For some time now, the Smile Free team have been highlighting the reality of face mask coercion varying from hospital to hospital, with whether you have to wear one or not depending entirely on the people setting the rules locally. COVID-19 infection rates are irrelevant: it all comes down to the views of individuals who have managed to get their hands on the levers of power. For those folk who are true believers in ‘The Science’, masks were – and are – a critically important weapon in the arsenal of non-pharmaceutical interventions. Blind to the realities of historical precedent, objective evidence and common sense, masks ‘work’, they claim, and we all have to get with the programme and strap them on.
Unlike the rest of the post-COVID-19 world where we are ‘learning to live’ with the respiratory infection, in some parts of the NHS masks are still required. Notwithstanding the directives issued from the very top of the Health Service to ‘step down’ COVID-19 measures, in some healthcare settings, often driven by the head of an individual trust’s infection prevention and control (IPC) function, what are still in effect mask mandates have not gone away. How individual trusts can maintain these controls is to be found buried in the small print of the reissued National Infection Prevention and Control manual (p.36) where a get-out clause comes down to those weasel words beloved by Health and Safety bureaucrats, ‘local risk assessment’. In short, if the head of IPC in Trust A wants to dispense with masks, he or she can; if the head of Trust B’s IPC wants to keep them, then they can be kept.
If this sounds a bit bonkers, well, that’s because it is. In a world where we’ve moved on from the constant news-bombing of stats for positive test ‘cases’, hospitalisations and deaths with COVID-19, we still can find ourselves being told that we are ‘expected’ to wear a mask. Why? Just because one person, with the lucky position from which to exercise their authority and masking peccadillos, says so.
So how does this random exercise in magical thinking show itself in its least rational light? When we compare health settings from neighbouring trusts. Recently, I needed to attend the Essex Cardiothoracic Centre for an outpatient procedure. Based at Basildon University Hospital, all cardio-related procedures undertaken in Essex have been consolidated at the Centre. Which means that patients come from across the entire county, from different areas served by different trusts.
Part of the Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust (MSEFT), the trust’s website advises service-users and visitors that “there is no longer the need to wear masks” in any of their health settings. And when looking at the website overall, one is struck by the absence of any images in which people, be they staff, patients or visitors, are wearing a face covering. The Cardiothoracic Centre’s website goes even further, making no mention of masks whatsoever. Indeed, throughout my time at the Centre I saw not one single mask being worn; not in the general areas, the ward or even the operating theatre in which my procedure was done. Everything was normal, so much so that it was only after I got home that I realised what I had experienced. Saying it was ‘blissful’ didn’t do my feelings justice.
In contrast, just 40 miles away from Basildon, in Colchester General Hospital, things are different. Part of the East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust (ESNEFT), the spectre of face masks continues to lurk ominously. The home page of the parent trust’s website, on the frame advertising ‘Latest Visiting Information’, continues to display a prominent photo of a masked nurse. Regarding guidance for visiting the hospital, the general message is that COVID-19 is still ‘a thing’, the web page headline stating that, “We continue to care for patients with a number of transmissible infections”. Further, visitors are told that they are “required to wear surgical face masks covering their nose and mouth where there is a high-risk of transmission of contagious respiratory infection”. In addition to a list of specific conditions and scenarios in which masks should be worn, the instructions are that those attending A&E will be “asked to wear a surgical mask”. Masks are available at all hospital entrances or by asking staff for one.
As if these general diktats weren’t enough, in communications with patients ESNEFT exposes an even darker core to its mask mania. Ahead of an outpatient appointment – scheduled for July18th(!) – a friend received a standard letter from it, which stated:
The staff caring for you will be using personal protective equipment such as face masks, gloves and aprons…. Please change your face mask/covering on arrival to a new surgical face mask provided at our entrances.
Should we be surprised that, even when an adjacent trust takes a sensible and relaxed view of masking, ESNEFT ignores directives coming from the very top of the management tree and deploys a stronger message about masking? Not really. As a previous Smile Free investigation into ESNEFT revealed, the fearful and authoritarian inclinations of ESNEFT management have been a feature of its IPC protocols. The man behind the mask, so to speak, is Chief Nurse and Director of IPC Dr. Giles Thorpe, pictured below in his mask and visor, and a committed devotee of covering one’s face.
