When do we think will masks become optional?

[sailorsinthedancehall]

November? There was mention of social distancing no longer being a thing by then?

@byvirtue

10 weeks? Isn’t that how long the clap for nhs lasted?? It’s another government tactic to placate the plebs. Masks are bullshit, wear a mask protect others, fine if you are one of the 0.01% who is carrying Covid asymptomatically but the stats show the majority of people are not currently infected with covid so we are all wearing them on the minuscule chance we come in contact with someone infected with Covid, it’s nonsense, but sure let’s all wear a mask and pretend everyone is infectious

Agree 100% with this

If Boris wants me spending my salary on the high street, he needs to ditch masks. The science is debatable, transmission wasn't happening in shops before, only 25 000 people in the whole of England have the virus. Chances of one of them coughing in my face in Tescos is negligible.

@UserNeedsGin

If Boris wants me spending my salary on the high street, he needs to ditch masks. The science is debatable, transmission wasn't happening in shops before, only 25 000 people in the whole of England have the virus. Chances of one of them coughing in my face in Tescos is negligible.

Yes, many of those will be tucked up in bed with a lemsip and not walking around Tesco. I'm unlikely to be near enough to an asymptomatic person in there for long enough to catch it.

I think they're a complete farce. I can wear one for about five minutes if I keep my breathing slow and steady, then the panic gets too much.

I'm already having nightmares featuring people in masks and dreading when it's dark by 4 in winter and I'm having to navigate underground carparks and other out of the way, quiet places when I can't make out people's features properly.

I'm praying they'll become optional. Terrible anxiety and panic attacks with them mean I've not been able to shop for six weeks now. Daughter getting weekly shop, everything else being bought online. I 'm more than happy to keep the 2m distance (in fact I'll do 6m if that could help me get out again!). The numbers of cases are rising again since making them mandatory, here and abroad, and the Chinese have been wearing them for years, and I think they are making folks too complacent with other restrictions. If it's not safe enough for me to go into a shop without a mask, (when I might be the only person in) how can it be safe for me to swan into my local Italian on a Friday night full of another twenty plus diners without one? It also concerns me that one must wash or dispose of the mask after each wear, but nothing has been said about washing say, a coat, a scarf or even someone's hair. Does the virus simply jump onto a mask but nothing else?

It seems to me that if they are worth wearing, it's worth having a safe routine for carrying, removing and washing them

yes we could use the special bio hazard bins the Government have thoughtfully installed everywhere ...............oh wait.

They are already optional for a lot of people. If you're going to wear one then do it properly - what's the point of having your beaky nose still out or the mask under your chin? If you consider yourself exempt then don't have one on at all!! Went on a well-known busy English pier this week and the arcade was packed and masks were being removed and dropped on the floor. Going round our local Tesco only about 50% had something somewhere on their face. The police can't enforce mask-wearing anyway. Why should the Gov provide bins fhs, take responsibility and take them home. Oh, and unless you regularly breathe through your coat or your trousers then you should be safe not disinfecting them.

what's the point of having your beaky nose still out or the mask under your chin?

Whys it a beaky nose and not just a nose.

I often pull mine down as my glasses fog up, and no I'm not doing the soapy water thing and slowly wrecking my glasses and pressing the nose guard they still steam up.

Whys it a beaky nose and not just a nose.

Most likely because someone dares to wear a mask incorrectly. If the MN mask Police had their way it would be an offence punishable by public execution.

I have driven a long distance today and on several service stations have hardly seen a mask -mercifully.
People pay lip service to putting the signs up, but anyone with an ounce of sense knows they are just a fig leaf a desperate government is peddling to get the hysterical 'phobes out from cowering under their duvets.
It is fizzling our snd hopefully will be just few snowflakes by October.

Another for the bingo card:

Compliance / Complied

The words just make me think of something out of The Handmaid’s Tale

The words just make me think of something out of The Handmaid’s Tale

It's no conspiracy to see what society has become people accusing neigbours, turning on people in supermarkets from not wearing a mask no empathy.

Some people love a society where you are told what to do it's easy to not make choices, but for rest of us it's hell.

As soon as masks became mandatory in my area, social distancing went out of the window, and now I have people in shops walking so close to me I think they might be trying to hold my hand.
I can't wait until they are gone. If they become mandatory outdoors aswell, I will never leave the house. My mental health is already struggling with all this plus I'm pregnant so hormones are going mad.

*Whys it a beaky nose and not just a nose.

I often pull mine down as my glasses fog up, and no I'm not doing the soapy water thing and slowly wrecking my glasses and pressing the nose guard they still steam up.*

What's the point of wearing it then? Why not just take it off. If it's worn just over the mouth it's pointless.

It is optional, especially if it's not legally enforced. The suggestion to make your own exemption template on the GOV website is a laugh.

What's the point of wearing it then? Why not just take it off. If it's worn just over the mouth it's pointless.

How you expect me distance when I can't see a thing.

How you expect me distance when I can't see a thing.

What?

@Miner49er

Since masks offer some protection to the wearer, I'm happy for the mask refusers/chin wearers to wander about, potentially infecting each other, while I am safe behind mine.

To the extent that masks do offer protection, they protect others from you, not you from them.

Whatever you think of masks, it’s fanciful to think the Government will make them voluntary by November, just as we enter the flu season!

I know some people on this thread would love the Government to say “It’s been a massive mistake, let’s just all get back to normal and take it on the chin - it’s not actually that bad after all!”, but that will clearly never won’t happen.

40-50,000 died on the Government’s watch back in the spring from Covid, they’re hardly going to play Russian Roulette with the country and cross their fingers and hope that the predictions of the Covid optimists come true, especially when experience from many other places shows that second waves do happen when you relax too much.

Actually, masks do seem to work both ways. The PHE/NHS seem to emphasise "protecting others" angle to flight complacency but most underlying research appears to suggest there is some protection for the wearer:

royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/set-c/set-c-facemasks.pdf?la=en-GB&hash=A22A87CB28F7D6AD9BD93BBCBFC2BB24

Cloth face masks and coverings for the general public are effective in improving: i) source protection, i.e., reduced virus transmission from the wearer when they are of optimal material and construction and fitted correctly; and ii) wearer protection, i.e., reduced rate of infection of those who wear them.

Of course, it is only observational data not supported by randomised control trials but so far it seems to be the best evidence we have.

I suspect they will gradually become optional after the winter and the flu season is over. I'd like it to be sooner as I dislike wearing them too, mainly because as a glasses wearer I still haven't found one that doesn't steam up my glasses. I've definitely reduced my high street shopping because of having to wear masks, even though I do comply with it when I am in the shops. It feels like everything is muffled, even though realistically it isn't. Between the face being covered and my vision being obscured it feels like I'm not in the real world any more.

February 7th at 11.14am.

How on earth could anyone commenting on this thread possibly know the answer to this?

Literally every single one of you is talking crap.

Some of you talk extremely elequant crap, but it is crap nonetheless.

@PJ6M

How on earth could anyone commenting on this thread possibly know the answer to this?

Literally every single one of you is talking crap.

Some of you talk extremely elequant crap, but it is crap nonetheless.

They are good for a laugh though. You are right when you say nobody on here knows, because it's true, no bugger does.

The posters that go into some long ramble with statistics make me laugh, but not as much as the "I have a friend who is high up in so and so and they say.....". Mmmm ok, of course you do.

When people stop harbouring under the misconception that cloth masks actually work.