Would You Be In Favour Of Mandatory Mask Wearing Again?

[Neville's Breakfast]

No, and if you support wearing them you're probably suffering from some kind of mild derangement.

There is no evidence, anywhere, of any kind of efficacy when it comes to mask wearing, and plenty of empirical data to the contrary.

It's an aerosol transmitted respiratory virus, fomite and droplet transmission is a myth. Trying to stop it with a manky-hanky over your face makes a finger in a dam look productive.

You will catch SARS-COV-2. If you're very very unlucky - circa 10% of infections - you will contract COVID-19. If you're obese, over 70, or suffer from hypertension or anxiety you will have a very small probability of dying parsed from the 10% of infections that become serious. For those not in those categories the probability is microscopic.

This will be here forever, and mask wearing and general foolishness of a similar nature has to stop, otherwise it will never end. The virus is already endemic and 7-10,000 people will die from it every year, vaccinated or otherwise.

600,000 people die in the UK every year, the vast majority of whom are over 70, with an average age of 82. Of that majority a significant amount die from respiratory tract infections causing chest infections and pneumonia.

Imagine if - prior to 2020 - we had routinely tested millions of people every day for the (then) common cold. How many of the 1,600 people that die every day would have tested positive for a cold 28 days prior to their death do you think? Quite a proportion. And most of them would not have died because of that cold, which demonstrates the ridiculousness of the 'within 28 days' denominator. Further, those over 80 that had a symptomatic cold would die in fairly high numbers.

SARS-COV-2 arrived in the UK as a novel virus in January 2020, there was no immunity. It was always going to cause an epidemic spike in deaths. That's not going to happen again. It will cause seasonal endemic waves.

That's it.

Keep on sailing in this ship of fools if you want to but I won't be.

[MENTION=6886]Bozza[/MENTION] provided links to six studies in post 128 of this thread. They contradict your point of view. You haven’t provided any links to support what you are saying but instead have given us a speech, hinting at our mental fragility for supporting the side of the argument with the actual scientific evidence on its side. I have to say, you have taken one of the oddest positions on NSC I have ever seen. Still, I look forward to you backing up your argument.

 

[A1X]

No, and if you support wearing them you're probably suffering from some kind of mild derangement.

There is no evidence, anywhere, of any kind of efficacy when it comes to mask wearing, and plenty of empirical data to the contrary.

It's an aerosol transmitted respiratory virus, fomite and droplet transmission is a myth. Trying to stop it with a manky-hanky over your face makes a finger in a dam look productive.

You will catch SARS-COV-2. If you're very very unlucky - circa 10% of infections - you will contract COVID-19. If you're obese, over 70, or suffer from hypertension or anxiety you will have a very small probability of dying parsed from the 10% of infections that become serious. For those not in those categories the probability is microscopic.

This will be here forever, and mask wearing and general foolishness of a similar nature has to stop, otherwise it will never end. The virus is already endemic and 7-10,000 people will die from it every year, vaccinated or otherwise.

600,000 people die in the UK every year, the vast majority of whom are over 70, with an average age of 82. Of that majority a significant amount die from respiratory tract infections causing chest infections and pneumonia.

Imagine if - prior to 2020 - we had routinely tested millions of people every day for the (then) common cold. How many of the 1,600 people that die every day would have tested positive for a cold 28 days prior to their death do you think? Quite a proportion. And most of them would not have died because of that cold, which demonstrates the ridiculousness of the 'within 28 days' denominator. Further, those over 80 that had a symptomatic cold would die in fairly high numbers.

SARS-COV-2 arrived in the UK as a novel virus in January 2020, there was no immunity. It was always going to cause an epidemic spike in deaths. That's not going to happen again. It will cause seasonal endemic waves.

That's it.

Keep on sailing in this ship of fools if you want to but I won't be.

This is the longest-winded version of the standard moron rallying cry of “wake up sheeple!” I’ve seen for a long time, to be fair.

 

[Weststander]

Why don’t you ask our friend from Burnley as he was the one to bring up unvaccinated people and insinuated all those dying are so.

Proportionately, the unvaccinated do make up the vast majority of current deaths with Covid.

This was cleared up on more than one occasion by Doctors Chris Smith and Linda Bauld, in their double act Q&A’s on TV. The numbers aren’t secret, but they knew where to look deep inside NHS or ONS data.

