Thread by @Rats_Nest_Org

#FBPE #FBNHS. To: the people complaining about masks/mitigation. No, Covid might not kill you - though it might: depends on your physical health including conditions you might not know you have, such as silent hypertension or coronary artery disease. But that's not the point.

The point is that if they're infected, and ill, the people YOU rely on without even thinking about it, can't do their jobs. If ONE train driver is infected and off work, it's no big deal. What if many are? If ONE delivery driver for a supermarket can't drive, no issue. But . . .

what if many are? What if many bin collectors are off? What if many supermarket workers are off? What if many teachers are off? But more importantly, what if many health staff and carers are off with this so called "mild version of Covid" (and we don't know how mild it is yet)?

What if nurses, cleaning staff, porters, doctors, paramedics, surgeons, ambulance drivers, air ambulance pilots are off with Covid? The system breaks down: it can't be staffed. So YOU, who didn't want mitigations or to wear a mask, or to take vaccines - fine, you don't get Covid.

Instead, you pop a heart attack. You fall off your bike. You get salmonella, and your kidneys start to fail. A sinister lump pops up where there was no lump before. You need a doctor. You need an operation. You need nurses. If it's a heart attack, you probably need an ambulance.

If you're in a pile-up on the motorway, you need an air ambulance. Oh, and a fire crew, to cut you loose of the wreckage of your vehicle. BUT THERE IS NO-ONE. (In an absolute disaster scenario of course.) Let's assume then that the response to your need is patchy and incomplete.

You don't get the blood test you need to diagnose your cancer. The ambulance is just a little too late. The over-stretched firemen don't make it before you die of a crush injury. The dialysis unit isn't functioning and you die of kidney failure. BECAUSE YOU WOULDN'T ACT.

You prioritised your personal "freedom" which relies inextricably on the support of thousands of others, over the safety of those thousands of others. Your "freedom" not to wear a mask or social distance gave your ambulance man Covid and then long Covid. It killed a nurse or two.

Fine, you think. It's not an issue. People die. Only the frail (and, you think, secretly, worthless) die. But it will be an issue when YOU can't get the care you need, or buy the food you want, or have your bins collected so your road doesn't turn into a stinking rat hole.

It will be an issue when society's fabric wears tissue-thin as a highly infectious disease (although, you know, mild - perhaps) runs through the population forcing it to isolate, or recover, or you know, even die, if they had any of the aforementioned silent vulnerabilities.

It will be an issue when YOU, my non-mask-wearing friend who doesn't support mitigation measures to limit the spread of this disease, falls though one of the holes in that social fabric. Planning never to get sick with anything, were you? Planning not to have a heart attack?

Planning never to have an accident, never to trip or slip or break a bone, or eat some dodgy food, or be taken off the road by some drink-fuelled idiot in a 44-tonner? Planning never to need medical care at all, let alone want your bins collected?

The safety of all - the ability of all to live within the fabric of a society that supports us - is the responsibility of all. The price we pay for that security is renouncing certain freedoms - the freedom to not wear a seatbelt or fix your own electrics being obvious ones.

For God's sake, stop whining and wear a mask. Stop being such a selfish git, for the sake of other people. And if you can't be selfless for others, then be selfish for your own sake. Stop spreading this virus. Mild or not, deadly or not, it still has the potential to unravel us.

It still, with its transmission rate, has the potential to impact many people on whom YOU, even if you don't recognise it, rely. So if you won't do anything for anyone else, do it for yourself. And yes, that still makes you a selfish git. Just a marginally less dangerous one.