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Maybe in several decades, when one of the current crowd writes his or her memoirs, or publishes the diaries he/she kept during the last 3 years, we may learn the truth about masks.

If the scientific evidence in favour of masks during a pandemic was weak at best, then we have to look for another reason why governments around the world, including Ireland, made it an offence not to wear one. Some kind of mass hysteria that spread rapidly across the world could be one explanation. But Occam's Razor suggests another.

For the best part of 2 years in Ireland seeing one's neighbours masked up in shops and on buses was a daily reminder that we were in the middle of a pandemic, and that we should be afraid, very afraid. There were no dead bodies littering the roads and rivers, no ambulances collecting corpses during the night. So without the daily sight of mask-wearing people, would we have believed a deadly pandemic was at loose in our community at all?

The visibility of the mask made it easy to police too, if not by the actual police then by the mask-wearing social shamers ready to shoot a disapproving glance at anyone they saw not obeying the law.

Making mask-wearing mandatory was a psychological weapon directed at the people by their government. But if ministers and officials had no interest in protecting citizens' health - they had before them the data that said masks were pretty useless - why did they want to instil fear in the community?

You might as well ask why governments want a docile citizenry who do what they are told. But that's another story.

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Gript should publish this one too. The first was great for the thorough analysis of the studies and the clarity with which the conclusions were presented. This one gets solidly at the why this really really matters.l

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Nov 19, 2022Liked by Damian

Thank you, once again for taking the time to write about this and summarise your original article. Lots of people still care and are hurt by the Donnlley’s words and actions. And actions of other government representatives. I remember and I care and you are 100% correct , that it is good journalistic writing that is our last bastion of hope to keep them all in check. Keep up the good work. ( I found your article on GETTR by the way- shared by the one and only Ivor Cummins )

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I shared your original Oodles of Data piece all over the place and thanks for it. If people only understood these long pieces of papers that Government are there to thwart us and confuse us and confuse us. But they are really waffle and fillers and rubbish. Thanks again (now I should read what you've written today 😜)

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