Wearing A Mask in public - Page 2

Lipstick is part of my personality.  I wear the stay fast ones from mercadona which dont rub onto the masks.  Yes i wear a mask in shops but otherwise do not.  I keep away from non local people to the best of my ability,. ,but lipstick is part of me and thank goodness Maybelline brought out a non transferrable one.   Also Mercadona have one of their own (deliplus).  I will not give up my personality because of this virus it has already taken so much  from us.  Where There Is a will there is a way!!!  If you have never worn a lipstick you would not understand.  Its like eye shadow and eyebrow pencil .  I've  worn makeup since i was 16 and at 82 am not about to give it it up. However base makeup has been a pain as that does come off.  But youngsters (don't know your age)  can get away with their beautiful fresh clear skin. 

I was in the Costa Almeria region October through November and was pleased to see how easily people accepted wearing the mask when in shops etc. I spent a couple of days in Almeria city and even when outdoors the vast majority of people wore the masks. It was uncomfortable at times but this is how the infection rate is minimised. Returning to blighty the norm is to not wear masks outdoors. 

Can you show me and everyone else the data that tells you that masks reduce infection? Somehow I never found any?

One thing that travels faster than a real virus is gossip and ignorance. As an ex-microbiologist I can tell you that masks are a placebo effect. They physically can not restrain any virus inside you, so they do not work. Any hole that is in any mask that you can buy is greater than the size of the nano droplet carrying a virus. A mask is not sealed to your face in any case so air and billions of viruses and bacteria are escaping all the time. to the tune of 50L per minute of expanding swirling gas in your local supermarket....

Common sense travels at a far smaller pace than gossip and pseudo science newspaper articles. That is why people get angry about masks not because they feel their civil liberties are taken away, that comes later in the order of things.

if masks do not reduce infections why are they worn by all medical staff?  and if you watch the cloud of smoke that comes from cigarettes and vaping if that was a virus coming your way you would want some sort of barrier to it.

Hi Alice,

Masks in hospitals (before Covid) were worn only when dealing with open infections and seriously ill people. The reason is to stop direct spray and spittle and dead skin from falling out of a medics moth (all of us do this but normally we can't see it because it is so small).

This is an entirely bacterial defence.bacteria are small and deadly too but even bacteria have viruses and viral infections, that is how small a virus is. None of the masks on sale are good enough to stop a virus or the incredibly small vapour droplets you can see on a cold frosty morning.

The smoking thing though is a good example. During the lockdown I could smell a neighbour smoking outside his front door about 18m away from me. The air would appear to be still, no wind at least. Try another test if you know a smoker, get them to blow through a mask for you. Sure, on the inside it will be stained but watch how much goes through. You ill notice too that no one has advocated  a medical mask, just a  covering but see my comment below about politicians?

I know this seems counterintuitive but it is basic common sense when you know the facts. The reason that most people object to masks is because they know they are inefective but now there is so much fear people believe that they have to do something. It is really hard for humans to get their head round the fact that nature is more powerful than us. A lot of this expectation rests on our generation of benefit from antibiotics and vaccines to rid the world of much of the things that would kill us long before we retired to Spain. I myself am only here because of a massive cocktail of antibiotics and antiviral drugs ten years before I got Covid. Now we believe there is a cure for everything and can expect to enjoy our long retirement? When I was a child most people retired and died shortly after retiring, the average age of death being 69 for men and 71 for women. Now it is into the eighties with many living longer. The number of people dying of heart/dirculation problems and cancer is less than half of all deaths (UK). So, what do the 55% die of? What used to be called old age and is no longer allowed on death certificates. All doctors in western europe at least are obliged to put up three causes of death on a death certificate because we now wear out rather than breaking down (if tyou can excuse the car analogy). I watched recently a podcast between two eminent doctors lamenting this fantastic improvement in health but the downside being that we can not play god and keep peple alive indefinitely. The fear of Covid,driven by the media (mainstream) has scared people into looking at medics and politicians for an answer. Politicians these days are too media conscious to give honest answers and not brave enough to deliver hard truths.

There has been no answer and even the vaccine is short lasting six months (some last a lifetime and some do not). It is worth pointing out too that some vaccines can only be given so many times before you stress the body systems so much that you run the risk of wrecking the immune system or create auto immune repsonses.

By now almost everyone will have either experienced the virus (40% have no knowledge of infection) as 60% was the estimate in Spain and the UK last autumn, long before the vaccines were rolled out.

The long term situation at present is that this Coronavirus (Covid 19) has muscled out Influenza (also a Coronavirus) almost 100% for two winters running.

The best solutions are to have a cup of tea, relax the best way you know how and laugh a lot.

I am however happy to explain more about this because even after two years people are still looking for answers. So, feel free to ask more? :)

In the early days of the Coronavirus epidemic in Ireland the medics were informing the public that facemasks were not an effective form of protection.  In fact, they argued that many were wearing the masks improperly and badly handling them which would lead to more infection. Then, even I (on this forum) argued for the non wearing of face masks. 

