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‘This is very cruel treatment. We should all be getting on, not treating each other like this,’ says man
uk.yahoo.com
A British passenger was arrested and kicked off a London-bound Eurostar service for wearing the “wrong type of mask”.
French police boarded the train and hauled off the unidentified man in his forties in Lille, France, where the service made an emergency stop.
He was then surrounded by at least eight uniformed officers, before being stranded when the train resumed its journey to England.
“I've done nothing wrong and respect all coronavirus rules - this is absolutely outrageous,” he said, as he was led away in front of other stunned passengers on Thursday afternoon.
With the usual caveat of there might be more to this than the article is letting on, if it happened like it says in the report, it seems a way over the top and ridiculous attitude by the Eurostar manager. I wouldn't expect something like that to happen on the UK rail network unless the passenger was being abusive and/or threatening.
Is France fully onboard with the whole mask thing still then ? Given that barely anyone bothers with the things on trains here anyway, Eurostar must be getting its cue's from one of the participating Nations !
Probably using the argument - "well they work in operating theatres don't they" (completely missing the point that an operating theatre is an extremely controlled and sterile environment, unlike the carriage of a train)
Wearing a high grade FFP3 mask can almost entirely protect health workers from Covid, research finds.
www.bbc.co.uk
Though fluid resistant, these masks are relatively flimsy and loose-fitting and are not meant to screen out infectious aerosols - tiny virus particles that can linger in the air and are now widely accepted as a source of coronavirus infection.
If anyone wants to be sure of avoiding virus transmission through aerosol particles, they have the option to wear an FFP3 mask which provides up to 100% infection.
There is no reason for anyone to insist someone else wears a flimsy surgical mask; such views are completely illogical. Unfortunately France, and Eurostar, have some illogical people in charge. But that's authoritarianism for you.
I travelled to France a couple of months ago with Eurostar without any issues, despite wearing just a cloth mask. As far as I was aware there wasn't a policy (at that time at least) for surgical masks.
I travelled to France a couple of months ago with Eurostar without any issues, despite wearing just a cloth mask. As far as I was aware there wasn't a policy (at that time at least) for surgical masks.
I have taken a few trips on it recently and seen people wearing cloth masks as well. I’ve also seen many of the customs and Eurostar staff wearing no masks, and passengers too. There is nothing on their website about what type of mask - this story sounds insane and the train manager was completely in the wrong if it is to believed. The eyewitness statements from the story make it seem so at least.
It does remind me though of some officious member of staff I saw in the departure hall in St Pancras on my last trip on the Eurostar who was walking round antagonising waiting passengers making comments like ‘you must have finished your coffee now so put your mask back on.’ I didn’t get round to making a complaint about the prick but this has inspired me to do so
The thing is, Eurostar does not specify that you must have a specific type of face covering (eg FFP3) when travelling on their services.
So there must be more to this story than meets the eye.
The same story was reported in the Daily Mail, and it said that that the man repeatedly removed his face covering on the journey between Paris and Lille, even after being reminded to put it back on.
I wonder whether the passenger failed the "attitude test", but I also can't help wondering whether the train manager exaggerated the nature of his offences when reporting them to the police, in order to get them to turn up at Lille.
As ever, without the full facts it is difficult to know what really happened and who is most at fault.
I think many people get a bit of a shock when they travel and realise Britain is actually a very liberal place.
France is a deeply illiberal place with many laws, like the banning of religious headscarves and the mandating of a quota of French Content on the radio, being par for the course. That’s just France for you. It’s still a place worth visiting though.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
‘This is very cruel treatment. We should all be getting on, not treating each other like this,’ says man
uk.yahoo.com
With the usual caveat of there might be more to this than the article is letting on, if it happened like it says in the report, it seems a way over the top and ridiculous attitude by the Eurostar manager. I wouldn't expect something like that to happen on the UK rail network unless the passenger was being abusive and/or threatening.
The article quotes the Eurostar manager as saying it was the wrong type of mask, so unless they are misquoting, it could be a rogue manager making up their own rules. It's not uncommon for rail staff to invent rules that don't exist.
...but I also can't help wondering whether the train manager exaggerated the nature of his offences when reporting them to the police, in order to get them to turn up at Lille.
True but given the passengers sided with the person who was removed, and given the company's appalling reputation, I blame the company entirely. It's a ridiculous rule anyway which is incompatible with our western culture and designed to create confrontation.
The article quotes the Eurostar manager as saying it was the wrong type of mask, so unless they are misquoting, it could be a rogue manager making up their own rules. It's not uncommon for rail staff to invent rules that don't exist.
Again it wouldn't be the first time.
True but given the passengers sided with the person who was removed, and given the company's appalling reputation, I blame the company entirely. It's a ridiculous rule anyway which is incompatible with our western culture and designed to create confrontation.
I agree that the most likely explanation is that the train manager was a maskivist pro restriction person, who was making up his/her own rules.
Quite why the manager picked on this particular passenger is beyond me.
I do agree that Eurostar have a bad reputation, and the quality of their service and the attitude of their staff has gone downhill in the past few years.
I can only hope that the forthcoming merger with Thalys brings a change of management and some fresh thinking to the organisation.
Regarding some of the earlier comments about masks in France, there is no rule specifying that a particular type of mask must be used.
In some settings where the Pass Sanitaire is required (eg. shopping centres, bars and restaurants) masks are not compulsory, and they are also not required for just walking down the street.
They are mandatory on all forms of public transport though.
The science supports that face coverings are saving lives during the coronavirus pandemic, and yet the debate trundles on. How much evidence is enough?