My wife is a practitioner at Worthing Hospital, who was seconded to Covid wards, it was common knowledge that almost all deaths on their wards were unvaccinated folk.

 

[spongy]

I simply can't afford to get Covid.

So far I've avoided it and intend to carry on doing so. It doesn't help that my company does not operate a sick pay policy, if you're off sick it's SSP. No matter what is wrong with you.

Financially it would cripple me if one month my pay was halved. Half a months pay wouldn't even cover the rent yet alone all the other bills associated with a house of 4 people.

 

[shingle]

Yes

 

[Coldeanseagull]

If it's mandatory, I'll comply. The obligation will be there to toe the line. If it's advisory, I'm afraid I'm a bit absent minded with the carrying of a mask

 

[Weststander]

I simply can't afford to get Covid.

So far I've avoided it and intend to carry on doing so. It doesn't help that my company does not operate a sick pay policy, if you're off sick it's SSP. No matter what is wrong with you.

Financially it would cripple me if one month my pay was halved. Half a months pay wouldn't even cover the rent yet alone all the other bills associated with a house of 4 people.

Commonplace. Mrs.W worked in nursing homes, the main one was incredibly profitable, all operated a zero sick pay policy. No ifs or buts, no matter the illness.

 

[clapham_gull]

Not if I'm wearing my tin foil hat and my 5G filtering copper cock ring (thanks for the tip Easy 10)

Simply isn't required.

 

[The Fifth Column]

I wouldn't particularly be in favour of it being mandatory but would comply if it was. Its not mandatory now so I rarely bother. I've yet to see any definitive evidence for or against mask wearing, for every study saying they work there's another saying they don't. I'm sure they are useful to some people in some situations and if someone asks me to I'll readily don one but generally I don't bother

 

[dazzer6666]

No, and if you support wearing them you're probably suffering from some kind of mild derangement.

There is no evidence, anywhere, of any kind of efficacy when it comes to mask wearing, and plenty of empirical data to the contrary.

It's an aerosol transmitted respiratory virus, fomite and droplet transmission is a myth. Trying to stop it with a manky-hanky over your face makes a finger in a dam look productive.

You will catch SARS-COV-2. If you're very very unlucky - circa 10% of infections - you will contract COVID-19. If you're obese, over 70, or suffer from hypertension or anxiety you will have a very small probability of dying parsed from the 10% of infections that become serious. For those not in those categories the probability is microscopic.

This will be here forever, and mask wearing and general foolishness of a similar nature has to stop, otherwise it will never end. The virus is already endemic and 7-10,000 people will die from it every year, vaccinated or otherwise.

600,000 people die in the UK every year, the vast majority of whom are over 70, with an average age of 82. Of that majority a significant amount die from respiratory tract infections causing chest infections and pneumonia.

Imagine if - prior to 2020 - we had routinely tested millions of people every day for the (then) common cold. How many of the 1,600 people that die every day would have tested positive for a cold 28 days prior to their death do you think? Quite a proportion. And most of them would not have died because of that cold, which demonstrates the ridiculousness of the 'within 28 days' denominator. Further, those over 80 that had a symptomatic cold would die in fairly high numbers.

SARS-COV-2 arrived in the UK as a novel virus in January 2020, there was no immunity. It was always going to cause an epidemic spike in deaths. That's not going to happen again. It will cause seasonal endemic waves.

That's it.

Keep on sailing in this ship of fools if you want to but I won't be.

It does need more research of course, but that statement is simply not true though is it……….there are loads of papers and articles examining mask efficacy. Here’s just one example (that cites numerous - dozens of - other pieces of research) :

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118

Conclusion (if you don’t want to read the whole paper)

Our review of the literature offers evidence in favor of widespread mask use as source control to reduce community transmission: Nonmedical masks use materials that obstruct particles of the necessary size; people are most infectious in the initial period postinfection, where it is common to have few or no symptoms (45, 46, 141); nonmedical masks have been effective in reducing transmission of respiratory viruses; and places and time periods where mask usage is required or widespread have shown substantially lower community transmission.

The available evidence suggests that near-universal adoption of nonmedical masks when out in public, in combination with complementary public health measures, could successfully reduce R to below 1, thereby reducing community spread if such measures are sustained. Economic analysis suggests that mask wearing mandates could add 1 trillion dollars to the US GDP (32, 34).

