Many people appear to be completely ignorant of what the government guidelines actually state about face coverings.

A person does NOT need to suffer from a ‘medical condition‘ to be exempt from wearing a face mask.

A medical condition, disability or physical or mental impairment is only one of the exemption classes and the guidance is not limited to these.

A person need only be caused “severe distress .. from either putting on, removing or wearing a face covering” in order to be exempt.

Secondly, those with a valid reason not to wear a face-covering should NOT be routinely asked to provide written evidence of exemption.

Any such display indicating a face covering exemption is entirely the choice of the individual and is not required by law.

Personally, I am caused severe distress by watching the daily debacle of the mainstream media and their obedient sheep-like followers who still seem to be living in total unmitigated fear and hiding behind the sofa wearing fully enclosed biohazard suits that this virus is killing thousands of people a week.

Deaths relating to Covid-19 now stand at virtually zero in the UK.

Every day for weeks now only two or three people die out of a population of 68 million where it’s mentioned on the death certificate and many of those would sadly have died anyway.

A recent survey showed a not insignificant percentage of the population thought 10% or more Britons had died from it, the reality being that it’s closer to 0.04% of the population, and even men aged 50-59 (higher risk than women by a factor of 2:1) with one or more underlying health conditions still have a 99.2% chance of NOT dying from an illness exacerbated by Covid-19.

It’s high time both the population of this country and our mathematically challenged politicians started understanding basic statistics and risk analysis and face the fact we cannot, will never and should not, remove all risk and actually show some bravery and courage rather than simply pander to votes and saving their backsides.

Ruining our lives in order to save our lives is utterly nonsensical.

This virus is harmful to those in a tiny number of vulnerable groups and has never been anything other, despite the sensationalism of seemingly “healthy” people “dying of Covid-19” plastered over the front pages and on TV news reports at every opportunity.

Such cases are extremely rare yet we are led to believe they’re commonplace.

For every one death relating to Covid-19 some estimates predict within five years there will be a staggering 50 more deaths caused by the effects of lockdown and our hysterical and disproportionate reaction to the virus.

Child poverty, anxiety, stress, heart conditions, obesity, alcohol and drug abuse, strokes and cancers (many undetected because our beloved NHS shut down on us by closing GP surgeries), all brought about by exponential job losses and the mass instilling of fear on the population will have far greater effects than the virus itself, especially given NHS whistleblowers are gathering to expose huge swathes as those recorded as “dying of Covid-19” when many were never even tested or tested negative.

The gerrymandering of figures has been endemic from day one.

We will reap what we have sown from this farcical situation. Let’s hope we learn never to act in such an incomprehensibly stupid way ever again.

I voted for this Government, but if this bungling mess is exposed in the way it should be I will lose no sleep if it brings them down.

My heart breaks every time I drive past the desecration wreaked upon our fine city due to this ‘scamdemic’, especially given our out-of-touch, Green-obsessed council have used it as an excuse to rid the town of cars.

Apart from a few sensible writers to this letters section most Herefordians seem to have fallen for the risible narrative on this fiasco rather than seek out the huge numbers of dissenting voices in the scientific community who can demonstrate quite clearly that the orthodoxy of reporting and opinion being peddled by mainstream media and the government is based on incompetence, fear, panic or a deeper agenda, or sadly, all four.

Heads should roll.

Fiona Thomas
Hereford