A comment in the Guardian Science Weekly session below. I think there is a touch of conspiracy theory but it may just be that they have picked the wrong conspiracies, not the real ones.
empathyfreak
46m ago
56
There is something mighty peculiar going on in government around face masks.
They say that because NHS staff must have masks, that makes it impossible to advise the public to wear them.
This is plainly nonsense in so many ways that it becomes difficult to sort out.
NHS staff who have contact with Covid patients know, of course, they are in contact with an infected person and therefore need a special type of mask – one which will prevent them from inhaling the infected saliva that is sprayed from the mouth of an infected person. This type of mask is expensive.
The much larger number of NHS staff who have no contact with patients infected with the coronavirus, together with all care home staff, and those who visit care clients in their home, must, in case they have the virus and don’t know it, wear a mask which prevents them from passing the virus on to their patient/client. In some cases it would make sense for the patient/client to also wear a mask in case they have the virus and don’t know it and might infect their carer.
Surgeons wear a mask so that they do not infect the patient. It is much less expensive than the mask needed to protect the wearer.
Only the expensive mask gives adequate protection to the wearer.
If the purpose of wearing a mask is to stop you infecting someone else, then it would make no sense to have the patient/client visited by anyone who is not wearing a mask. Nobody knows whether or not they are infected at the time of the visit just as nobody who is walking along the street or wandering around a supermarket knows if they are.
So everyone has to wear a mask for the good of everybody. Personal responsibility being enacted and thereby achieving the common good.
So why does the government have what looks like a phobia on the subject of masks?
Remember that Sir Patrick Vallance enunciated his pet “herd immunity” theory. He is the government’s chief scientific adviser who was previously Director of R& D at Glaxo Smith Kline a mega pharma company with a big interest in vaccine manufacturing so he must have known that herd immunity is produced by very high rates of vaccination.
It is believed that he is also prominent on the Government “Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies” (SAGE) membership of which is secret.
Sir Patrick is also a vocal anti-mask voice.
It is not hard to spot that there is a potential conflict of interest which could lead him to be against masks as they have been shown in places like Taiwan to help reduce infections to zero.
But two other possible explanations for the government’s bizarre position keep obtruding through the barrage of mis-information that has become the trademark of government pronouncements.
Massive investment in facial recognition technology will prove useless if people have to wear masks until such time (maybe a year or two away if at all) when a vaccine is available. Facial recognition has been developed as a security tool and has been criticised as being part of a big brother mindset.
But the Government has also been developing (through an NHS off-shoot) an app which will trace people’s movements through their mobile phone recognising other close-up mobiles with the same app and passing on the information to a central data bank.
This proposal was thoroughly debunked on the BBC R4 World at One on 22 April by Professor Alison Pollock of The Newcastle University Centre for Regulatory Science who said that it was neither needed nor would do the job as well as local people on the ground seeking details of contacts from anyone who shows symptoms just as had been done many times for other diseases.
The membership of SAGE must be made public. How can the body which is dictating government policy which has over 20,000 deaths as an outcome, remain in the shadows?
Herd immunity appears to be still the objective and for this Sir Patrick Vallance should be sacked and investigated in respect of any of the deaths.
basis.
oh dear.. i think its mandatory.