Prof blasts new ruling on face coverings

A NOTTINGHAM professor has criticised the reintroduction of face masks.

Professor Robert Dingwall, a Nottingham Trent University sociologist, said that the policy on masks helped politicians show they were “seen” to be doing something.

His comments on Talkradio come as new Government rules came into effect.

Professor Dingwall said: “I think this has very much to do with the desire to be seen to be doing something – I mean, it’s a very visible effect.

“But I mean, as I’ve said on numerous occasions since summer 2020, we’ve not conducted proper research to find out whether they actually work or not. And the accumulating evidence is that the effect of the face mask, the value of face masks, is nil to minimal.”

The Press Association reported his comments as: “We have a body of work which has been put together – much of it flawed, much of it problematic in quality – but without showing any consistent strong signal that there is any benefit to the community in the general adoption of face masks.”

Professor Dingwall added: “One of the difficulties about deciding whether masks work or not is that they’re often part of a package of interventions. And we don’t know which bits of the package work and which bits of the package don’t work.”

Since the identification of the new variant, vaccine timings and eligibility have also been updated.

Booster vaccines are now being offered to those aged 18 to 39 and second doses are advised for those aged 12 to 15. Professor Dingwall said that vaccines would make a “major contribution” compared to any of the other measures “except possibly working from home. I think this is the only thing in my view that’s been really effective through the pandemic”.

He added that even though vaccination experts have reduced the time frame between second jabs and boosters, it was likely people would still be waiting for months. He said: “Many of the premises of vaccine hubs have now reverted to their everyday use. Many of the volunteers got jobs and they’ve gone back to work. I don’t think it’s going to be possible to get the same kind of speed and capacity as we saw earlier (in the year). So allowing people to get jabs from three months after their last dose, in practice, I suspect that mostly it will be for four or five, even six months. But I certainly encourage anybody who is invited to come forward and to take up the offer.”