Models suggest that public mask wearing is most effective at reducing spread of the virus when compliance is high (39). We recommend that mask use requirements are implemented by governments, or, when governments do not, by organizations that provide public-facing services. Such mandates must be accompanied by measures to ensure access to masks, possibly including distribution and rationing mechanisms so that they do not become discriminatory. Given the value of the source control principle, especially for presymptomatic people, it is not sufficient for only employees to wear masks; customers must wear masks as well.

It is also important for health authorities to provide clear guidelines for the production, use, and sanitization or reuse of face masks, and consider their distribution as shortages allow. Clear and implementable guidelines can help increase compliance, and bring communities closer to the goal of reducing and ultimately stopping the spread of COVID-19.

When used in conjunction with widespread testing, contact tracing, quarantining of anyone that may be infected, hand washing, and physical distancing, face masks are a valuable tool to reduce community transmission. All of these measures, through their effect on Re
, have the potential to reduce the number of infections. As governments exit lockdowns, keeping transmissions low enough to preserve health care capacity will be critical until a vaccine can be developed.

 

[beorhthelm]

It's worse than that, the highest death toll in a peacetime rail crash in the UK is 112 at Harrow in 1952, it's more like one of those every day.

800 per week is roughly the equivalent of 2 fully laden 747s crashing every week. If that happened I think someone might be asking some pretty serious questions about the safety of air travel, not going "well they tested the planes and they were fine so we should ignore it and just learn to live with all these planes dropping out of the sky".

here again with numbers, for perspective.
for week ending 8th Oct.
Disease of the respiratory system: 3206
Influenza and pneumonia: 1069
COVID-19: 666
thats mentioned on death certificate.

thousands from dementia, heart disease, cancer, get faded from the data altogether. tracked in other datasets, but this one disease is bluring everything.

 

[vegster]

It does need more research of course, but that statement is simply not true though is it……….there are loads of papers and articles examining mask efficacy. Here’s just one example (that cites numerous - dozens of - other pieces of research) :

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118

Conclusion (if you don’t want to read the whole paper)

Our review of the literature offers evidence in favor of widespread mask use as source control to reduce community transmission: Nonmedical masks use materials that obstruct particles of the necessary size; people are most infectious in the initial period postinfection, where it is common to have few or no symptoms (45, 46, 141); nonmedical masks have been effective in reducing transmission of respiratory viruses; and places and time periods where mask usage is required or widespread have shown substantially lower community transmission.

The available evidence suggests that near-universal adoption of nonmedical masks when out in public, in combination with complementary public health measures, could successfully reduce R to below 1, thereby reducing community spread if such measures are sustained. Economic analysis suggests that mask wearing mandates could add 1 trillion dollars to the US GDP (32, 34).

Models suggest that public mask wearing is most effective at reducing spread of the virus when compliance is high (39). We recommend that mask use requirements are implemented by governments, or, when governments do not, by organizations that provide public-facing services. Such mandates must be accompanied by measures to ensure access to masks, possibly including distribution and rationing mechanisms so that they do not become discriminatory. Given the value of the source control principle, especially for presymptomatic people, it is not sufficient for only employees to wear masks; customers must wear masks as well.

It is also important for health authorities to provide clear guidelines for the production, use, and sanitization or reuse of face masks, and consider their distribution as shortages allow. Clear and implementable guidelines can help increase compliance, and bring communities closer to the goal of reducing and ultimately stopping the spread of COVID-19.

When used in conjunction with widespread testing, contact tracing, quarantining of anyone that may be infected, hand washing, and physical distancing, face masks are a valuable tool to reduce community transmission. All of these measures, through their effect on Re
, have the potential to reduce the number of infections. As governments exit lockdowns, keeping transmissions low enough to preserve health care capacity will be critical until a vaccine can be developed.

Even if wearing a mask reduces your chance of passing on or catching Covid by 1% it helps the bigger picture. What have we got to lose by wearing a face mask regularly and properly.

 

[dazzer6666]

Even if wearing a mask reduces your chance of passing on or catching Covid by 1% it helps the bigger picture. What have we got to lose by wearing a face mask regularly and properly.