Why then are people like Dr. Thorpe so evangelical about masks? What special insights do they possess that allows them to impose different rules than those in similar positions of authority and qualification just a few miles down the road? (One of MSEFT’s hospitals, Braintree, is just 23 miles from Colchester General.) After all, it can’t be that COVID-19 threat levels are different between bordering neighbourhoods and in such close proximity. Nor can it be that ‘the Science’ of masking is different between these adjacent places. So, what is it?
Perhaps we can find some clues to this riddle when we look at another neighbouring trust, Norwich and North Norfolk University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (NNUH). Here we find the Integrated Care System within which NNUH sits has, in line with national NHS guidance, determined that “individual healthcare providers” can “decide upon their own guidelines regarding mask use, based on the level of risk in their local setting” (emphasis mine). Based on these parameters NNUH has decided to go further than ESNEFT – but not as far as MSEFT – throw caution to the wind and ‘relax’ the mask measures so that, “instead of face masks being universally worn, they will be required in certain settings based on the local risk assessments”, for example if a person has “suspected or confirmed COVID-19”. The telling part of its announcement appears at the end of the press release when NNUH’s Chief Nurse and Director of IPC offers these soothing words to those who use its services:
We understand that after three years of mask wearing there will be some anxiety and we want to reassure staff, patients, carers and visitors that masks will still be available at our hospitals for those who wish to wear one.
And here we have it, an admission that the population’s mental health and acuity has been damaged by the ceaseless propaganda surrounding masks, in some cases beyond repair. Without a candid and truthful re-evaluation of the usefulness of masks, and absent clear and unambiguous instructions from the top of the NHS, there will always be a desire amongst mask obsessives to cling on to the false idea that masks work.
The Smile Free campaign does not accept we should be subject to interminable masking based on the arbitrary decisions of local healthcare managers, and we invite you to sign our Open Letter to NHS leaders, calling on them to issue new guidance that explicitly discourages this harmful practice.
Paul Stevens is a member of Smile Free which campaigns for the end of mask mandates and masking.
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Governments ( aside from the Swedes and the odd few other exceptions ) and TPTB never and still do not give a stuff about kids’ welfare, development or education. This is evidenced due to school closures, urging to get a toxic jab they never needed and the sexually explicit and inappropriate material ( as well as woke tosh that states you can identify as anything you want ) being taught in class. Kids are being targeted on multiple levels and the buck stops with the parents because the threat is not going to go away any time soon and it is all under the guise of ”public health”.
”The World Health Organization’s broad definition of health embraces physical, mental and social well-being. Expressed in its 1946 constitution alongside concepts of community participation and national sovereignty, it reflected an understanding of a world emerging from centuries of colonialist oppression and the public health industry’s shameful facilitation of fascism. Health policy would be people-centered, closely tied to human rights and self-determination.
The COVID-19 response has demonstrated how these ideals have been undone. Decades of increasing funding within public-private partnerships have corroded the basis of global public health. The COVID-19 response, intended for a virus that overwhelmingly targeted the elderly, ignored norms of epidemic management and human rights to institute a regime of suppression, censorship, and coercion reminiscent of the power systems and governance that were previously condemned. Without pausing to examine the costs, the public health industry is developing international instruments and processes that will entrench these destructive practices in international law.
Public health, presented as a series of health emergencies, is being used once again to facilitate a fascist approach to societal management. The beneficiaries will be the corporations and investors whom the COVID-19 response served well. Human rights and individual freedom, as under previous fascist regimes, will lose. The public health industry must urgently awaken to the changing world in which it works, if it is to adopt a role in saving public health rather than contributing to its degradation.”
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajes.12531
As I’ve said all along TPTB don’t give a shit about children, infact I think the whole idea is to damage children as much as possible. Any one with half a brain cell could see the negative impacts lockdowns would have on society and yet people still want to cannonise the evil or compromised or both Valance and Witty. This is just another study for the white wash enquiry to ignore.
