The following is from: lauradodsworth.substack.com/p/midsummer-mask-madness?utm_source=email
In a speech in August 2020, after the WHO’s policy change on masks, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said “the mask has come to represent solidarity”. (My emphasis.) What he did not mention was any new evidence behind the policy change. In fact, the WHO’s guide, ‘Mask use in the context of Covid-19’, published in December 2020, said,
“At present there is only limited and inconsistent scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of masking of healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2”.
This has not been updated with new evidence.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) concurs that,
“evidence regarding the effectiveness of non- medical face masks for the prevention of COVID-19 is scarce”.
The idea that masks work is lodged in some people’s brains and they can’t change tack. They are trapped by their own confirmation bias. (I’m sure they would say the same to me, but I think my mind could be changed with hard evidence. I’m still waiting.) I imagine it would be very difficult now for people who pushed for restrictions and masks to change their minds at this stage.
What’s the panic based on? Jamie Jenkins (who formerly worked in health statistics at the ONS) has dissected the latest hospitalisation figures from NHS England. Most recently, there were 10,658 patients in hospital with Covid, up from 3,835 on 5th June. That sounds like a big increase over a month but we have to remember most of those patients are in with not because of Covid. Most pertinently, according to latest data, there are an estimated 70 patients are in critical care beds in England primarily for Covid-19 out of 4,187 beds. This is just over a quarter of the number this time last year when it was 255.
This is the occupation of critical care beds in the 7 days to 28th June:
4.4% of critical care beds had a patient with Covid
72.3% of patients not with Covid
23.3% of beds were unoccupied
This is the occupation of general beds in the 7 days to 28th June:
2.6% of general hospital beds in England have patients being treated for Covid
4.3% of beds have patients with Covid but are primarily treated for other conditions/injuries
87.9% of beds patients without Covid
5.3% of beds are unoccupied
(With thanks to Jamie Jenkins who is worth a follow on Twitter.)
Dame Sarah Gilbert who developed theAstraZeneca vaccine said in The Times that pandemics do “rumble on” before they come to an end. We need to learn to live with this.
But there is an urgent health situation that too few people are talking about. Non-Covid excess deaths are worryingly high. In the last week’s reported ONS data, there were 10,836 deaths in England and Wales in total. Covid was the cause of 166 of them and involved (mentioned but not main cause) in a further 119. The concerning part is that this total is a staggering 1,432 deaths above the five year 2015-2019 average.
Deaths registered in May 2022 were 5,873 above the average seen pre-pandemic in 2015-2019. Of those 4,357 were not due to Covid. Of the main causes of death, heart disease had the largest number of deaths above average.
If these excess deaths were due to Covid, it would have been all over the media. You would not be able to avoid red graphs, blaring headlines, panicked demands for restrictions, so why is no one talking about these non-Covid deaths? Although the causes are multi-factorial, these deaths are inconvenient and cast blame on lockdowns and the quality of healthcare.
Some sort of madness has taken hold of people if they are fretting about re-introducing masks for Covid and not worried about the excess thousands of non-Covid deaths. Reicher said “closing our eyes and pretending it's not there, that's the most dangerous strategy of all,” but that is exactly what people are doing.
). However, despite my stringent actions of PP2 mask & gloves, all clothing, dishes immediately despatched to relevant machine etc. 2 hourly temperature checks on him at night (yawn) because he had sepsis 2 months ago - here am I with Covid (my chap shot out of his 'prison' like a rabbit). Not too bad at moment perhaps because we've both had all four jabs. Worst is not being able to see family but thanks to Skype, phone and texts all is good and I do get to have my at-home hugs again.
).