Face masks turn us into voiceless submissives - and it's not science forcing us to wear them, it's politics

PETER HITCHENS, Daily Mail

Why is this frenzy taking place?

Here is a clue. On July 12, Deborah Cohen, the medical correspondent of BBC2's Newsnight, revealed an astonishing thing. The World Health Organisation (WHO) had reversed its advice on face masks, from 'don't wear them' to 'do wear them'.

But the key fact was that it had not done so because of scientific information – the evidence had not backed the wearing of face coverings – but because of political lobbying.

She revealed on Twitter that: 'We had been told by various sources [that the] WHO committee reviewing the evidence had not backed masks but they recommended them due to political lobbying.' She said the BBC had then put this to the WHO, which did not deny it.

In March, the WHO had said: 'There is currently no evidence that wearing a mask (whether medical or other types) by healthy persons in the wider community setting, including universal community masking, can protect them from infection with respiratory viruses, including Covid-19.'

The American TV news channel CNN reported on March 31 that Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO health emergencies programme, had said at a briefing in Geneva: 'There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit.

'In fact, there's some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly.'
Findings are now also pouring in which suggest that a horribly high number of the excess deaths during the last few months were not caused by Covid, but by people failing to seek treatment for heart attacks, strokes and cancer.