Paul Stevens

Paul Stevens has written a postcard from California for the Daily sceptic. Despite the mask mandates being lifted, some Californians continue to wear masks, having become habituated to the humiliating ritual.

Face mask mandates continue in pockets of the NHS, enabled by national guidance that leaves the decision down to local trusts. It's time to end this ridiculous postcode lottery, says Paul Stevens.

The evidence that masks do nothing to stop transmission of COVID-19 is now overwhelming. Why, then, is an NHS mental health trust reiterating its demands for patients to wear masks?

NHS mask mandates are arbitrary, depending more on where you happen to live than any actual science. Yet they don't seem to be going away, writes Paul Stevens.

Smile Free, which campaigns against mask mandates, predicted that whether you had to wear masks in hospitals and clinics would become a ‘postcode lottery’, unconnected with science or evidence. And so it has come to pass.

At a time of high pressure on the NHS, a hospital is still spending £138,000 employing two people to stand at the door and hand out face masks and hand sanitiser, a Freedom of Information request has revealed.

Masks have gone in most parts of UK society now, but healthcare settings like GP surgeries remain a notable exception. Why are medics the last holdout of the masking obsession, and what can be done about it?

Chinese lockdown sceptic artist Ai Weiwei has been beaten by the police for his opposition to the Chinese Communist Party and held in conditions of extreme confinement. We can say honestly he has suffered for his art.