Wear masks in shops

[FridgeMagnet]

No, I don't follow friends - the person who said this seems generally a nice and well-meaning lady. She's been very upset by the mask thing as she and a child are on autistic spectrum and really find them unbearable to wear and I think although they carry some kind of medical letter saying they are exempt, she has said they've been harrassed for not wearing masks on public transport (I don't think she drives). So she's been very against mandatory mask wearing, even with medical exclusions, and it's sad because you can see she is anxious and upset, and now there's people replying to her posts with the whole 'It's a global conspiracy to oppress everyone' (honestly not sure how) and how everyone in a mask is judgey and sanctimonious and will report non-wearers to the authorities. and it's not really helping her. What we need, I think, is raising awareness that there are reasons for health, deafness, being non-neurotypical etc, why some people can't wear masks, so not to assume.

Everything relating to masks that has any prominance gets spammed to shit by nutcases on Twitter IME. There isn't a way to stop it apart from just staying under the radar, and that only works until it doesn't. Wish I had anything more positive to say.

 

[Aladdin]

This is the box I made. I've made a few modifications since, like a perspex window in the front, lined it with foil for reflectivity, and connected it to a HEPA filtration system, but I'm using it for purposes other than cleaning apples

There are lots of tests being carried out on the efficacy of Ozone and UV/Ozone combinations for sterilising N95 masks and CPAP equipment, and the results are promising. E.g. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.28.20097402v1.full.pdf
... but I wouldn't endorse it,

For anyone thinking of building anything similar, please remember that UV light is very bad. Treat it like a wasp. Don't let it near your skin or eyes. Plastics make excellent UV blockers.
High concentrations of Ozone are also bad for you, so ensure good ventilation during use, and before you use any power tools, be sure to ask a responsible adult.
There's also electricity involved. Electricity is bad.
Probably best to just not even think about doing anything like this.

Looks well made.
I definitely would not be able to make that.

Wonder would a hairdressers UV75 box work?

 

[Saul Goodman]

I definitely would not be able to make that.

Wonder would a hairdressers UV75 box work?

I've never heard of them, but they'd need a low-pressure mercury or amalgam lamp with a non-doped quartz glass to allow the 185nm wavelength through to create ozone. I wouldn't rely on UV alone to do the job, and if my life depended on it, I wouldn't rely on both to do the job effectively.

 

[emanymton]

How will this affect the pubs an restaurants that have just reopened? You can't wear a mask while eating and drinking.

 

[lazythursday]

So I've just been to Tesco - and not only was there not one single person wearing a mask apart from me, now all of the social distancing measures have gone - no one way system, no queuing, no staff on the door. All just back to normal, nothing to worry about. It just seems fucking insane.

 

[scifisam]

How will this affect the pubs an restaurants that have just reopened? You can't wear a mask while eating and drinking.

Not really possible.

So the restaurant discount is:

Aimed at a sector that has been hit less badly than some other sectors (pubs have been badly hit, but it's not usable for alcohol)
Useless for most cafes, which are the worst hit in the restaurant sector (they don't have a takeaway model and don't usually charge £20 a head)
Only usable in a way where you can't wear a mask and social distancing will happen in groups
Less good value than a Meerkat voucher

Dishy Rishy dishes fishy dish gifts.

 

[Doctor Carrot]

On buses everyone now has to wear a mask. The driver doesn't because they're behind a glass/plastic screen.

The very simple solution to all of this is mandate that all customers entering a shop have to wear a mask/face covering. Mandate all shops have to put up plastic screens at payment points. If a member of staff is on the shop floor they need to wear a mask. If they're behind the plastic screen or not on the shop floor they can take the thing off. Why we make it so fucking difficult in this country and make it all about freedom or whatever is beyond me. We're dealing with a brand new never before seen virus that has no issue with attacking your heart, lungs, brain, and kidneys and there's as yet no treatment for it. The virus doesn't give a fuck about whatever notion you have of rights and personal freedoms.

The way far too many people are carrying on over this, particularly in America, is incredible. Like spoilt kids who don't like being told what to do.

'Boo hoo I can't go and buy some wallpaper without having to wear a mask' grow up ffs.

 

[platinumsage]

My mum told me about her hairdresser experience yesterday. Both she and the hairdresser were finding the masks annoying, they couldn't hear each other properly and my mum's mask kept getting in the way.

So the hairdresser obviously cottoned on that my mum was anti-mask, so she beckons my mum into a secret back room not visible from the street, all set up with a chair and mirror and sink and everything, and there they both take their masks off and carry an as normal.

 

[scifisam]

My mum told me about her hairdresser experience yesterday. Both she and the hairdresser were finding the masks annoying, they couldn't hear each other properly and my mum's mask kept getting in the way.

So the hairdresser obviously cottoned on that my mum was anti-mask, so she beckons my mum into a secret back room not visible from the street, all set up with a chair and mirror and sink and everything, and there they both take their masks off and carry an as normal.