Another government created problem that the w**kers who promoted lockdowns now want money throwing at.
Yep, ”we’re coming for your children”, well they did warn us. I say the buck stops with the parents but the problem is when the parents are fully paid up members of the Woke Brigade themselves.
”The city council is sponsoring a five day drag camp which offers 14-year-olds the opportunity to become “divas”.
Oxford City Council is supporting a week long “Drag Camp” which offers 14 to 18 year olds the chance to “create their own daring stage persona”.
The camp, which starts on Monday on Magdalen Road, will be run by T(ART) Productions, which is a queer not for profit community events company, alongside Pegasus theatre group and Doris Field Charitable Trust.
The company promises to help children find their “drag voice” and to introduce them to the “world of drag as a performance art”.
Stephanie Davies-Arai of Transgender Trend told the Daily Mail said: “Why is Oxford City Council encouraging children to participate in the world of adult entertainment?
“The aim of queer activists is clear in the blurb: to subvert and destabilise boundaries, under the guise of being empowering for children.
“Encouraging children to create a ‘daring’ stage persona means only one thing in the drag world: to push sexual boundaries.
“Blurring the boundaries between adult and child in this way is a safeguarding red flag.”
https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/23692650.oxford-council-sponsors-week-long-drag-camp-children/?ref=socialflow&fbclid=IwAR28kUZ0biGeQcMUHpr921MJFyAVYRuz6kXN5a8a3afwkXeHOdQM3FttJZQ_aem_ARKgzhZudJp-IHuWWqlmq017KDJYXZphsVrcAiR8JW_RrLGWiROWEsS3ItThhpqDlh0
Kids are doomed when the parents are woketards. Case in point. Presumably this is a boy;
https://twitter.com/againstgrmrs/status/1686372574467690496
Well, the report is here:
https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/2023-07/WP202321-parental-labour-market-instability-and-childrens-mental-health-during-the-pandemic_0.pdf
Not sure what to make if it. Much of the text is given over to explaining the statistical methods used to analyse the multiple choice questionnaire responses and compute the outcomes.
Children are very sensitive to their parents’ emotions. I don’t doubt many experienced an impact on their social and emotional wellbeing. But quantifying it like this … I’m not persuaded.
I fear for children growing up in modern Britain. The COVID debacle was only one of many factors deleterious to their mental wellbeing.
Stuck record, I know, but please:
“Just as the dust begins to settle from the fallout of the Government’s response to the Covid pandemic…”
There. Was. No. Pandemic!
England and Wales, 2020-2021:
Average age at death overall: 81
Average age at death “FROM COVID”: 82!
Imagine a vaccine so safe you must be threatened to take it, to protect you from a virus so deadly you need be tested to know you have it!
When I’m with my children and the “pandemic” gets mentioned on TV or the radio, I repeat ‘there was no pandemic’. The same goes for the so called “climate emergancy” I repeat ‘there is no climate crisis it’s a scam’. Three sets of ‘oh dad’and eye rolls. I’m not going to let the constant propaganda get to my family.
I know how it’s affected me… and I’m in my late 40s. I can’t imagine the effect on youngsters. By using something so extreme on them so young, I guess it makes it easier to force ‘global boiling’, ‘climate catastrophe’ on them, because they’ve already been softened up by the powers that be.
Well they haven’t softened up our two. We are taking all of this abysmal episode in human history as a very valuable “teaching moment”.
With my 16yo (14 at the start of the plandemic) ’lockdown’ was very damaging to his development; although he was fully inoculated by his parents against bullshit and manipulation – and poisoning – it came at a point in his life when he needed routine and to knuckle down and work. Despite the fact I’m a teacher, I am well aware of the evils of state education, but the discipline and routine it brings are, I think, important, particularly for boys in their mid-teens. He struggles now to do anything reliably, and I put that down in part to the PTB shitting on his adolescent years.
Yeah. I’m 48 and I’m not as good as I used to be. I used to be super-organised. Now I find I either go like the clappers to get things done or have no energy even to read – it’s one extreme or the other. I work from home now, living like a recluse, and haven’t even seen anyone I work for since the start of 2020.
