So - now masks protect the wearer?

According to Dr John Campbell on YouTube, there is scientific evidence that wearing a mask protects the wearer to some extent. If you are exposed to someone breathing out the virus near you, the mask cuts down the number of virus particles you breathe in (reduces your viral load), so you are more likely to be able to fight off the infection. If you do get it you are likely to have milder symptoms. Heavy viral load = worse illness.

I can really recommend Dr John’s videos. He is a former A & E nurse and nurse trainer with a PhD.

Sorry if I am repeating something already said - I don’t have time to read the whole thread.

Please biscuitmuncher tell us what you are getting at ? Are you saying Covid doesn’t exist ? Or that it does but we shouldn’t do anything about it?

NotSpaghetti do you worry about radiation a lot?

MOnica my friend had no pre existing mental health problems

Baggs

2 million out of 7+ billion is not a high percentage.

Whch is not an argument against mask-wearing, just in case anyone should think it is.

The screenshot is from ourworldindata.org from the page about global births and deaths per year.

I absolutely cannot understand what you mean ?

Why are people assuming that the OP is using excuses not to wear a mask? She clearly says that she is wearing one. All she is asking is why the advice keeps changing. The only thing I would say is, that if it is propaganda to push people to wear masks and it works, so be it. However, I have read research which indicates that wearing a mask can give up to 40% protection to the wearer.

It is known that touching and getting the virus on hands is a huge contributor to the spread, hence the advice to keep washing or sanitising hands.

As for getting sore hands from constant washing and sanitising, a good hand cream can deal with that. I have to say that, at the beginning of the pandemic, my own hands were suffering but, they are fine now. I have spoken to others who have found the same thing. I suspect that the skin gets used to it. No! We are not washing our hands less frequently.

Biscuitmuncher When a house or factory is on fire, fire crews will turn out and not only fight the fire from the outside, but venture in to the building in an endeavour to control the conflagration. Meanwhile police will be keeping bystanders well away from the site because of the danger they might he affected by the heat, or fumes or if there was an explosion. Should someone turn up with a cigarette lighter and light a cigarette, they will quickly be hustled away, because of the inherent risk this act contains.

The fact that the fire fighters get up close and personal with the fire does not invalidate the decision to keep other people well away from it because of the danger.

This applies to COVID. Medical staff, police staff, care workers and others, are like the firefighters, needing to deal with a far higher risk of getting the disease than others in order to protect the rest of us.

We, in the meanwhile, are kept well away from any situation where the disease might be passed on. If we do that we are contributing to reducing the chances of this disease being passed to others and helping to protect those facing the worst dangers by reducing the number of infected people needing hospital treatment and the chances that the miscreant the police officer is dealing with will have the disease.

2 million out of 7+ billion is not a high percentage.

Whch is not an argument against mask-wearing, just in case anyone should think it is.

The screenshot is from ourworldindata.org from the page about global births and deaths per year.

Radiation is also invisible...

Just saying.

"something you've not even seen" Do you have a CO2 alarm? Carbon dioxide can't be seen either, but people die from running their car engine in their garage, or from a faulty heater..

I have yet to know anyone with COVID, but DH had a premature discharge from hospital bcause there were so many COVID cases being admitted.

When he was discharged half his ward had already been sealed off and turned into a COVID ward and I suspect by now the whole ward is a COVID ward.

Early in the first lockdown DS and family had to go into quarantine because the parent of DGS's friend had COVID. A couple of bubbles in DGD's school have been quarantined because someone has COVID, although her bubble has been fine. But noon we know has had the illness.

I appreciate that some people have struggled with mental health issues during the lockdown, but could I suggest, with some diffidence, that if they were so seriously ill they were sectioned, that the mental problms must have been pre-existent. I do not think many people who entered lockdown in good mental health, rapidly became so ill they were sectioned. This is not to to diminish the very real problems your family members suffered.

It is all very easy to generalise from our own experience. I am as guilty of doing it as others. I live in an area, where people generally obey the lockdown rules; but this doesn't invalidate other people's experience of living somewhere where compliance is poor. What neither of us must do is assume our experience is universal.

There are masks and masks. Obviously we are not wearing the P3 hospital masks as that would deplete their supply. However it is better to wear 3 layer masks, as recently publicised but Which. A single layer face covering may be quite ineffective, as are masks which are pulled out of the pocket and used numerous times without washing.

Another thing, even with medics, is the constant fiddling with, and readjusting masks, and afterwards every surface touched must be contaminated.

Lucca no its the whole , my child is sitting on a laptop for 6 hours a day on her own lonely trying to have an education, my son working in a police station dealing with spit and other bodily fluids but it's far too dangerous to go to a gym! It's the having no life for a year over something you've not even seen

Good post Aldom. I completely agree.

Biscuitmuncher Just because you do not have personal experience of C19 does not mean the situation is not serious. In the hospital where my son in law is a consultant there are 30 people on ventilators and several hundred people on the wards with C19. These people are very poorly and suffering dreadful symptoms. Most of the admissions to the hospital are for Covid19. Staff are falling ill. The hospital is desperate for qualified doctors and nurses to come forward to help with the terrible situation. The NHS is in crisis. Please don't ignore the rules. Wear a mask, wash your hands, stay 2 metres apart. Stay at home. Support the NHS and ultimately, help us all to come out of this alive. I personally know people who are currently ill and I know someone who has died from Covid. I have sympathy with your mum whose mental health is affected.

So those people who had no symptoms but tested positive could have assumed they were perfectly healthy and gone around for a week or more spreading it to dozens of other people - some of whom could have been very ill with it, or died? THAT is how them wearing a mask would work to help stop transmission. I do hope they did wear one!

Biscuitmuncher I’m sorry to hear of your two relatives but that is not surely a reason to disbelieve the news if 2million people worldwide who have died of Covid, are you suggesting all the doctors in every country lied ? I just don’t get this attitude, sorry.

Baggs I knowa few people who tested positive but had no symptoms and I know a few with bad coughs. My mum lives in an old age community and she doesn't know anyone. And I don't live in the middle of no where but in a West Midlands city

On a visit to Japan a few years ago people were seen wearing masks which for us looked a little different shall we say. now the world at large are wearing masks so not so odd now. I don’t mind in the least wearing a mask I would step back from someone in close contact with me if they’re not wearing one. Keep safe everyone.

I don't know anyone who's been ill with covid either. The team I work with are carers in the community. None of them and none of the people they've been visiting during the past year have become ill with covid. Some of the people they have visited have died but not of or even with covid. Others have had periods in hospital for other reasons; they also have not contracted covid.

My eldest DD thinks her family was affected by covid (they all had symptoms except her) but none of them were ill (they did isolate for the required time).

Things need repeating several times before they really sink in.

You've already done the house insurance, oven glove thing

My sister is in hospital with corona virus.

Do you live alone on a desert island, biscuitmuncher?

Because you personally don't know anyone who has been ill with the virus, do you believe that the many, many posters who have known people with it, or lost family and friends to it, are telling lies?

How many people have you known who were seriously injured or died in a car accident? Whose houses were badly damaged by fire or accident? who were knocked down crossing the road? Who got third degree burns by lifting a hot casserole dish? Whose child was injured playing with the carving knife?

If you don't know any of those people, why do you bother with the insurance, the oven gloves, the child-proof lock on the knife drawer? Or do you just not believe that anything can be potentially dangerous until you see the blood flow with your own eyes? Or feel the pain yourself?

Or are you just enjoying being controversial and going against common sense?

There's been two members of my sectioned, my mum because shielding went very wrong and my friend who struggled with living alone and working from home, hope that's a little easier to understand Lucca