Some good news – kinda!
Care Minister Helen Whately has just announced masks won’t be required on staff in care homes in England… hopefully this is another nail in the coffin of widespread masking, though in typical Government fashion, Whately doesn’t have the guts to just bin the travesty of masking altogether and signal a clean break, but passes the buck down to individual employers.
Whately’s statement is quoted in The Express saying:
“For most people, Covid restrictions are a memory and life is back to normal – but not for those in care homes or being cared for at home.
For them, many of the people they see are still wearing masks.
It’s a barrier to communication. And it gets in the way of a smile that could brighten the day.
Masks make it hard to understand what people are saying. For deaf people, it makes it impossible to lip-read.
That’s about to change. Whether care workers have to wear masks will be the decision of the care home or care agency.”
So… lots of harms we’d all be better off without… but we’re gonna leave it up to individual care homes to keep doing it… based on how they feel on any given day… a full 998 days after the first lockdown. Gotcha.
It’s better than nothing of course, but just like with hospital and GP surgeries, we can now expect a “postcode lottery” with some care homes continuing to mask staff and presumably pushing them on visitors too. On which note…
Smile Free has been doing some digging, to find out exactly who is responsible when it comes to individual hospitals still insisting on masks – and we’d encourage you to read Paul Stevens’ research here.
Once you do, you’ll know who to put pressure on, if your hospital is still insisting on masking.
You’ll be shocked to the core to discover masking from hospital to hospital does not appear to be based on any kind of methodology, but rather on the personal whims of local individuals (exactly as we warned it would be, back in June when NHS guidance changed).
Last but by no means least – you are probably aware by now that one of the revelations in Matt Hancock’s new book is that English schoolkids were ordered masked in school just to avoid “a big spat with the Scots.”
We always knew mask mandates were dishonest, political decisions made for ‘nudge’ or PR reasons, but it’s good to have confirmation.
UsForThem have also been doing sterling work on this issue and their digging via Freedom of Information request found this vile policy decision was not risk-assessed for 17 months.
Following the Science, eh? You gotta love it.
