One of the last great reminders of the ‘Covid pandemic’ is the ongoing requirement to wear masks in health services. Go to your local hospital, doctor’s office or pharmacy and you will still see signs everywhere telling you that you must wear a mask or face certain death from Covid.
It is like these places exist in another plane from the rest of the world where only Asian tourists and old people are occasionally seen with their faces hidden. The only thing is, it’s all a nonsense. The actual Order regarding mask use in health services doesn’t require you (or their workers) to actually wear one!
I have had a couple of interactions of late with health services along my personal medical journey. (It seems I am a bit of a klutz.) A couple of hospital visits for a smashed-up foot and a broken rib, a specialist visit to get a camera shoved up my nose, a doctor’s appointment and a few visits to my local pharmacy/post office for both prescriptions and registration labels have seen me take notice of the supposed masking requirements and how the different premises go about supporting the Government’s narrative of keeping you scared.
In all of these places, you still get different levels of propaganda and persuasion but the effect is still the same, the fear porn is still active.
At Queenstown Hospital recently I have had two interactions. On the first I flashed my mask exemption card from the outset and the lovely nurse there said no more. On the second occasion for the broken rib, I did the same but the nurse felt she should harangue me to still wear one, you know, for the protection of the other people there (who were all masked). I politely declined her repeated requests, even though it meant that everyone else there would surely die. I felt not a jot of guilt.
At Invercargill Hospital for the snozz-camera thingy, I was again the only person there not wearing a mask. Signs were everywhere. The lovely lady at the reception desk asked if I could wear a mask, I again politely declined and stated I was exempt and she also said no more. People there though looked at me like I was an alien, I looked back at them like they were all idiots.
The ENT specialist wore a mask, under his nose. I asked him how he put up with the mask BS, knowing, as an ENT guy must, that masks were useless. He half-heartedly tried to suggest that some studies showed a potential benefit but I let him off the hook by stating “It’s OK, you don’t need to pretend there’s some benefit to them; you are an ENT guy, I know you know it’s bullshit.” He smiled, I think.
My local pharmacy in Frankton is particularly bad. All through the Covid years they were astoundingly authoritarian. It was masks or the highway. They ignored mask exemptions and stated that it was a personal business decision and they could ban whomever they wanted to. They still have multiple signs up but no longer ask me to put a mask on. Many people still do wear them in there though, even when you are only there to do a change of ownership on your car or post a care package to your Nana.
So what are all these stories leading to? Well, some time ago I saw a meme that purported to show that the legislation covering mask-wearing showed that you didn’t in fact need to wear a mask in a Health Service if you were a “patient or worker” there. I figured that this must be wrong, or more likely was probably just another Labour Government cock-up where they passed legislation with a mistake in it.
Well, apparently it wasn’t wrong! The COVID-19 Public Health Response (Masks) Order 2022 states exactly that!
5. Person must wear mask at certain health service premises
(1) A person must wear a mask when they are at the premises of a health service unless-
(a) the person is a patient or worker of the health service; or
(b) the person is receiving residential care at the premises; or
(c) the health service provided at the premises is 1 or more of the following:
(i) a psychotherapy or counselling service:
(ii) a mental health service:
(iii) an addiction service.
Seriously, you couldn’t make this up. After all the fanfare about wearing masks in ‘health services’ (defined in the Order), and all of the grief you get when you try to breathe freely at these places, it turns out that if you are a patient or even a worker there, then you are already specifically exempt!
I can only presume that because Ardern and Hipkins made such a big deal about it when they brought this new legislation (Order) in, that simply no one has bothered to read it and they just believed that masks in these places are actually a requirement!
Quite who must wear a mask in a health service is not actually clear. If you are not a patient or a worker, who else is there? Maybe the photocopier serviceman but even then he could be a worker. Certainly, the cleaner is a worker as of course are your doctors, their receptionists, nurses etc. So who is left? According to the Covid-19 Government website, it is only “visitors” but it doesn’t make it clear, and in fact, I would say deliberately makes it unclear, who is a visitor.
Presumably, if you pop in to visit Nana at the care home, you have to supposedly still wear one, but not Nana or her carers. If you take your child to the hospital with a broken arm you have to wear one, but not the child as he is the patient, and certainly not the hospital staff! Perhaps if you are at the pharmacy getting a prescription or some foot fungus cream you are all good to go sans mask, but if you want to buy a birthday card you have to put a mask on? Is a customer a visitor, or is it only someone window shopping that is deemed a visitor? Of course, you can still rely on your mask exemption as they are available basically for anything too. Clearly, the Order is nonsense.
Given that the exemption in this Order is basically for everyone, why even have this legislation?
The stupid thing is that as soon as this garbage piece of not-really-law is removed, all these places will magically stop worrying about Covid and will instantly fling their masks in the bin. They will no doubt produce TikTok videos to prove it.
So what to do? Well if our local efforts to force the schools to back down on mask wearing is anything to go by, we can encourage change by hassling those involved.
Write an email to your local doctor, hospital, pharmacy etc, include a link to the order above, or share this article with them. Ask them why they are still requiring patients and their workers to wear masks when they are specifically exempted. Share this on the social media of these organisations, to everyone you know who works in one of these places. Print out a copy of the order, it’s not very long, and every time you go to get a prescription or get a rego label, leave a copy for them. Let your local MP know, especially the opposition ones.
Just start making noise but most of all, don’t succumb to the false narratives. Fact-check everything and call out the BS when you see it. Just because Jacinda et al stood up on TV and said we all had to wear masks in health services now, it doesn’t mean it is real. The day they removed the hated “Traffic Light” nonsense was when this all came into force. Ardern and Ayesha Verral released a statement outlining the decisions. They stated:
“You will no longer be required by Government to wear a mask anywhere, except in healthcare settings like hospitals, GPs and aged residential care facilities.“
Maybe they just forgot to explain that they were lying by obfuscation? Isn’t that called misinformation or something?
