³³When Moses finished what he had to say, he put a veil over his face. ³⁴But whenever he went in before the Lord to speak with him, he left the veil off until he came out.

Exodus 34: 33-34 – Revised English Bible

¹⁸And because for us there is no veil over the face, we all see as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, and we are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, through the power of the Lord who is the Spirit.

2 Corinthians 3: 18 – Revised English Bible

¹²He was once in a certain town where there was a man covered with leprosy; when he saw Jesus, he threw himself to the ground and begged his help. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘if only you will, you can make me clean.’  ¹³Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, ‘I will; be clean.’

Luke 5: 12-13 – Revised English Bible

Photo: Anna Tarazevich from Pexels

We’re three months from the anniversary of face coverings becoming compulsory in the UK, July 24^th 2020. The incidence of COVID at that point was at an all-time low. So why did the government decide to do this? It remains highly suspicious.

Why on earth would I wish to write about masks? Isn’t it a very minor inconvenience, in the larger context of lockdowns and other restrictions on our lives? It’s precisely because I believe the opposite that I want to tackle the subject. I believe masks to be the height of stupidity and an outward sign of the extent of our government’s duplicity and our collective insanity in meekly complying.

It’s a subject about which I know a little, having worked for one of the world’s leading designers and manufacturers of respiratory protection. I’ve said before that if you’d asked us then to design a cloth mask to protect against an organism that measured between 60 and 100 nanometres in size, we’d have fallen over laughing. Why? Well, 100 nanometres is one ten thousandth of a millimetre or one billionth of a metre. It’s a number that’s so small, that most of us struggle even to imagine it. It’s been calculated that the volume of every COVID virus in the entire world would fit into one coke can. See

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210210-why-the-entire-coronavirus-would-fit-in-a-can-of-coca-cola

But what if I say that a cloth facemask, trying to act as a barrier to such a virus is the equivalent of trying to stop mosquitoes, using a chain link fence as a barrier? The thread diameter of the best medical masks is about 55 microns – the gaps in the best masks are therefore about 1000 times bigger than the virus itself. The University of Minnesota has calculated that an infectious dose is 300 virions, but that one minute of speaking through a mask generates 750,000 virions. What drives us to such arrogance that we think we can control this with a couple of pieces of cloth? Have we lost our minds?

The truth is that we have absolutely no idea how such minute particles behave in the real world. We’ve all experienced seeds blowing miles on the wind and rising on air currents. Well, a Coronavirus is massively smaller. Should we open the windows to ‘blow the particles out’, as the hugely irritating UK government advert tells us? Maybe you’re lucky and live in a house where when you open your windows, the air flow is always outwards? If the wind blows into your house, you’re just as likely to pick up Coronavirus blown in from a jogger passing your house.

The suggestion that such particles fall to the ground within a metre, (hence the two-metre separation rule), suggests that gravity has an effect on them that is considerably greater than their mass; this is complete nonsense physics.

Anyone who suggests that face masks can stop the virus is ignoring many glaring problems, not least of which is that not one single study from anywhere in the world has proved that masks work in stopping or even slowing the virus. Face masks are, at the very best, pseudo-Science. No, I won’t even grace them with that. Cloth face masks are totally, completely and absolutely useless. Full stop.

But why would I not just grin and bear them? Why not use them as a sign that we care for others, on the off-chance that they might just have some positive effect, despite the complete absence of data? Is that the level of ‘The Science’ that we’re now following? Really?

I believe there are a growing number of reasons why we should reject masks:

• Our faces are the outward sign of our very humanity. If you have children, do you remember their first smile, when they responded to you smiling at them? This is deep inside our subconscious; it’s one of our first voluntary actions after birth. Do we know or care what we’re doing to future generations?
• Masks encourage people to be aggressive with each other. I’ve witnessed this at first hand and, amazingly, it’s getting worse with the passage of time, rather than better with the reducing incidence of COVID in the population. Many people and shops simply do not accept anyone with a valid exemption.
• Masks inspire and encourage fear in the population. I still can’t get my head around why any democratic government would wish, as a conscious act, to terrify their own people?
•  There’s now growing evidence that the graphene that’s applied to some of the most common facemasks can be injurious to health, if breathed in over protracted periods of time; its effect may be not dissimilar to asbestos. Other unknown so-called ‘anti-viral’ barriers used in masks are also being inhaled, as well as microplastics and Chlorine compounds, according to the Hamburg Environmental Institute. There will be huge long-term effects of inhaling these products over an extended period of time. Does no-one care that we’re even forcing children into these products?
• Wearing masks increases the speed of our exhaled breath, by channelling much of it through a number of ‘gaps’ where the masks don’t fit adequately. This propels any virus that’s ‘hitching a ride’ a greater distance than without a mask; it’s really very simple physics, as a result of positive pressure building up within the mask when we exhale.
• Discarded masks are already appearing in our oceans and in our countryside (I’ve experienced them in fields near where I live). They’re not bio-degradable and they’re so universal that by making them compulsory we have massively increased environmental pollution. Does no-one care about this?
• Masks historically have been used as a sign of subjugation in some ethnic populations. See Genesis 38:15, where a woman wearing a veil thus identifies herself as a prostitute. They also make many people feel stressed, nervous and anxious.
• Masks collect the dampness from our exhaled breath. Tests have shown that humidity on the outside of the mask increases greatly after only ten minutes of use. So apparently, we should replace masks every 15 minutes, ie 32 per person in a working day! Masks create an almost perfect warm, moist breeding ground for a whole host of fungi and bacteria. And studies have shown that COVID can stay alive on the surface of a face mask for one week.
• Compulsory use of face masks is encouraging the rejection of disabled people, who for whatever reason cannot safely wear them. Do we really want to encourage people to reject others on the grounds of their disability? When did we become so heartless? Only this week we’ve heard the story of the poor Correia family, who were thrown off a US flight and ejected from the airport, for the sin that their 14-year-old daughter with cerebral palsy could not wear a mask. Abuse of random strangers may be the most serious long-term legacy of COVID. It’s the opposite of what we’re taught as Christians!
• If face masks actually worked in preventing the spread of COVID, do you not think that we’d have seen some evidence of that after more than a year? There is none, from anywhere in the world.

This is an impressive and growing list of reasons why we should not tolerate compulsory mask-wearing (I have no wish to stop people doing so voluntarily). There had better be some very good reasons to counteract all these negatives.

Unfortunately, there are none at all.

If you’re not convinced by these arguments, as Christians we should reflect on our Lord’s approach to a dreadful contemporary illness, leprosy. It was not fully understood in his time, but they did know that it was very contagious and often hideously disfigured the faces of poor sufferers, like the man in Luke 5. The story shows that Jesus showed no fear; neither should we. Can you imagine Jesus saying to the leper: ‘First of all, put on a mask. Then I will consider coming near enough to try to heal you. But I’m certainly not prepared to touch you’

No frankly, neither can I.

For those who would like more information, the two articles that follow are very good and make many references to peer-reviewed scientific studies. If you check the articles of those who are arguing for masks, sadly all you’ll find is fact-free nonsense, coupled with abuse of those who argue against masks.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306987720333028

https://swprs.org/face-masks-evidence/

Lord forgive us for our inhumanity towards others, particularly those who are stressed, disabled or vulnerable in other ways, like children. Give us the courage to fight for what is right and reject laws that remove our humanity. Amen