Why Did Chris Whitty Go From Opposing Face Masks to Mandating Them With No New Evidence They Work?
One of the major frustrations throughout the COVID-19 crisis has been the failure of high-profile journalists to ask ministers and SAGE scientists challenging questions about the rationale for their – often unprecedented – decisions. When they were not baying for earlier and harder restrictions, the journalists who participated in the numerous coronavirus press conferences typically restricted themselves to questions seeking clarification about the detail of a new rule or imposition rather than imploring the experts to justify the reasoning that led to their non-evidenced diktats.
I am sure I’m not alone in fantasising about the sort of questions I would like to put to the key rule-makers responsible for this extraordinary two-year assault on our basic human rights. Consider, for instance, Professor Chris Whitty, England’s Chief Medical Officer, and his belated support for requiring people to wear masks in community settings, arguably the most insidious of all the COVID-19 restrictions.
This is not an academic issue. Thanks to the Government’s relentless messaging about the purported benefits of face coverings, there is a real danger that widespread community masking – with all the attendant physical, social, psychological and environmental harms – could become a permanent feature, at least in certain sections of our society.
Prof. Whitty’s track record on the contentious issue of masking healthy people is, like that of many of the high-profile political and scientific rule-makers, characterised by contradiction. In early March 2020, he unequivocally stated that healthy people should not be wearing face-coverings. One month later, he was faltering, saying that, “The evidence is weak, but the evidence of a small effect is there under certain circumstances”. Since this time he has supported – or, at least silently colluded – with the pro-mask lobby. What changed his mind? No robust evidence supporting mask efficacy emerged in spring 2020, nor any time since, so what ‘nudged’ him to relinquish his anti-mask stance?
To clarify the reasons for his change of mind, I would be keen to be given the opportunity to ask our Chief Medical Officer the following questions:
- Around April/May 2020, what piece of robust real-world research made you change your mind about the ineffectiveness of masking healthy people in the community?
- As late as December 2020, a WHO document concluded that: “There is only limited and inconsistent scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of masking healthy people in the community.” Do you agree with the BBC Newsnight reporter Deborah Cohen that the WHO’s U-turn on masks was likely to have been the result of political lobbying?
- With regard to the imposition of masks, what has been the specific rationale offered to you by the Government’s behavioural scientists, such as Professor David Halpern?
- Is it merely a coincidence that masks powerfully help enforce the main ‘nudges’ promoted by behavioural scientists to achieve compliance with COVID-19 restrictions?
- Do you agree that the most robust type of scientific evidence is that provided by real-world, randomised controlled trials? If so, how can you reconcile your promotion of mask wearing with the results of such trials that consistently show that masks do not significantly reduce the transmission of respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2?
- Do you agree that, in a democratic free society, the evidential bar for mandating an intervention (such as masking the healthy) should be set very high? If so, do you believe that the empirical evidence for the benefits of masks as a means of reducing viral transmission reaches this threshold?
- There are a wide range of harms (physical, social, psychological and environmental) associated with masking healthy people, including the maintenance of inflated levels of fear that will have contributed significantly to the tens-of-thousands of non-Covid excess deaths and the current mental health crisis. Do you believe that a marginal reduction in viral transmission can compensate for this extensive collateral damage?
- If the Government’s behavioural scientists had not promoted masks as a way of increasing a sense of ‘solidarity’ that encouraged general compliance with the COVID-19 restrictions, can you confirm whether you would have changed your advice?
Growing numbers of people would like to hear Whitty’s answers to these important questions. Given the opportunity, I would be very happy to directly put them to our Chief Medical Officer in a public forum. Failing this, maybe a high-profile journalist will rise to the challenge. Ah, we can but dream.
Dr. Gary Sidley is a retired NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist, a member of HART and co-founder of the Smile Free campaign.
