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This morning's news seems to report that health officials here are going to recommend the opposite (that the public shouldn't wear medical grade masks and that scarves will do). I imagine this is as much to do with preserving what little PPE supplies there are...
Wrongcog-
I'm mainly concerned with the compulsion aspect. Assuming that masks (as PPE, the lowest form of health and safety provision) make sense in some contexts (perhaps for medical personnel), if you make them compulsory you'll get people relying on them in contexts in which completely different measures are called for.
The whole farrago about PPE has served to obscure the Government's total failure to act effectively and in timely fashion. When you've gone down the hierarchy of measures so far that PPE is the only set of measures left, you've failed.
The FT claims that there may have been around 40,000 deaths in the UK that are COVID-19-related so far:
Coronavirus-related deaths in the UK may be as high as 41,000, according to a Financial Times analysis of the latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Their findings include deaths that occurred outside hospitals updated to reflect recent mortality trends.
Oliver Schick
Germany has just decided to introduce compulsory mask-wearing. I hope that won't be done here.