A few weeks into the epidemic the Irish medics informed us that they got it wrong and the wearing of face masks was a necessity to reduce the effect of the virus. Needless to say, I changed my advice on the forum to reflect this. 

We have got to beat Covid in all its forms. The wearing of face masks indoors is a weapon against Covid. The wearing of masks in outside crowded areas is also a weapon. It isn't onerous to wear a mask. Let's do the right thing and wear one and let's make a good effort to reduce the effect of Covid. If not for ourselves, let's do it for others.

How come everyone died already?

As you neatly explained the advice was don't bother, it is awaste of time.

Later it changed due to political pressure from the public and authorities for fear that there would be panic - witness the panic buying that followed as it was assumed that everyone would die and society would break down.

Masks as worn anywhere are 100% ineffective measures against airborne viruses, period. If you enjoy the placebo effect fine but you are just perpetuating a myth to advocate the mask as a reasonable means of preventing disease.

There is no evidence, none? Find some, was my original remark? You can not run a defence system of any sort, in any walk of life on belief. there has to be substance.

A while ago a haplesss medic was wheeld out in front of the tv cameras to be questioned about masks, visibly shaking, he mumbled that they were 50% effective, would you wear a seatbelt that was 50% ineffective or carry your shopping home in a bag that was 50% ineffective or try to carry water in something 50% ineffective?

If it is not 100% then you are still going to spread the virus, the whole point of my argument here.

If you study who is giving the advice it is mainly politicians. If it is a medic - question who and why he is saying what he does? Medicas and scientists are just as prone as anyone else to responding to the baying media and money. Money is a big problem. The WHO is riddled with big Pharmacy connections. Moderna has gone from being seriously in the red to being profitable in one hit.  The head of the Welcome Foundation (Professor Dame ??) was mis reported the other day by the Associated Press but what she really said was that we should not forget the lessons of this episode. Well they are the same as the lessons learned from 1918. Nothing has changed except the massive media attention and greater communication (often gossip) available to discuss and transport news. Back in 1918 people tried masks and lockdown and it did not work then, why should it now? Everything I learned in the 70s is still valid today, nature did not change its socks. if the 'big one' comes we will be dead before we can do anything.

The sad truth is that the human psyche works on belief and emotion rather than truth. We are more geared to this than thinking thing through. It takes forever to get rid of irrational emotional fear (ask a psychologist) and it sometimes never happens. When it comes to death we unseat the greatest fear and whoever told us that we are all going to die deserves to be found out. Hardly anyone has died, population deaths per year in most countries have not increased significantly in the whole of northern Europe.

Masks never saved us, nor helped, except in th belief that it might help.

Find me the evidence, I asked...... If it existed then everyone would be quoting it? Your Irish medics were right, they knew th etruth but the truth is lost when fear overtakes us.

You want evidence then here it is:- People using the Underground in London for months didn't have to wear face masks. Neither did people on the red buses. These were instrumental in the spreading of Covid in the UK. 

Enter the London Underground or jump on a red bus now and you must wear a face mask or you'll be chucked out. And rightly so!

So, you don't want to wear a face mask. That's your choice. But, if you get Covid, don't come whinging to me.

The Covid virus is not air borne, it is transferred in droplets of water that are carried or projected through the air when coughing or sneezing.

In the early days of Covid there was no evidence either way if masks were effective. That is because science takes time to undertake and Covid was a new virus. Since then, there has been plenty of research. Masks are effective and even a basic search on Google will provide evidence to this effect. Masks stop droplets of water reaching the wearers mouth/nose and airways, not 100% but up to 70% effective.

That is not evidence, just shows an irrational  knee jerk reaction and the NEED, to do something that is part of our psyche. We can't do nothing when fear drives us - we must fight or flight? Re: your remark about we must beat the virus. Sorry, the virus won and it has stayed around to mutate just like flu did for decades and no one really bothered. Nature always wins. Humans lost good and proper and the stupid human race is still running around in circles, trying to make out it won and can win next time... no lessons are learned by the masses. The same will happen next time. In the meantime we have lost our freedoms. Vaccines are only effective for 6 months and then you are back to zero. Population of Spain 52 million twice a year 104 million shots - bet the politicians will not buy into that? I repeat the dangers of over re-action that is a known problem with vaccination too, along with vaccination while your immune system is challenged by something else. Anywhere between three and five percent of the population do not get the benefit of vaccination. The numbers of people who died are less than 1% so you are not protecting anyone. People also believe the vaccination will stop them getting the virus - no it does not. It only works if you have an active immune system and it is possible to still die of the virus and you can still carry the virus to infect others regardless of whether you are ill or not.

Belief, belief belief not fact is tormenting society.

Especially now we are of the era of mass protection by medicine that  has elongated our lives. I looked at some data for people in Ireland in the 1800s that I have in relation to my genealogy. Out of a sample of around 3,500 people in rural Ireland post famine 1864 to 1900 ,better than one in three people lived to be more than 70. I was a little amazed at such a high figure for a hand to mouth existence that most people in Ireland lived. However, two out of three were dead before 70.

Truth will also win... eventually