Precisely…….also as mentioned by others, if me wearing a mask makes someone else (who might be vulnerable) feel a little bit safer when I’ve popped into to co-op or whatever then it’s a tiny inconvenience worth putting up with in enclosed spaces.

 

[Bob!]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...d-hit-100000-a-day?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

I guess Tory MP's will all now be wearing masks in the House of Commons

 

[Dave the hatosaurus]

I have read through the posts on this thread and while i appreciate that either side MAY be right or wrong i would ask people to consider this :-

If we mask wearers are wrong the consequence is that we will all have worn masks unnecessarily for some small periods of time
If the anti mask wearers are wrong the consequence will likely be several thousand extra and unnecessary deaths in the coming months

I know which i prefer .........

 

[Bozza]

How about option 3:

Mask wearers are preventing spread of the virus at a time where we are able to deal with it, delaying it to a time where we are less able to, thus ultimately resulting in more deaths.

Not saying the above statement is necessarily true... but at the moment, the NHS is able to deal with the virus, but during the winter flu season it will struggle.

Mask wearing is simply not necessary now, to the point that it may end up being counter productive.

To clarify, you're saying that all of Sajid Javid, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Professor Stephen Powis, National Medical Director of NHS England and Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency were all fibbing to us today when they repeatedly impressed on the need for caution including mask-wearing in settings of heightened risk?

I'll give you something: your ongoing confident bold assertions are impressive given you're likely to have as many clinical and medical qualifications as I do. By that, I mean none at all whatsoever.

 

[dsr-burnley]

Why don’t you ask our friend from Burnley as he was the one to bring up unvaccinated people and insinuated all those dying are so.

I don't know if you're remotely interested in accuracy, but just in case you are:

1. In post 224 you raised the unvaccinated by saying that people have been "sacrificed needlessly by the Government because it's too politically difficult to persuade selfish people to put masks on or get a vaccine".

2. In post 235 I said "Are you saying that it's the government's fault if someone dies unvaccinated, because the government should have worked harder to persuade them?". That's the whole post. You seem to have interpreted that as me saying that everybody who died was unvaccinated. I have no idea how you get that, but I apologise if I wasn't clear.

I was trying to clarify if you blame the government for the deaths of those who chose not to have a vaccine. That's how I read your post, and it seemed too ridiculous to be true so I was asking if that was what you meant. Apologies to anyone else who was confused, if anyone else was.

 

[Bozza]

Are you saying that it's the government's fault if someone dies unvaccinated, because the government should have worked harder to persuade them?

Most of the people dying are fully vaccinated.

In the most recent period (13 Sept - 10 Oct) there were 2,805 Covid deaths, of which:

- 2,136 of them were fully-vaccinated (two doses)
- 557 of were unvaccinated people (no doses)

There's a huge amount of context to this I can't be arsed to go into at midnight, but these numbers absolutely do NOT illustrate that "vaccines do not work". They do however, illustrate that decent people who did the right thing are tragically losing their lives in high numbers.

Just for anyone who is thinking "Hang on, do vaccines work?"...

- This time last year, 100% of people who were dying were unvaccinated (as we did not have vaccines).
- If we did reach the holy grail of vaccinating every person in the country (we won't obviously - it's hypothetical), 100% of deaths would be of fully vaccinated people.

 

[clapham_gull]

There is obviously a lot of social engineering going on here. We can be certain that the expectations of the public are being managed by the government as much, if not more so, than the virus itself. So there are things that are being selectively revealed, or not, and other things which are being said solely to manage our expectations and influence our behaviour.

It's quite obvious why the default position is caution, such as the need for mask wearing, even if it is not necessarily required at this point. There are also political reasons for this, such as keeping their voter base feeling like they are being protected. But at the same time, in reality, they know full well that the vast majority will not wear masks until mandatory - and we all know this too right, if only from experience?

So of course, you should all follow the government guidance. Wear masks, be cautious and so on. But in reality, this is all PR, and public health could be in fact relying upon those who don't actually comply to the advice.

I think this current regime politically don't like telling people to do anything and are very challenged internally when they do.

 

[Klaas]

Would you allow permission for anyone talking to a deaf person to pull down the mask to allow lip reading, or are the deaf simply persona non grata in this scheme?

Mask wearing for deaf people is a problem yes, I've tried to be aware of this and do what I can. What do you do to help out in these circumstances?