unsettling and makes me feel less than safe.
It is a clear admission that they fully understand the risks from air pollution in the underground – how ironic.
You must know – that’s NOT what is being suggested – forgive me if irony/sarcasm was intended.
Khan would be better off – spending the money he’s wasting on the mask message – making sure the air quality is improved.
But of course he’s incapable of doing anything so rational and beneficial – the more people falling ill due to particulate and other harmful substances – the sooner he will have fulfilled his WEF mission.
Perhaps it should be viewed as an admission by Khan and TfL that pollution levels are unacceptably high on the tube and are dangerous for your health.
On a similar theme, the other day there were two new notices posted outside our village hall. one was about making sure your child has received their immunisations, but the other one was about covid. It asked if you were well, if you weren’t, please don’t enter the building. It also strongly suggested that if you were concerned, you get yourself tested, wear a mask, and of course, make sure you jabs were up to date. This is a newly printed poster, not a remnant from the scamdemic. I wonder how many posters are waiting in line, ready to go up at intervals, that are subscribing to the law of nudge. I now fully expect to see multiple poster directives (oh, sorry, ‘useful information’) telling us about how we are causing climate change, how to not use electricity, how to keep warm in winter, how not speak our mind for fear of offence, how useful a CBDC would be in our lives – the list is endless.
Unfortunately, this poster was in a locked display cabinet, otherwise I would have ripped it down, like I used to do with other rubbish covid bumph within reach. I find it all so sinister.
Interesting change to the narrative here. During the so called ‘pandemic’ we were told to wear muzzles to protect others, now it seems they protect the wearer. Clearly the memories of those who make up this bullsh*t are very short.
The problem is that particle pollution is high in the underground, and it needs to be reduced by better ventilation and air filtration, but this costs money, so its cheaper to put up a few posters than deal with the problem. In the first instance, what is needed is accurate measurement and reporting of the problem including particle size to establish whether masks would reduce the damage to people’s health, and make people aware of the real issue. In the longer term, improvements to ventilation need to be carried out, so masks are not necessary.
Like old soldiers, crises never die.
The nearby council-run leisure centre has a ‘Customer Notice’ outside saying that ‘if you are unwell’ do not enter the facilities, and reminding ‘customers’ to wash hands or use sanitiser.
Is this what is meant by Long CoVid? The Everdemic.
” . . . giving passengers unasked-for permission to cover their faces with cloth or plastic. . . . ”
The permission ought to need to be asked for, because “in the old days” face coverings were forbidden in certain environments (such as crash helmets in banks) because they represented a potential threat. Now, however, everyone, including those who are a threat, have been given carte blanche to obscure their face . . .