Masks to be worn by everyone in public...?

[Javert]

Anyone who has ever been prescribed an inhaler for asthma is exempt.
Autism - exempt.
Anyone likely to suffer distress, exempt.

People don't need to have an exemption certificate or badge, either.

This makes it unenforceable without public cooperation - ASD covers a huge spectrum of people and many of them would be perfectly capable of wearing a mask without problem, although some would not.   The issue though is that since there is no requirement to carry any kind of document that proves you have autism, and there is no ability of any shop to demand medical evidence, they just have to take the person's word for it.  As such, anyone who claims they are mildly autistic, or need to use an inhaler occasionally, they have to take their word for it, meaning that anybody who doesn't want to wear a mask will just say that.

Fundamentally it only works with public cooperation, and there will always be a small minority of traitors, sorry I mean patriotic heroes, who refuse to wear the mask and therefore put their fellow citizens in danger.

[papasmurf]

So went to the golf club Friday morning , nobody wearing masks in pro shop , no social distancing .
Fri afternoon went to newsagent , man being served in front no mask , shopkeeper mask around neck . leaving shop passed woman ,no mask .
Popped in pub for a swift half dozen on way home . No social distancing ,people mingling and greeting in normal fashion ,handshakes cheek kissing ect .

If we are going to have the mask policy it needs to be enforced or forget it .

May I ask where you live please, just the town/city.

[Streetwalker]

So went to the golf club Friday morning , nobody wearing masks in pro shop , no social distancing .
Fri afternoon went to newsagent , man being served in front no mask , shopkeeper mask around neck . leaving shop passed woman ,no mask .
Popped in pub for a swift half dozen on way home . No social distancing ,people mingling and greeting in normal fashion ,handshakes cheek kissing ect .

If we are going to have the mask policy it needs to be enforced or forget it .

[papasmurf]

We don't want angry mobs attacking people who have no masks on, when they are exempt, do we?

If they aren't exempt serves them right. Personally I am fed up with people ignoring what they have been told to do and risking a 2nd wave of infections.
The government has been far too soft.

[Barry]

Fair enough, for those who are exempt, a face mask is optional. I am exempt, but I still wore one when shopping earlier today.
We don't want angry mobs attacking people who have no masks on, when they are exempt, do we?

[papasmurf]

Anyone who has ever been prescribed an inhaler for asthma is exempt.
Autism - exempt.
Anyone likely to suffer distress, exempt.

People don't need to have an exemption certificate or badge, either.

Although I will wear a mask and a face shield where necessary, as one of the shielded I already have a written exemption (two actually.) One from my GP one from the NHS.

[Barry]

Anyone who has ever been prescribed an inhaler for asthma is exempt.
Autism - exempt.
Anyone likely to suffer distress, exempt.

People don't need to have an exemption certificate or badge, either.

[papasmurf]

Frankly anyone fraudulently not wearing a mask should be jailed.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/face-coverings-when-to-wear-one-and-how-to-make-your-own

[Barry]

[papasmurf]

Who is endangering who's health?

The one without the mask.

[Barry]

Print your own exemption if you want to
https://www.keepsafe.org.uk/card

Keep-Safe-Logo.png
This website has closed
Keep Safe was a free resource created by Photosymbols. It was set up to help keep people with learning disabilities in the UK informed throughout the first wave of coronavirus. It had the latest information in easy read format including:

A series of 20 posters

Advice on symptoms

How to get help and what to do

Rule and guidance

News updates

Range of downloadable resources

Print-your-own cards

Live events including online quiz

This project was never funded and we have had to make the difficult decision to close it so we can focus on our usual work again.

Very odd. Yesterday there were cards and things to print or show on your phone .
Who had that closed down, and why?

Here's another, wonder how long it will last:
https://disabilitypartnershipcalderdale.org/2020/06/16/mask-exemption-cards-print-wear/

[Sheepy]

All of this controversy only shows how political so called scientific opinion is. Who would have thought a virus particle  as small as Covid , would remain airborne for far more than a few seconds.?
One could always make an argument as to how masks are used ,and how to reduce their effectiveness. 
The argument they don't help in any way , was only ever made to suit  the politics of that moment. Masks always had the potential to help lower the impact of Covid , as with all transmissible infections that in the main transmit  via mouth and nose.

OK time for me to take off my "Porton Suit" for a moment so i can be heard clearly...

A couple of things: A couple of points to be made, and a few to be shot dowen.

