Brace Yourselves Once Again for the Mask Madness

“They’re here.”

Many will recall the little girl from the 1982 Poltergeist film, standing in front of the TV set, announcing the return of the malevolent spirits. These iconic words seem an appropriate way to announce the reappearance of the pro-mask ghouls who, over recent days, have been beseeching us all to wear a face covering to protect ourselves (and, of course, the NHS) from the consequences of the scary-sounding ‘super flu’.

It is the usual suspects who are screaming again. A senior NHS mandarin, Daniel Elkeles, has said that the UK faces “a tidal wave” of illness and that people should “get back into the habit” of mask-wearing. Pandemic industry technocrats at the UK Health Security Agency have repeated their highly dubious claims that strapping pieces of porous plastic across our airways can protect ourselves and others from those pesky microscopic pathogens. Most predictably of all, Professor Trish Greenhalgh has popped her pantyhose-clad head above her ideological trench to broadcast the benefits of multi-layered face coverings. And of course, the BBC has been keen to amplify this nonsense in its reporting of specific hospitals that are recommending masks for their staff and service users.

It hardly warrants repeating that the more robust scientific studies, together with the bulk of the real-world evidence, show that masks constitute an ineffectual viral barrier, and no amount of evidential cherry-picking and fantastical claims about ‘source control’ will change that conclusion. And how do the muzzle mafia manage to avoid any consideration of the multiplicity of significant harms associated with ubiquitous masking? Maybe their mono-focused minds don’t care about the collateral damage of their crusade. After all, what does it matter if we:

• Torment the elderly and confused in our care homes by denying them human comfort in their final years of life;
• Stunt our children’s verbal and cognitive development;
• Re-traumatise victims of physical and sexual abuse, the autistic, and many with mental health problems;
• Plunge the millions who are hard of hearing into social isolation;
• Compromise the effectiveness and acceptability of healthcare consultations;
• Poison our citizens by contaminating waterways with chemical additives and micro-plastics?

Did we learn nothing from the Covid debacle?

Given the apparent irrationality and self-destructiveness of it all, one is left to speculate on potential motivations underpinning this insanity. A number of possibilities come to mind:

1. As masks are very effective at evoking and perpetuating fear, Big Pharma and its public health allies are collaborating to inflate anxiety about contracting the flu and thereby increase vaccination rates;
2. For the more conspiratorially minded: the pandemic industry has received an order from its paymasters to re-run the mass masking exercise – in the same way as the military would test a crucial weapon in its arsenal – so as to check out whether it remains fit-for-purpose as a means of controlling and enslaving the general population to comply with further imminent contractions of our rights and freedoms;
3. The forever-strikers at the British Medical Association – who pushed relentlessly to mask the public during Covid – are now insisting on mass muzzling as part of their negotiations with the Government;
4. An influential subgroup of healthcare policymakers, aware of the public’s declining satisfaction levels with the NHS, is yearning for a return to those glory days of 2020-21, when a mask symbolised virtuous brave troupers who were worthy of our weekly applause;
5. The tyrannical muscle, evident within many infection control personnel, needs flexing again so as to satisfy the intrinsic desire of those personnel to dictate how others should behave.

The last few years have demonstrated that hard evidence (about mask ineffectiveness and harms) is insufficient to deter these blinkered fanatics. Whatever their underlying motivations, one thing is clear: the only way to counter the re-imposition of mask requirements is to refuse to comply.

Dr Gary Sidley is a retired NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist and co-founder of the Smile Free campaign opposed to mask mandates.