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Doctors’ face masks ‘aggravated’ communication failure that led to fatal overdose:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/02/15/doctors-face-masks-aggravated-communication-failure-led-fatal/
Pfizer Board Member Reveals Why Their COVID Vaccine for Children Was Delayed
https://www.theepochtimes.com/fda-delayed-decision-on-pfizers-vaccine-for-children-due-to-low-number-of-covid-19-cases-in-trial-gottlieb_4279546.html
FDA Delayed Decision on Pfizer’s Vaccine for Children Due to Low Number of COVID-19 Cases in Trial: Gottlieb
By Zachary Stieber
Don’t get complacent. Let’s keep getting the message out with our friendly resistance.
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I’m going to read the article after writing this, but: It really doesn’t matter.
People who are afraid that other people being allowed to breathe freely would be just too dangerous for them can effectively protect themselves and these kind of delusions can be treated.
And that’s it.
I think it does matter because the answer will be the same as the answer to the questions as to why he changed his mind on lockdowns, supported vaxxing kids etc. He appears either to have deliberately misled the politicians, or followed malfeasant orders from them, or taken leave of his senses. Whatever the answer is, surely he’s unfit for office. The mechanisms by which the folly and evil were perpetrated may never be known, but we surely would like to know them.
What I’m trying to get at is that this is not a legitimate question. No politician or scientist on this planet has a right to interfere with vital functions of my body, no matter who is convinced of what.
NB: They might have to power to do so, but that’s an entirely different question.
I agree. I would be opposed to mask mandates on principle, regardless of efficacy, as I don’t believe it’s right to force people to protect others from third party harms.
We are mammals living in herds and have been mammals living in herds for hundredthousands of years. 20th-century-crackpots who are convinced that they simply cannot live in such filthy conditions among unsanitized other mammals are free to remove themselves from the herd. It’s unlikely that they’ll be missed much and in this way, everybody gets what he wants.
A conviction like But our nature is very bad for me, is – by defnition – lunacy, ie, being in disgreement with reality (perhaps more evident in German, in the noun Irrsinn — being convinced of something that’s demonstrably wrong).
That depends on whether we have any ‘rights’ – as far as I understand it, Schwab’s plan that all his” Young Leaders” from Davos are all following says we do not – that is why any we might still have are currently under direct assault around the world!
‘Unfit for Office ” but fit for a Knighthood!
In good company with Blair of course.
Like Kill Bill Gates.
Or, promised a pot of gold at the end of all this?
The answer is not in the science. At the beginning of June 2020, weekly death rates were back to normal. Fear was waning. In July, masks were introduced. This ramped up the fear, reduced vitamin D intake and caused other nasty side efects. Whitty & co are intelligent enough to know that this would be the result. One can only surmise that it was intentional.
It enabled the people producing these masks to sell enough of them that their factory workers started complaining about inhuman working conditions while trying to meet the artificially created demand. That’s for certain and entirely damning enough.
September 2020 it was all over – France was virtually normal, then suddenly face masks were made obligatory on the streets for a bewildered populace.
I thought that it was due to pressure from the British Retail Consortium when it was found that the “bounce back” on reopening after the first lockdown wasn’t as big as had been hoped for.
Masks were comfort blankets for nervous shoppers.
I don’t think that argument holds. People could always wear masks if they chose. Normally speaking, that would have removed their fear and BRC need not have been concerned about lack of bounce back. However, the propaganda was based on virtue signalling – that people must wear masks to protect others. That made people fearful of each other: counterproductive and not sales counter productive.
Zombies don’t cease to be afraid when they nappy their own faces. They’ve been trained to recoil in terror from any human face. It’s your face that’s the problem.
My MP informed me, when asked, that it was to make those fearful about going out more confident.
I suspect your MP was primed to say that. It makes no sense. People have usually worn masks for their own protection and never entertained the possibility that their protection depended on others also wearing masks. That was the propaganda – to increase and prolong fear rather than alleviate it.
That’s how it was sold but the reality was quite the opposite. I was working in John Lewis at the time and can testify that footfall dropped very significantly on the day the mandate came into force and the huge optimism of our initial reopening was completely reversed. Nervous shoppers were terrified at the sight of the store transformed into an emergency ward.
