No masking their incompetence

DEAR Editor, In 1939, the outbreak of war, the competent British Government supplied every citizen with a gas mask, at huge expense, just in case Germans dropped poison gas bombs on us.

When a pandemic came in 2020, this Government advised the public against wearing a mask until June, although we have known for a 100 years, that, if I cough into your face, there is a real risk that I am transmitting viruses and droplets containing viruses, directly into your lungs.

Can you explain how any Government could be so incompetent?

In June 2020, we began to wear flimsy, illfitting masks over our lower faces.

In June 2021, we finally discovered that

FFP3 masks, which fit much more closely to the face, were superior in preventing droplets infiltrating the gaps in the other masks, and so they those masks should be preferred in all hospital wards.

These FFP3 masks cost about £4 each.

Is it unreasonable to suggest that, knowing in January 2020, that a close-fitting mask was superior to a thin bit of cloth, that this Government should have ordered millions of them, as the best possible defence against covid viruses, until and after vaccines were invented?

Nobody has to be clever to find the intelligent, scientific answer.

Neville Westerman, by email