Last part of the video.

💙 Masking is a caring act to protect others & oneself.

Often it is personal experience that truly makes one understand this.

#MaskUp & have a well Christmas!

Please make sure it's a good respiratory FFP3 mask 😷

Singapore had early targeted border controls because of their experience of SARS. So, health screening from Wuhan began in Jan 2020 & progressive travel management was applied by risk. They didn't wait for WHO. The UK by contrast has late border closures & minimal enforcement & poor track & trace.

Brilliant!

Good for you!

That's great. It is not straightforward to mask in the UK and it's not getting easier.

😷 Masks aren't traumatising.
Abandonment is.
Airborne denial is.
Hospital-acquired infection is.
Long Covid and severe ME is.

The most traumatising part of the ongoing pandemic and current flu surge is the refusal to care. /14

😷The real scandal isn’t masks - it’s how many people need them and are denied cultural permission to use them without ridicule.

It shows a culture deeply rooted in ableism. Disabled people had reinforced (again) that adaptions are not normalised, they are stigmatised. /13

Instead the UK dug into cultural masculinity that denied airborne transmission & collective responsibility. The toughness of presenteeism still dominates.

This was and is driven by media nationalism. We know pandemics push societies to the right to avoid accountability & cost. /12

Exceptionalism Meets Airborne Denial

The UK government didn’t just refuse Asian etiquette - it refused Asian science.

They already knew from SARS that:
🔹respiratory viruses are airborne
🔹ventilation and respirators matter
🔹community masking is cheap and humane /11

We still have Institutional Exceptionalism. The UK dismissed:
🔹Hong Kong’s containment strategies
🔹Taiwan’s mask and quarantine systems
🔹Japanese etiquette
🔹Singapore’s border management
🔹South Korea’s test-and-trace infrastructure

Science is filtered through cultural ego. /10

We should never have allowed a basic & powerful respiratory tool to be weaponised.

If the UK invested in comfort, sizing education, and non-ideological health messaging, this culture war would evaporate. /9

Masking isn’t about ideology. It’s about:

😷 immunocompromised children at school & their families not risking their health & lives
😷 people with Long Covid trying not to be reinfected
😷 disabled people protecting their protective system

That’s the stakes. /8

Official UK guidance doesn’t help, it hinders - contradictory, politicised, quietly dropped.
The NHS are stating if one has flu one should mask.
The UKHSA says one should 'consider' masking.
The public get mixed messages & the vulnerable get abandoned. /7

This is solvable.
Japan & SE Asia built etiquette infrastructure - public messaging, social practice, comfort-driven design. All based on the cultural concept of Wa - harmony.

Masks are a courtesy, compassion, not a statement or tribal identity. /6

We have respirator illiteracy in the UK, most have only worn poorly fitting "blue baggies.
They don’t seal, they feel stuffy, they slip.
So discomfort gets mislabelled as oppression.

Try a well-fitting 3M Aura or soft FFP2 headband mask - behaviour changes 😷 /5

What’s really going on?

😷Respirator illiteracy - people here have never worn a good mask
😷Media oxygen - conflict sells, courtesy doesn’t
😷British exceptionalism - refusal to learn from Asia
😷 Airborne denial

Masking was never given a chance to become normal. /4

❄️ Meanwhile in the UK, we have symbolic theatre. Ministers claim masks are “a monstrous imposition" - Swayne.
Kemi Badenoch even said she’s traumatised by them.
Perspective, please. /3
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

In Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore… masking is boring. Etiquette. Courtesy.
A cough? Pollution day? Crowded underground? Mask goes on. End of story.

No identity crisis. No tribal signalling. Just collective care. /2
(Family photo from SE Asia - man in mask=NBD)

Thank you to @greensagainstcovid.bsky.social for the recommendation to reach out to @adrianramsay.bsky.social 💚