Welsh hospitals bring back face masks for visitors and staff

28 comments

1. Surprised the requirement was ever lifted to be honest. It should be culturally embedded that you wear a mask if you’re going to a place with a lot of immunocompromised people.

2. Entirely reasonable, I’m sure it will be met with reasonable takes. 

3. Masks are a simple and effective way of combatting respiratory infections, so long as you wear them properly. It makes sense to make them a requirement in a hospital where there are lots of immunocompromised people. It’s a shame they became a silly culture war thing.

4. This is actually a pretty good way of alleviating the pressure of visitors and patients bringing in coughs and colds to already compromised patients, and staff who are hit with waves of it every day.

   If this was the norm in hospitals, I’d be supportive. And I say this as someone whose face breaks out in horrific reactive acne every time one of those horrific masks touches my face.

   It’s for the benefit of everyone.

5. It’s the 21st Century, but people will argue against taking simple steps to curb the spread of viruses in places full of viruses.

6. Cor blimey, everything old is new again.
   May as well just copy/paste comments from an old 2020 post.

   However, this time round, can we please acknowledge that not all masks are equivalent.
   Proper masks, properly fitted. Brilliant.

   However, acknowledging that some bollocks xmas-cracker mask does fuck all should not be controversial.

7. Should be mandatory everywhere. The amount of people I saw today coughing and sneezing without covering their mouths was ridiculous. It’s lucky I wore a waterproof jacket.

8. I remember being at my GPs once about a year ago and this woman walks in with her two kids.

   All three were sneezing and coughing up the freaking yazoo and at no time did she use any sort of mouth covering for herself or her kids.

   Fortunately within a couple of minutes I got to go in to see the Doctor and left by a different exit.

9. Good idea if there’s a lot of infectious illness around, it’s not really a hardship to stick a mask on and save spreading your germs about.

10. The thing is we all moan about going to the GP with an issue and sitting in the waiting room with folks coughing etc. wear a mask ffs

11. I somewhat doubt that cultural issues like wearing masks to prevent others from getting what you have will ever take on in this part of the world…

12. Masks used by lay people without proper training will do nothing for viral spread. We have the data on this. To stop viral spread using face coverings everyone will have to wear military grade respirators and take a weeks training course on CRBN decontamination drills. People who are ill especially those with respiratory issues should not be wearing masks as it will have a detrimental affect on their health. Not everyone in hospital are carrying viral infections anyway.

13. Also clean masks! I see people in supermarkets with filthy masks often wet which are no protection to them or others. An educational point here. Wear it properly , change it often and always if wet

14. I had hoped the first wave would have normalised wearing masks when unwell or visiting those more vulnerable

15. Genuinely should be the requirement full time. You have a congested building full of people with all sorts of bugs, some super vulnerable and you are allowed to jump off a bus, tube etc and walk straight in?

16. Ridiculous. Being forced to cover my mouth in a place occupied by the clinically vulnerable? Muzzled just like my darling XL Bully, Stella ? No thanks. Just like him, the contagious viruses and bacteria I carry wouldn’t hurt a fly.

17. I wish GP surgeries would adopt this even if just in reception and waiting rooms.

18. LOL brought to you by the same NHS that offers acupuncture, non epileptic seizures, “medically unexplained symptoms” and eschews the term morbid obesity (literally meaning sickly fat) in favour of “large body habitus”

19. Oh shit not this argument again.

    I wear a mask in medical settings but I also couldn’t care less if you don’t.

    There.

20. We have compulsory mask wearing in the ED building and have done for several weeks

21. I disagree, looking at the data their is no signal that shows mask wearing had any affect on transmission. If they did we would have seen a clear signal. If the data is wrong then data collection during the pandemic must have been poor or fraudulent (this is very complex and we do have evidence that the testing program was used for political gain).

    If mask wearing worked we would have seen clear reduction is transmission after introduction. Scotland had mask wearing for longer than England which made no difference to transmission. All the evidence shows that masks were ineffective during the pandemic which spread in the same way as most viral infections that we should be worried about.

    The only people saying that masks worked are government agencies. All independent studies show the opposite. We even had a meta analysis in England which showed little to no affect.

22. Good. I caughta bad case of flu at work because people came in coughing and spluttering all over the place. Personally I feel masks should be compulsory, especially if you work in any hospital or medical field.

23. This wouldn’t be the worst idea to implement for hospitals in general during winter months.

24. Hospitals should always be required face mask areas. They’re literally where sick people gather. Say it don’t spray it was lost on a lot of kids in kindergarten

25. Do the nurses and doctors wear masks outside of hospital….no. This is more medical baloney then.

26. To the Redditor’s who don’t understand why people are so against masking. Reading people’s faces while communicating is very important to most people. It’s a visceral reaction when that part is covered. It may not make sense to people who generally struggle to make eye contact and often stare at the ground (sorry to say I imagine this applies to a high proportion of Redditor’s).

27. i was in A&E in Birmingham a week ago on friday night and everyone was asked to put on a mask as covid and norovirus were present at the hospital. a nurse even went round with boxes of masks handing them out – i counted 12 people who got up and left after arguing they wouldn’t wear a mask.

28. Would have been good to keep across the world in hospitals but then the boomers will call us all ‘woke’ so we can’t just be nice to each other

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