Get to your local Wetherspoons mate
That’s because you’re ‘one of us.’ How many kids live in homes where parents say the ‘anti-vaxxers’ belong in jail?
Significantly fewer than one year ago. They’re more likely to live in households where you can’t even bring up Covid because everyone’s too embarrassed!
So true! The husband of my Mum’s best friend was saying a year ago that people who refused the vaccine should be locked up. That would include me, who has cooked for him and his wife in my home and has eaten with him and his wife at theirs. When people pontificate like that – as we saw through the scamdemic – they forget the individual human face, which might be one they know!
Now my Mum’s best friend believes the vaccines are killers, in no small part due the the fact that my Mum now has a defibrillator-pacemaker in her chest because she developed a serious heart condition following the third booster jab.
I’ve got mixed feelings about all these impressive (and expensive) sounding studies.
I think they might serve to obscure rather than enlighten.
There was no pandemic. Respiratory viruses cannot be stopped by humans. We are social animals. Life must go on. Any extraordinary measures are harmful on their face – no complicated studies or cost benefit analysis required. To me this is orthodoxy – to most it’s now considered heresy, I think to this day.
Can you imagine if the human race behaved like this when TB was still an issue? We’d still be in the pre-industrial era!!
Seems like some people want us to go back there…
Shock.
And all to protect the poor vastly underpaid bloody teachers. How many actually “caught covid” from kids and died.
Long gone are the days when they actually cared about kids.
Didn’t they realise all they had to do was chop 6″ off the bottom of the doors to Stay Safe.
Cowardly and selfish doesn’t even begin to describe the majority of them.
Supermarket workers, delivery men etc. kept working
Ah yes, the vaccine that only works if others get vaxxed too. It’s always been the unjabbed people’s fault, the scapegoats of society, despite the fact if you had a vaccine that actually worked then why do you give a crap if anyone else is jabbed or not?? You’re allegedly ‘protected’ because Fauci, Biden et al said so, and they assured us repeatedly! Same non-logic can be applied to masks. And on and on the unfunny comedy sketches would go. My philosophy was always; my immune system is 100% effective with zero side-effects and it hasn’t got me killed or hospitalized yet. I’ll take my chances!
Very similar story in the Telegraph today….”Lockdown’s severe damage to children”..this is brilliant Bob’s reaction…
Bob Moran
@bobscartoons
Thank you, @telegraph
, for firing me when I tried to defend children against those who wished them harm through lockdowns.
Great to see such ethical consistency.
LOL! …..has anyone done any studies showing the way all the green zero zealots and their ideas will affect children?….thought not…..so no lessons learned then??
This new pro-narrative, vax-pushing, fear-mongering paper is crap, and the fact it has passed peer-review makes it double crap. Not to worry. The HART team have done a stellar job of extensively taking it apart and highlighting its shortcomings;
”The usual covid high priests who have been wheeled out repeatedly in front of the television cameras to fear-monger about covid without any debate, are at it again. Several members of Independent SAGE and others have written a paper assessing the impact of covid on children over the course of the last three years. It is not the paper they wanted to write.
Imagine you were them and had got hold of the data ready to write your paper. What might you want to show? I would suggest their priorities would have been to show:
They were unable to demonstrate any of those points using the actual data, as we shall see.
The paper was published in the BMJ but it seems the peer reviewers did not actually do much reviewing. Campaigners who have repeatedly demanded children be vaccinated and who even now are demanding boosters for vaccines (see figure 1) might not be in the best place to provide a dispassionate assessment of the evidence, and indeed they did not.”
https://www.hartgroup.org/yet-more-fear-mongering-over-covid-in-children/
My brother got a new dog during lockdown. It didn’t socialise properly as a puppy and is quite aggressive with other dogs.
The Conspiracy Against The Children , Was NOT a Theory. Do NOT be Fooled that They didn’t know, enough scientists spoke up ALL of whom were accused of being ignorant or censored . THEY KNEW Lockdowns were devastating. The EVIL thing about it is that they are getting away with it at the expense of your children