Disappointing to keep seeing the same misinformtion over and over again on here. Falsehoods do not become truth the more you repeat them, and the truth does not care what you want to be true.
The science supports that face coverings are saving lives during the coronavirus pandemic, and yet the debate trundles on. How much evidence is enough?
Disappointing to keep seeing the same misinformtion over and over again on here. Falsehoods do not become truth the more you repeat them, and the truth does not care what you want to be true.
The science supports that face coverings are saving lives during the coronavirus pandemic, and yet the debate trundles on. How much evidence is enough?
Not true; the first link says things like "some studies hint that masks might reduce the severity of infection" and admits that, when it comes to the sort of masks that nearly everyone wears, "Much less is known about surgical and cloth masks".
The second link admits that "N95 masks have a much higher efficiency on virus penetration inhibition than surgical masks" and that surgical masks result in "insignificant protection against aerosolized infectious agents"; it does not appear to provide any results itself and merely refers to things like "...established by the current studies" (there are loads of these studies with circular references to each other!)
Their conclusion is that "all people, regardless of physical conditions and professions, should wear masks at all times in prevention of COVID‐19" which is absolutely ludicrous! Clearly such studies are created by people with authoritarian agendas (generally academic type people who would be completely incapable of doing any real-world job outside the world of academia)
Disappointing to keep seeing the same misinformtion over and over again on here. Falsehoods do not become truth the more you repeat them, and the truth does not care what you want to be true.
Unfortunately if you are saying that the wearing of cloth or surgical masks protects against transmission, I have to say that is misinformation. I refer you to the study I linked to in post #10.
Wearing a high grade FFP3 mask can almost entirely protect health workers from Covid, research finds.
www.bbc.co.uk
Wearing a high grade mask known as an FFP3 can provide up to 100% protection.
By contrast, there is a far greater chance of staff wearing standard issue surgical masks catching the virus.
[Standard] masks are relatively flimsy and loose-fitting and are not meant to screen out infectious aerosols - tiny virus particles that can linger in the air and are now widely accepted as a source of coronavirus infection.
The study found high levels of infection with standard masks, which was 47 times higher than when effective masks were worn. Obviously we don't have a 'control group' with no masks, but the results are very damning for the standard, flimsy surgical masks.
Furthermore, Robert Dingwall, who is a member of Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M), which reports to Sage, stated:
Experts appear divided on whether people in England should be asked to continue to wear facemasks after July 19.
www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk
Robert Dingwall, professor of sociology at Nottingham Trent University, said: “The benefits of masks have always been uncertain because the quality of the evidence in both directions is so weak.
“Any benefit has probably been quite small, or it would have been obvious even from weak studies, and needs to be offset by the psychological impact on population fear and anxiety, on children’s learning and interactions with adults, on people with communication issues, and on the substantial number of adults who cannot wear masks because of underlying health conditions or other disorders, including previous trauma from assaults or abuse or worse
“In my opinion it is a positive step to make mask-wearing voluntary.”
While it is true that FFP3 masks are effective in preventing infections, the standard flimsy loose-fitting masks that complied with mask mandates do not, according to a SAGE advisor who specialises in this area:
Dr Colin Axon warned some cloth masks have gaps that are invisible to the naked eye, but are 5000 times the size of viral Covid particles
www.telegraph.co.uk
Dr Colin Axon warned some cloth masks have gaps that are invisible to the naked eye, but are 500,000 times the size of viral Covid particles
Standard face coverings are just "comfort blankets" that do little to reduce the spread of Covid particles, a scientist advising Sage on ventilation has said.
I agree with your overall viewpoint but I will also point out that our immunity is optimised after a natural exposure to the virus following vaccination (or, similarly, in people who were exposed to the virus prior to vaccination); a natural infection in a vaccinated individual acts as a booster, which enables an even broader response* in any future infection.
The virus is endemic and repeated exposure of Sars-CoV-2 will occur indefinitely; any attempt to avoid any exposure to the virus is futile and is only delaying the inevitable.
[* While vaccination is extremely important, and anyone who has had a natural infection is still strongly advised to get vaccinated, a natural infection will result in the body being exposed to more parts of the virus than the vaccine, and therefore a broader response is possible. However one natural infection on it's own may or may not be as effective as a dose of the vaccine, as it depends on various factors which may vary by individual, viral load etc, so any natural infection should be in addition to getting vaccinated, to be sure of giving yourself the best possible levels of immunity]
This is the key question that authoritarians often duck; for some the answer is yes (it's a sign that we are complying with them; I utterly reject that and will push back). For others the answer is something like "only until everyone is vaccinated" (but around 10% of the population isn't going to get vaccinated; they are going to have to build up immunity through natural infection, whether they, or indeed anyone else, likes it or not).
To me, masks are a distraction from what really matters: vaccines. And wearing them is like wearing a placard saying "I distrust the vaccines"; others are welcome to take a different view, but that's how I see it.
Edit: I will add that mask mandates are highly effective in creating conflict, whether it be causing delays to trains and wasting police time, to causing arguments on online discussion forums or causing friends/family to argue/split up, or businesses to lose trade. That's the only thing mask mandates are effective at, as far as I can see.
The science supports that face coverings are saving lives during the coronavirus pandemic, and yet the debate trundles on. How much evidence is enough?
Disappointing to keep seeing the same misinformtion over and over again on here. Falsehoods do not become truth the more you repeat them, and the truth does not care what you want to be true.
To be honest folks most of the points raised in this thread have been covered in numerous other ones, so rather than go over the same old arguments we’ll knock this one on the head now and leave it here. Thanks everyone.
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