Where do you live? Hairdressers aren't obliged to wear masks in England.

 

[Saul Goodman]

Mandate all shops have to put up plastic screens at payment points. If a member of staff is on the shop floor they need to wear a mask. If they're behind the plastic screen or not on the shop floor they can take the thing off.

I've found that people working in supermarkets are some of the worst culprits. I realise they have to stock the shelves but FFS, either wait until I've moved, and/or wear a mask, but wear a fucking mask!

 

[scifisam]

I've found that people working in supermarkets are some of the worst culprits. I realise they have to stock the shelves but FFS, either wait until I've moved, and/or wear a mask, but wear a fucking mask!

Most of the shop staff when I went last week weren't wearing one, and one of them pushed past my friend (he was standing in the way of the exit from the customer services exit, but he didn't know that and he'd have moved if asked). Obvs it's more difficult to wear a mask all the time, but most of them didn't even have one they could pull up if they needed to speak to a customer.

It feels shitty saying that knowing that several people on urban work in supermarkets and do wear masks or do their best. But I haven't seen much of that from supermarket staff in my part of London.

Maybe they're just not being supplied with decent masks that are comfortable to wear, or aren't allowed to wear home-made masks that aren't part of the uniform. Wouldn't surprise me. Then they'll get arsey customers and eventually, being human, will get arsey with different customers.

 

[Doctor Carrot]

I've found that people working in supermarkets are some of the worst culprits. I realise they have to stock the shelves but FFS, either wait until I've moved, and/or wear a mask, but wear a fucking mask!

I work in a small shop so my experience may be different but I expect it's similar. It's difficult to convey just how stressful and frightening it's been working in an environment like this. We've not just worked through lockdown but all through the insanity of the panic buying pre lockdown with lots of abuse and nastiness thrown at staff.

You go through stages of bewilderment, panic, terror, anger, loneliness and then you reach a point where you just don't give a fuck anymore. I suspect that's what a lot of people working in supermarkets now feel and they probably don't give a fuck about socially distancing or wearing a mask. You just accept that you're gonna get it at some point no matter what you do. You see people carrying on like it's all a laugh, sitting on their arse on furlough, getting pissed in the sun, moaning at you because you haven't got the right thing in the stock and your give a fuckometer goes down further.

I don't want to feel like this and I suspect it's largely down to the fact I just need a holiday, just any time off for more than a day or two and to be somewhere else, but at the moment near enough every customer is the enemy. I used to really like my job but now I just want to leave and that's purely down to the pandemic.

All this is precisely why I just want the government to pull their fucking finger out their arse and just mandate this stuff. Everyone wears a mask in shops, every shop has a screen up, everyone socially distances, everyone knows their place, everyone knows their responsibilities to themselves and everyone else, everyone's on the same side and everyone can get through this with a good bit of sanity left in place. It just doesn't seem forthcoming though and when it is it's too little too late.

How I long to put a sign like this up where I work

 

[Flavour]

I find it bizarre and tragic, all these tales of people not wearing masks in the UK. I mean, I expect it from the loony weirdo yanks, but I would have thought the UK would be in line with what's going on across continental Europe i.e. mask-wearing as compulsory basically everywhere and everyone just getting on with it. It's been this way for ages already in Italy, at the beginning all the shops were giving out free masks, but they don't really need to anymore because everyone has one all the time by now. Being Italy, a little fashion industry of masks has quickly sprung into life and if you wear a bog-standard white mask at this point you're a bit of a normie.

 

[MrSki]

I find it bizarre and tragic, all these tales of people not wearing masks in the UK. I mean, I expect it from the loony weirdo yanks, but I would have thought the UK would be in line with what's going on across continental Europe i.e. mask-wearing as compulsory basically everywhere and everyone just getting on with it. It's been this way for ages already in Italy, at the beginning all the shops were giving out free masks, but they don't really need to anymore because everyone has one all the time by now. Being Italy, a little fashion industry of masks has quickly sprung into life and if you wear a bog-standard white mask at this point you're a bit of a normie.

The UK or England likes to trail the rest of civilisation by at least 3 months. Our medical advisors said that Cheltenham was safe & letting 3000 fans over from Madrid was no problem. It is time to question where this advice comes from. At the moment I look elsewhere & follow the advice from countries who are doing a better job than England. Scotland seems to have got a better handle. Fuck this stupid government & when it finally comes to it I hope they all have to serve their full sentence.

 

[Maltin]

I find it bizarre and tragic, all these tales of people not wearing masks in the UK. I mean, I expect it from the loony weirdo yanks, but I would have thought the UK would be in line with what's going on across continental Europe i.e. mask-wearing as compulsory basically everywhere and everyone just getting on with it. It's been this way for ages already in Italy, at the beginning all the shops were giving out free masks, but they don't really need to anymore because everyone has one all the time by now. Being Italy, a little fashion industry of masks has quickly sprung into life and if you wear a bog-standard white mask at this point you're a bit of a normie.

