Mask wearing should be continue.

[Gordon999]

Boris is lifting covid restrictions for double jabbers. And to wear or not to wear a mask is to become a personal choice.

But mask wearing is supposed to protect other people near you from infection. So if mask wearing is not compulsory in crowded areas and public transport , this will become the mobile hot spots for infection spreading .

The right time to stop compulsory mask wearing in public areas , is when the reported hospital cases for covid is down to zero.

[ExpertInAField]

There are other issues that it can cause other than just death. I know someone personally who caught it about a year ago.

Before he was a super fit muscle gym guy. Now he is just a shadow of his former self, looks so gaunt and thin. Can barely walk anywhere now.

This is what worries me, is what if I am physically incapable of living from day to day.

[Macromia]

SO, pneumonia is more deadly than covid !

Hope to see you with a mask on for the next 50 years to stop getting pneumonia .

The percentage of people who die (or become seriously ill) after contracting a particular illness is far from the only important consideration.

Rabies has a close to 100% fatality rate in people who aren't vaccinated, and ebola kills about one in every two of the people unfortunate to catch it. We don't worry about either of these in the UK though because the chance of catching either here is effectively zero.

In an average year about 220,000 people catch pneumonia in the UK, compared to close to 10 times that number of confirmed cases of Covid 19 in the UK during 2020 - despite lockdowns and mask mandates.
Do the maths and then consider whether it's sensible to claim that pneumonia is more of a risk to the average person in the UK than pneumonia.



Is it reasonable to expect people to continue to wear masks indefinitely?
Of course not - but I agree with Gordon, that making masks completely voluntary at this point in time is not the right call.

[JK0]

I saw a guy crash his bike recently. He was wearing a mask and glasses, so presumeably could not see the curb. Made me laugh.

Also I despair of those who wear them walking out in the fresh air, or on their own in the car.

[ram]

Sorry to mention the following, but saw it on the internet.

"I see these people ( men ) driving alone in a car wearing a mask.
Do they wear a condom, alone in bed - just in case."

[Ted.E.Bear]

There are also too many deaths from the "Jab", Too many heart abnormaities after the Jab, too many people becoming disabled after the Jab.[

Like the rest of the statistics you posted - that is deliberately misleading nonsense - in the first lot you chose to compare two completely different statistics to come to a 'conclusion'

If you administer millions of doses to people over the age of 80, some of them are going to die soon afterwards.
Try comparing with a control population of the same size over the same time? But that won't show anything you can easily point to.

Masks help, a bit. But even a small reduction in transmission rates will, eventually, save thousands of lives. But they are just statistics, they won't be people you know, so you will never know what difference your contribution made.


Back to the subject, I wonder if more people will go for FFP3 masks now. They have been shown to be effective at preventing the wearer becoming infected.
Although the valves can make it more likely the wearer will infect other people, but I guess that's just tough!

[ram]

From chemistclick How long can you use an FFP3 / N99 Mask for?

You can use these respirators for up to 8 hours. However, if you remove your mask or suspect that it has become contaminated, you should discard the respirator and use a new one.
They are £ 3.50 each, and up to 1 per day use.


From chemistclick - they refuse to answer that these masks will save you from covid-19 Do N99 / FFP3 masks protect against Coronavirus?

FFP3 masks offer a high level of protection against bacteria and viruses. These masks can filter particles as small as 0.3 microns. Although some virus particles are small than 0.3 microns, N99 masks are still able to protect the user. This is because the particles are so small, that they pinball against other particles in the air. This makes it easy for the filters on the mask to capture smaller sized particles. It is also very rare for naked virus particles to be present in the air. They are usually attached to liquid from coughs and sneezes, which is easy for N99 masks to capture.

Nowhere does it give a yes or no. ( coronavirus is about 0.12 microns )
The below W.H.O. DOES give you an answer.


From who-2.jpg

Masks should be used as part of a comprehensive strategy of measures to suppress transmission and save lives; the use of a mask alone is not sufficient to provide an adequate level of protection against COVID-19


We also know that those in the know don't wear masks.

liesMask.jpg

Majority at Wilbledon don't wear masks ... I wonder why ? but we know why.

I hope the moderators don't delete this factual information.

[Ted.E.Bear]

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/...s-dramatically

"Upgrading PPE for staff working on COVID-19 wards cut hospital-acquired infections dramatically"

If it works in hospitals then there is no reason to believe it won't work in supermarkets. Admittedly, they haven't actually studied that...

