Bantamzen
Established Member
1) I believe the principle is supposed to be that you wear masks when you can't avoid getting 'too' close to people. Not that having a mask on means you don't bother keeping your distance when you could easily do so.
Well quite clearly the decision makers don't agree, because they continue to mandate people distancing despite also mandating masks.
2) Masks may help but I don't have the evidence to be sure of this. Therefore it is illogical of me to act as if they definitely do.
You don't have evidence because it does not exist. Studies into the effectiveness are almost exclusively limited to medical environments, where of course much stricter protocols exist along with many other mitigations.
I think we're rather going round on circles on this, but, for example:
Infection rates in Caerphilly shot up recently. There was no mask mandate or any other big change in regulations coinciding with this.
If they had just brought in stricter mask requirements I expect people here would be saying this is strong evidence that masks are bad.
There are other factors involved in the spread, but the simple fact remains. In many countries where stricter mask mandates have been applied, infection rates grow. So again, we are told that masks are effective in reducing spread, yet it appears the opposite is actually happening. If masks in non-medical environments were really effective, then it would not be unreasonable to expect infection rates to fall, which they are clearly not doing.