Correct. They had to keep the fear going so that when the jabs were produced people would be scared enough to line up to be experimented on.
And here’s what we were told:
https://bannedvideos.co.uk/face-masks-uk-government/
At the No 10 news conference 28 August 2020 Jenny Harries was still stating that there was “no strong evidence for or against” but they were “supportive” ie in a situation in which Whitty et al were trying to make everyone afraid it was signal, a sinister nudge technique. If they had wanted to calm people they would stuck to the theory they were not needed,.
https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3021/rr-2
https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2530/rr-1
They used the same wicked strategy when introducing the vaccines for 12-15 year olds – since the JCVI could not find an adequate reason Whitty and the other CMOs argued that it was of psychological benefit.
This is before she was ‘politically corrected’ and when she still thought we were managing a relatively low mortality risk level virus – not a Globalist ‘power grab’ agenda based on mass vaccination..
Harries appears on a video telling Bozo that masks, outside a sterilised area, could be dangerous because of possible contamination.
These are great questions, which should have been answered before any mandates were ever inflicted upon us.
I will never forget, until the day I die, watching Our Dear Leader Sturgeon telling us frightened little dumb Scots, that she was mandating the use of face coverings, and because she is such a caring, inclusive person, who didn’t want to cause expense to the poorest in society, she explained that you can cut an old t-shirt up and use that.
You couldn’t make it up. But the masses bought it hook, line and sinker. And from that moment on the thought of wearing a face mask felt like tyranny.
she explained that you can cut an old t-shirt up and use that.
That’s like telling people they can re-purpose chicken wire if they can’t afford mosquito nets.
if only the gallows awaited Wee Jimmy Ceaucescu…
Hell awaits. Gallows not essential.
There is no ‘Hell’ – that’s just a concept for religious nutters. And a weak excuse for not doing something in the present.
“Hell awaits them” … yeah, whatever. What really awaits is a decent pension and comfortable lifestyle before they snuff it. I very much doubt if the people making money from the Covid Scam are particularly concerned about going to ‘Hell’.
It was tyranny.
……
Whitty’s political masters required him to conform with the international groupthink that forced the WHO to similarly reverse their guidance.
Surely the answer is that Whitty was under orders or following an evolving ‘agenda’? At various moments of uncertainty during the covid diktats he always came to the aid of the ‘narrative’ notably by inventing ‘asympotomatic transmission’ of an aerosol transmitted virus, a concept ridiculed by senior virologists as never before encountered nonsense .
His calculated ambiguity on safety and desirability of child vaccination served the narrative of pushing the vaccines onto children without regard for myocarditis concerns . His comments on gatherings, social distancing etc serve the narrative not the real science.
I understand he works for the WHO – where Gates is the biggest fund source. Gates is the driving force behind mass Global vaccinations
Whitty was the principal ‘authority’ behind all the questionable repressive measures that challenged ‘common sense’ and took away our freedoms.
For this he was Knighted – what more do we need to say?
Our dear leaders have knowledges we cannot fathom. Trust in collective wisdom, comrades.
Sarcasm aside, the more serious question is why did they allow exemptions if this plague was so serious that a mask mandate was needed?
Psycho states across the world never allowed exemptions.
As to Whitty: amoral careerists like to get ahead evilly.
Q1. Would you wear your handkerchief over your nose and mouth for as much as 12 hours a day?
Q2. When wearing your mask you feel a sneeze coming on. Do you a) take the mask off or b) keep the mask on and sneeze into it?
If option a) can you explain why the mask was needed?
If option b) can you explain how the dried snotty mask now stuck to your face has improved your health?
Q3. *Bonus points* what was all that nonsense about sneezing into the crook of your elbow about? What’s wrong with a tissue?
Option ‘pitstop’: carry fresh masks for such chicanery.
Think I read somewhere 1 disposable mask is used per person per day. If correct over 700 days that’s 49 billion…and counting…UK only.
You can deduct 700 from the total. I have never used one.