But, yes, the use of a mask alone, and taking no other precautions, would be quite dumb. Again, they help, a bit - but that bit can be quite important. (How important varies, depending on the current infection rates, but it could make the difference between cases growing exponentially or declining).

[Gordon999]

posted on bbc website today ( Jul 9 ) :

• The number of Covid-19 infections has risen by more than 50% in the week to 3 July, according to the Office of National Statistics
• The percentage of people testing positive has increased in every UK nation and reached the highest level since the third week of February, it says

was this 50% rise due to not wearing mask ?

[Moderator2]

This discussion about mask wearing can continue, but as I have said elsewhere any arguments that vaccination is wrong are not acceptable.

For those of you who believe in democracy e.g., the outcome of the ‘Brexit’ vote where the leave result was just under 52%, then I would have thought that you would accept the ‘vaccine’ vote which is currently over 87% of the adult population. Noting of course that an injection is a far more significant personal commitment than a cross on a piece of paper.

If I see the word ‘sheep’ in a covid related post again, then that member may well find themselves unable to post for a day, it's so arrogant. Don’t insult or offend other forum members who may have made a different choice to your own.

None of what I have written above is an invite to a debate, keep your vaccination views to yourself, they are not welcome on these forums.

[jpkeates]

Vaccination has massively reduced the risk of infection (but not to zero) and also massively reduced the risk of going to hospital if you do get it.
And that's an amazing result.

There are two problems.
When someone is vulnerable (all those people who had to shield, for example), vaccination doesn't necessarily have the same impact on hospitalisation (there's no data on that, so it's an unknown), so for a number of people, opening up and suggesting people make their own judgements, is disproportionately risky.
Wearing your own mask is really helpful, wearing your own mask with everyone else wearing their own is close to risk free.
How do people make their own decisions about wearing a mask when they don't know everyone else's level of risk?

And we currently have a population awash with the virus, albeit not being hospitalised by it - many of whom are young fit people.
That's the perfect environment for creating variant strains of a virus.
That, plus restarting international travel, is going to make things much worse in the Autumn and Winter.
Opening up early means we'll be locked down again later on.

Right now, if you're in anywhere where you're in public, you should have to wear a mask, and if you aren't prepared to, you shouldn't be allowed in public.

[landlord-man]

It's time we stopped reporting Covid cases - as more people self-test (wrongly in many cases) and/or more tests are carried out, the figures become less reliable as there is no real comparison between date a and date b. The figures go up because testing goes up duh.

WHY can't we report and give focus to the number of people in hospital due to Covid as that would be a truer reflection of where we are.

Since when have we reported how many people have Flu each day? - we haven't - we only report stats for those who've died from it.

Time to change the reporting method.

[jpkeates]

WHY can't we report and give focus to the number of people in hospital due to Covid as that would be a truer reflection of where we are.

They do for England at least, every day, here - https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistic...ital-activity/

On 6th July, there were 1,998 people in hospital with Covid (how they define that is on that page).
Which is worrying, because on June 6th, there were 807.
We're already back at the level of early April, when it was "wrong" to end the lockdown.

The number of new admissions on those dates is 383 (July) and 113 (June).

Since when have we reported how many people have Flu each day? - we haven't - we only report stats for those who've died from it.

It's been done for years.

The number of flu cases is usually reported in a similar way to Covid, but it's confined to the winter months.
Summary of results are here
https://www.gov.uk/government/statis...al-flu-reports
You want pages 21-24.

There were 40 people hospitalised with flu last winter (a fraction of normal numbers, it was just short of 5000 the previous winter), with 9 needing intensive care in England (none in Scotland and one each in Wales and NI).

Covid precautions have pretty much stopped flu in the UK for the time being.

[boletus]

Right now, if you're in anywhere where you're in public, you should have to wear a mask, and if you aren't prepared to, you shouldn't be allowed in public.

Define "anywhere".

Maybe on public transport and a very few limited exceptions, otherwise not. It would be unenforced and unenforceable.

The severe restrictions have only been possible with the (surprising) consent of the people.

[JK0]

WHY can't we report and give focus to the number of people in hospital due to Covid as that would be a truer reflection of where we are.

Because that would not give an excuse for further lockdowns.