First. I have indeed worn wore a mask, and more, I have worn a full "Porton Down" as some call it here Nuclear Biological and Chemical Warfare / Biohazard Protective suit, with independent (scuba-like) life support providing me with the capacity to operate in an environment hazardous to life.  But that was more to stop the isolated animal cells I was culturing (which i had extracted from live animal organs and cultured in a rig akin to, and using mechanics similar to what most here might visualise as being used in sci-fi film hydroponics labs) from being exposed to ME.

So I feel I have at least a modicum of experience on these subjects ...

First and foremost, the virus particle does not travel in isolation.  It travels in a droplet breathed, sneezed etc from another. A mask that covers your mouth and nose which has a gas permeable layer beneath an outer covering **WILL** capture a lot of moisture from the inhaled air before you inhale it, and thus reduce your inhaled droplet load. So can we please pack in the stuff about the masks not stopping the individual virus particles. They don't. The can't. But that isn't what they are designed to do.


Second, if you catch and die as a result of catching COVID 19 from a single virus particle then man oh man you are ONE UNLUCKY BASTARD. I'm sure there is one such person in the ground right now, but they are the equivalent of the poor sod who gets hung over from a sniff of the hops brewing in a brewery three miles down wind. The whole point about a viral attack is a whole bloody army of the bastards hit you. And the mask will reduce the number that get through and enhance your chance of exterminating the ones that get through before they exterminate you. That is. after all, what the game is about.

BUT as i posted on a local community facebook group, where the question was asked whether one should be forced to wear mask in the shops, the whole problem revolves around four things.  Proximity of a source, Directionality of Travel, Exposure Time and Cross Contamination.

I wore a mask when i was working with the cells i had cultured, but as I explained, that was more to protect the cells in my cultures from anything on me than to protect me from what i was culturing.

I do not plan on spending three hours sitting six inches from your face, breathing all over you, while i study the pores on your nose.

But when analysing the degree to which liver cells had metabolised the radioactive sugar compounds i had introduced into their culture medium, I spent a whole day sitting inches from open glass vessels containing various cultures, staring down a microscope at some i had extracted, pipetting others to meet a gruesome end in the chromatography machine ....

In a shop, unless I am forced to stand within a very small distance indeed of you and face to face, and for a rather prolonged period of time, I personally do not see there is any significant point in being forced to wear a mask, and particularly one that is not a one time disposable one, because - and here is the fourth point, do you know how to put them on and take them off. There is a splendid internet meme of some prize T@@@ removing the latex gloves he's worn to handle his shopping trolley by gripping the end on his hand in his teeth...... words really do f**king fail me.

I put it to you that a population forced to wear masks all the time will either wear them improperly (like the twats i saw yesterday who left their noses uncovered) or will do stupid shit l;ike contaminate their hands with whatever might be on the front outer edge of the mask as they take it off, particularly if on taking it off they stick it in their pocket and then put it back on....

And so on.

SO in summary.

I'm off to Lidl in a minute to get some barbecue marinated diced chicken breast kebabs. I am about twenty times more likely to die of something left on them the cooking does not exterminate than a COVID 19 dose from anyone in the shop. So stuff the mask.

However, I will be needing to book myself an eye test soon. And a haircut. And I will probably take a disposable mask to both, keep in on throughout, and bin it, removing it the same way my microbiology professor taught me to remove the ones i wore in his lab 40 years ago.

I shall be enjoying a pint in a beer garden sometime this month. I won't be wearing mask then, because taking it off to drink the beer and putting it somewhere to don it again after is just bloody stupid from the point of view of cross contaminating my hands, and other surfaces...

They haven't worked out yet, it will never be gone, because a virus mutates constantly. They will be wearing masks as a sign of conformity until they die  and on the death certificate it will say, here lies another victim of covid, you must conform.

[papasmurf]

Print your own exemption if you want to
https://www.keepsafe.org.uk/card

Keep-Safe-Logo.png
This website has closed
Keep Safe was a free resource created by Photosymbols. It was set up to help keep people with learning disabilities in the UK informed throughout the first wave of coronavirus. It had the latest information in easy read format including:

A series of 20 posters

Advice on symptoms

How to get help and what to do

Rule and guidance

News updates

Range of downloadable resources

Print-your-own cards

Live events including online quiz

This project was never funded and we have had to make the difficult decision to close it so we can focus on our usual work again.

[Barry]

Print your own exemption if you want to
https://www.keepsafe.org.uk/card

[Barry]

Who is endangering who's health?