48,999,999,300
And half a billion++ boxes of tests, each of which contain lots of little bits of plastic. Wot happened to ‘single use plastic is killing the planet’? Disappeared quicker than PC plod at a BLM rally
Make that -701. I keep one in my jacket pocket but never used it. (It’s probably fused into the pocket material by now.)
-1400
Found this just after posting. Sneezing into your arm with mask still in place. Picture even appears to show empty supermarket shelves in background. My submission for “Covid stupidity awards 2020-2022”.
She knows the mask doesn’t stop the sneeze but cannot transfer that instinctive reaction to the stupidity of wearing the mask in the first place!
“Orders from ‘Experts” above” eliminate instinctive Common Sense.
What % just wore masks to conform, or for fear of being told off by ‘Little Hitlers’ and only pretended they thought they were a ‘good idea’?
Precisely. It’s her face nappy, quite literally. But nappies stop diarrhoea, right?
Nappies leak. Ask any parent faced with a stinking baby to clean up.
‘How to sneeze if you’re caught out while shopping for stuff that’s not there to buy’.
That’s a very, very long list.
Journalists (or spy’s) are just as deep-state as any other high ranking civil servant. I recommend checking the Sheepfarm boys deep dive on Whitty.
Baa..
Face masks were a visible sign of one mind, of tacit agreement to lockdown, to remind us that the virus was always there, always watching. Nothing more. We all know this, and no amount of logical retaliation will work. What’s more, there have been plenty of bogus studies plugged by the media to assert “the science” was always in favour of mask wearing. Absolute nonsense!
There is a strong case for stating that continued mask wearing has been the primary factor in the continuation of the pandemic. Without them, no one would know who was onside…they are, ironically, the real yellow stars. Whoever does not wear one is to be outcast.
Funnily enough, unless I’m mistaken, masks were not universally worn before Autumn 2020: i.e. after the ‘worst’ had ‘passed’.
Indeed the worst had passed – that was their problem!
They needed fear and compliance to push their experimental Gene Therapy mRNA injections, already being lined up.
Forced mask wearing did the trick! Michie was one of the strongest advocates!
I’m reminded of an episode of ‘Dad’s Army’ in which Captain Mainwaring, concerned that the threat of a German invasion is no longer tenable, gets his men to act suspiciously in the hope that people will think enemy agents are in the area and thus the Home Guard needs to be taken more seriously.
“Yes Minister” and “Yes Prime Minister” provide us with a rich source of material for parody of things that have happened over the last couple of years. I particularly like Sir Humphrys explanation of how polls work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GSKwf4AIlI
Good post – it also defines the wearer as either ‘sick’ or in fear of contagion by others – a carrier or potential ‘victim’ of disease!
Very nasty exploitation of behavioural psychology for purely political, not health objectives – especially when you consider Nazi propaganda films levelled at the Jews.
Good luck with this but then, why should they be allowed to escape questionning? As you say the press didn’t do it, they were more a sort of incompetent, complicit enabler. Would Boris have locked down if the press had been more objective and dispassionate?
It’s difficult to see whether Whitty was the ventriloquist or the ventriloquist’s dummy, but I strongly suspect the latter. The question, then, is who or what is the former, and if so, what were the aims to get Whitty to behave and say as he did.
Blackmail? Bribery? Both? Neither?
Can anyone tell me if there were more eminent contenders for his high fillutin’ job: passed over due to too many braincells or too much integrity?
But masks do work. In laboratory settings (except when it is a lab in Wuhan).
Being serious there are several grades of mask. Is P100 the lowest grade that is effective?
So… paper masks and cloth masks do not work…as you were folks .
It’s a pity the rona isn’t radioactive… or smoky… or a pesticide…
No all masking outside of a clinical are useless. Especially the ones I have that have been washed repeatefly. PS even the paper masks can be washed a few times
I am not talking about the masks that are used in industry I.e. dust masks
Cos he’s a pratt?
Wrong speak! You’ll be censored!
