The one thing I kind of get

is that some people have sensory issues which would make it psychologically intolerable for them. This is a genuine thing. It's a tiny proportion of people and if just that cohort didn't actually wear masks it wouldn't matter from a policy/numbers perspective.

You can get masks for a quid or two but honestly for the affordability point given we've already wasted unbelievable sums on an app which doesn't exist we might have thought about providing free masks to certain groups: those who qualify for free prescriptions plus pupil-premium households, or some other group. Would cost peanuts compared to other spending on this and might have more impact.

And make them out of different stuff so if people are allergic to one, they can wear another...some people will be chronically allergic multiple things but again that cohort is so small that it wouldn't really matter if they wore no masks at all.

The problem is those who "just won't" for whatever ill-begotten reason. If it were only their own lives they were risking I'd chalk it off to Darwinism. But if they get badly ill they'll be putting health workers at risk, and if they are asymptomatically infected they can and will kill other people without even realising it. So I'm distinctly unrelaxed about it.

Posted By: Old Man, Jul 14, 19:26:58