You have heard of Brexit and British exceptionalism, haven’t you? What do these bloody foreigners know, eh? We’re made of much sterner stuff in Blighty. And we’ve had enough of experts too. It’s all Project Fear

 

[Badgers]

Went to local B&M plus Tesco today for booze and bird food essentials and again almost no masks. Zero staff wearing them and at best 5-10% of punters.

 

[Marty1]

I thought you said you were before?

Some are. For the others, they're mostly outside and don't come that close to customers. Low transmission risk.

We do/are enforced by Amazon to wear masks but I’ve yet to see any other delivery service driver or postie wearing masks.

 

[Marty1]

How will this affect the pubs an restaurants that have just reopened? You can't wear a mask while eating and drinking.

 

[killer b]

Yeah, it's not happening, but not because of 'british exceptionalism', it's because it isn't compulsory, or even very enthusiastically encouraged. Boggles the mind really, it's such an easy thing to do, and it's not as if anyone would really complain too much. I guess some would, but fuck them.

 

[scifisam]

We do/are enforced by Amazon to wear masks but I’ve yet to see any other delivery service driver or postie wearing masks.

Hmm, I've had deliveries from Amazon by people not wearing masks. Don't have a problem with it. They don't come near me, and I'm pretty sure there's nobody else in the car.

 

[weltweit]

Very few people wearing masks when I have been shopping. Mind you I wasn't myself up until recently.

People are increasingly behaving as if there isn't a virus at all.

 

[Saul Goodman]

Very few people wearing masks when I have been shopping. Mind you I wasn't myself up until recently.

Who were you?

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Well Gove doesn't like the idea anyway. Of course he also wants everyone to go back to workplaces (but also "follow the guidelines", which say work from home if at all possible, so nice and clear there).

Cabinet minister Michael Gove explicitly says face masks should not be mandatory in England, giving his first clear answer on this.

When asked by the BBC’s Andrew Marr if the wearing of face masks should be mandatory, Gove answered, “not mandatory, no”.

“I trust people’s good sense,” he said. However, he said that the situation was evolving and “tougher measures could be taken”.

Brazil cases near 2m – as it happened

The biggest increases were from the United States, Brazil, India and South Africa, according to a daily report. This blog is now closed

www.theguardian.com

 

[weepiper]

Just been in my local supermarket and was surprised to see 100% compliance from both customers and staff - before it was only ever about 30% of people wearing a mask but now it's mandatory everyone is just getting on with it.

 

[Doctor Carrot]

Oh look here we fucking go again with Gove this morning.

'Trust people's common sense. It's basic good manners to wear a mask in a shop'

Ah yes good old English manners and common sense. The virus is now in full retreat because an English gentleman tipped his hat in his Sunday best. Fucking twat.

 

[zora]

Well Gove doesn't like the idea anyway. Of course he also wants everyone to go back to workplaces (but also "follow the guidelines", which say work from home if at all possible, so nice and clear there).

Aaaaaaaarrrrrggggghhhh! Just when I got my hopes up that the government might have a tiny bit of sense and finally make masks in shops mandatory, and just after customers in my shop were wearing loads more masks yesterday after the idea being floated slightly more forcefully, up pops this fucking shithead and ruins it again!!!!!!! What about the common sense of a shop worker who doesn't want to be spat at (and I don't even mean deliberately) by customers all day long. There's only so much we can do for our own protection.

 

[zora]

Oh look here we fucking go again with Gove this morning.

'Trust people's common sense. It's basic good manners to wear a mask in a shop'

Ah yes good old English manners and common sense. The virus is now in full retreat because an English gentleman tipped his hat in his Sunday best. Fucking twat.

This, basically.

Ugh, so cross.

 

[Flavour]

It's mind-blowing. The damage is already catastrophic, but it's just going to go on and on in the UK, while R numbers will stay lower in the rest of Europe.

 

[zora]

This is so fucking stupid. (I am ranting now...) Even if you don't give a flying fuck about people's health, even if you just look at it from the POV of "the economy", I am sure wearing face coverings as a matter of fact would help. I am sure there are loads of people out there who would be more likely, rather than less, to go into shops if that was the case. I, for one, would be, and I would also be more likely to have a conversation with customers and recommend them another book like we used to rather than give them a cold hard stare across the bridge of my mask that basically says "Get the fuck away from me". Plus, as inevitably other common cold viruses will spread again, at the very latest when the schools reopen, it would make sense to me if you wanted workers in work to protect a bit against that as well, otherwise we'll all have to self-isolate again for yonks, and we know that there's nothing a Tory hates more than a day of "productivity" lost to sick leave...ugh.

 

[Sasaferrato]

I have masks, but won't be wearing them.

This is because I'm going nowhere at the moment. It's 116 days since I've been in a shop.