I would love to see this human specimen locked down and ‘strongly advised’ to wear a mask all day in his cell.
Whitty and the rest of the self-serving khoziaistvenniks, apparatchiks and technocrat collaborators that make up our puppet regime fell into line when they realised the long planned globalist coup was actually underway. The COVID hoax was only one step of a long planned demolition of the West, so don’t get lulled into a sense of false hope about “after COVID”. The ruling elite have a whole load of nice surprises lined up for us. Now its onwards to full spectrum surveillance, the total destruction of the economy and complete transformation of society. A new post-democratic order is being imposed out of contrived chaos and things are going to get extraordinarily difficult for ordinary people. Next up? Take your pick from among many ‘problem-reaction-solution’ scenarios. They have been indoctrinating the masses for years with climate misinformation and their minds are totally pulped, so that means of traducing the West is definitely on the cards – but they can literally make anything can happen. ‘HIV’ pandemic, supply chain breakdown, energy crisis, hyper-inflation, food shortages, government debt bubble, cyber attack, war with Russia/China, seizure of private property, the Great Die Off, alien invasion? Who knows what the Bilderberg/Davos psychopaths have been wargaming? I… Read more »
I’m moving towards this position myself. No tinfoil hat needed. It is apparent few western leaders reflect the will of their people in any way. Trudeau being a current example.
The answer is straightforward. Whitty, and others like him, are in prominent positions because they can be expected to maintain a narrative without the need for explicit instruction. That’s what an establishment is. A club where the vetting ensures entry to those who get it and don’t need to be told.
The acceptance within these circles of nudging as reasonable, to keep the plebs on track, is the only evidence we need. The very existence of a behavioural insights team itself within a supposed democracy ran on behalf of the people is an alarm bell so prominent it should be headline news.
Whitty challenged nothing because he is a salesman. While I respect the author’s credentials and sincerity, where is the anger? We all know the script now; covidmania merely made some of it more visible. None of these people work for our benefit, don’t believe they are there to work for our benefit, and view themselves as superior decision makers who feel they have a right to ignore democratic norms for their own benefit, not ours.
Whitty is an actor playing a part for which he is rewarded. Nothing more.
You’re more to likely to have angels fly out of your @rse before Whitty answers any real, pertinent questions.
Demons flying out of one’s nose are proverbial among C programmers. 🙂 But this one is decidedly good as well.
Politicians: “We have a crisis and don’t know what to do! Scientists – we must mould public opinion to make them afraid.”
Scientists: “Here’s a graph, here’s a mask mandate, here’s a scary advert.”
Politicians: “Great. Have a knighthood. But we still have a crisis and don’t know what to do! We must sound out public opinion!”
Opinion Poll: “We are afraid because of the scientists, and because some people aren’t following scary rules.”
Politicians: “Oh dear, listen to the polls! We have a crisis and the public say we need to scare people more” Scientists – we must mould public opinion…” (Rinse and repeat).
Everybody goes mad in a propaganda state – even the propagandists.
A real leader should tell them all to bugger off and announce publicly it is a flu.
The answer is given in Schiller’s William Tell: masks are the perfect Gessler hats, and nothing else.
As if further proof was needed, the current wave of eliminating ‘all’ restrictions excludes the Gessler hats in most countries and in many circumstances, even in the UK.
Germany plans to lift all/most restrictions except masks on March 20. Apparently it is a very difficult decision for the Germany’s enlightened government to do away with the useless mask mandates. Accordingly, it’s every citizen’s obligation to help the government by simply stopping to follow them.
Knowing how the actual “pandemic management” works over here, chances are that two weeks after nobody adheres to the rules, the government will follow with lifting them because of a “scientifically confirmed changed public health situation” or some other such bs.
They’re not a symbol of an authority everybody is supposed to fear and obey uncritically. In the COVID-melodrama, the Geßlerhut would be Sars-CoV2 and the act of donning a mask would be equivalent to greeting the hat. The authority itself is probably the president of China.
