Councillor slams the wearing of face masks and says they cause more harm.
Councillor David Durant has slammed the council’s latest health initiative called ‘Doing your bit’ that promotes the wearing of a face covering, saying it could actually make you worse.
The Rainham councillor is angry that Havering council are encouraging people to wear face masks as he believes this will actually harm people more.
In an interview with the Havering Daily Councillor Durant said: “The council have launched the new initiative called ‘Doing your bit’ where they are promoting the use of a face mask. This is wrong, if you wear a face mask for a long period of time this could actually reduce your oxygen levels in your blood and cause you more harm.
“There are many people out there that are exempt from wearing face masks and the council have not included them. They could be leaving themselves open to a law suite.
“I think what the council has done is highly irresponsible. The infection levels are very low and the Government are inflating this whole pandemic and making it worse.”
Councillor Durant says he is exempt himself from wearing a face masks so does not need to wear one in shops.
He continued: “Only a handful of people are dying from this. A lot of this is fear porn. If I walked into a shop and they challenged me as I don’t wear a mask and I told them that I have an exemption then they are discriminating against me and others alike.
“All this is nonsense. They are perpetuating fear and people become terrorised because of the fear they promote. The real problems will start when furlough is over and the economy crashes.
“I believe there certainly is an agenda behind all this fear promoting. The country has faced millions of cancelled operations and the economy will soon have a massive crash. I think it is incorrect for the council to run an initiative like this.”
In response, Mark Ansell, Director of Public Health at Havering Council, said:
“#DoingMyBit was launched last week to encourage residents to do the right thing around COVID-19 by sticking to the rules set out by the Government and helping to prevent the spread of infection in Havering
“We understand that some people are exempt from wearing face masks and coverings and this has been reflected regularly in all of our communications throughout the pandemic.
“Scientific evidence from experts, plus the deaths of more than 40,000 bereaved families in the UK, suggests that residents and businesses should continue to follow government advice.
“Covid-19 has not gone away. We all need to do our bit to prevent the infection from spreading.”
The new Council guidance is to wear masks in public, (this is not government guidance) with no mention of exemptions, but many fear heavy fines if they don’t comply. This means many exempt people may feel compelled to wear a mask for prolonged periods restricting their breathing causing them to faint, resulting in injury or worse. If this happened the council could be held financially liable for failing to undertake a medical health assessment before launching their latest initiative.
Masks themselves offer no protection from a microscopic respiratory virus that can simply pass through and around a mask or face covering and even if there was some placebo benefit, it makes no medical sense making mask wearing mandatory in the hot days of summer and not in March/April, particularly as according to the Office for National Statistics only 1 in 60 deaths are now Covid-19 related.