Also interesting here: Hide one’s face in shame, ie, cover one’s face in an implicit admission of guilt, is an idiom in English. There’s another, strongly Christian undercurrent here. As human being, I’m guilty of having been born with a body I cannot ever cleanse of parasites which could be harmful for others. Due to this original filthyness stemming from the very fact that I’m alive, I’m supposed to cover my face to own up to it.
It’s also certainly not coincidence that Corona’s witnesses also tried to outlaw sex outside of firmly established relationships.
Yes, if the world really had a “watchdog” press corp, the world would be a far better place. If only every news organization had one or two token real journalists who were not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom and/or were not afraid to ask “authorities” some uncomfortable questions.
But, alas, in our “New Normal” those with absolute power never have their extreme power questioned. “Pack journalism” includes a pack that contains no diversity of thought and so the authorized narratives are always promoted and protected.
Until this changes (not very likely), nothing is likely to change.
Excellent starter set of real questions. It is amazing and quite depressing that 24 months into he pandemic none of these questions have been asked of any political leaders or public health officials.
I’d add this question: Why are case, hospitalization and death numbers in Sweden – where almost no one has worn a mask – the same or better than countries that mandates masks? Why have Swedish students and children, who never wore masks and indeed never missed any school – the same or better than children and students throughout the world who HAD to wear masks?
That very question is one I’ve been asking too! Even when Sweden was mentioned as a comparison, at the time – no-one furthered the thought……
All masks are theatrical props. This one is no different. It signals that you are playing a role in a scripted drama. Also. Whitty’s face. No wonder he wants to wear a mask with a dial like that.
Can’t argue with that….
Indeed. As a follow up – a general question:
“Should someone with such wind-driven opinion and maleable and intellectual and ethical principles ever be appointed to the post that Whitty holds – let alone be knighted for it.
Why did he go from telling us this was a mild virus, even put on Gov.UK website and it would affect very few of us, then begin ramping it up into a major and dangerous disease which we needed to shut down society for.
A text from Bill?
Chris Whitty- Government Daily Briefing 11/05/2020. “A significant proportion of people will not get this virus at all, at any point of the epidemic which is going to go on for a long time. Of those who do, some of them will get the virus without even knowing it, they will have the virus without even knowing it, they will have the virus with no symptoms at all- asymptomatic carriage, and we know that happens. Of those that get symptoms, the great majority, probably 80%, will have a mild or moderate disease,-might be bad enough for them to have to go to bed for a few days, not bad enough for them to have go to the doctor. An unfortunate minority will have to go as far as hospital, but the majority of those will just need oxygen, and will then will leave hospital, and then a minority of those will end up have to go to severe and critical care, and some of those sadly will die, but that’s a minority, it’s 1% or possibly even less than 1% overall, and even in the higher risk group..Uh..this will be significantly less than 20% i.e. the great majority, even the… Read more »
As they are trying to coerce people to have a jab, he and his friends should be coerced into telling us what made them change their minds………
I used to send that clip to arch bedwetters, not one of them could take in what he said
Yet more evidence they need to get their shredders and hard drive erasers going!
They’re burning more files than an SS general on VE-Day, I’ll wager.
The questions assume that reasonable answers could be given, but this misses the point. None of the measures have been based on reason, common sense, or best practice. To avoid cognitive dissonance, Whitty wasn’t asking himself those questions.
A better question would be to ask ourselves how Vallance, Van-Tam, Whitty and Harries got to the positions they did (and then knighthoods etc). How did they attain such lofty posts, promoted all the way to the top? It certainly wasn’t by being honest scientists, it was by delivering what those who could promote them wanted to hear.
Perhaps the most charitable explanation is that those with left wing and progressive ideals saw the mask and the agenda as the ultimate affirmation of the need for a collectivist approach. In the case of an infectious pathogen your health is my health etc. But then there is the much larger force of corporatism where the desire for outward displays of compliance has much darker motives. Naivete combined with cowardice just leads to a grey muck of illogic that is tacitly accepted because it proffers the unthinking delusion of safety in numbers.