One mask forward, two masks back

"Flu" in Scotland is so bad that many NHS doctors are voluntarily wearing masks, probably surgical face masks, to protect themselves, and suggested visitors do too. Let's count all the problems with this:

1) "so many​ doctors and nurses were falling ill ​from​ the virus that frontline workers were voluntarily wearing protective face coverings to avoid contracting the infection", 'described​ flu patients waiting for “hours and hours” to ​secure places on wards' -- despite all this crisis, no actual policy change for infection control, just individual mask wearing. Because apparently trying to keep your own workforce from being infected is too much for hospitals.

2) The article never mentions covid or coronavirus, despite the virtual certainty that many, if not a majority, of those "flu" cases are in fact covid-19. But hey, if you don't test, it's not there, right?

3) Three years ago, a British hospital did as close to a high-power controlled test as we're likely to ever get, basically proving that FFP3 masks are far more protective than surgical masks. (Quick summary: in surgicals, the covid ward workers got infected a whole lot, while non-covid workers only got infected at the community rate. In FFP3s, the covid workers got infected at the same rate as the non-covid workers and community.) Despite that, the doctors and nurses reported are likely wearing... surgicals. Certainly the blurry photo is only of baggy blues.

4) Reminder that influenza virus is easy mode. The same controls in 2020 that generally struggled with or outright failed to contain SARS2/covid-19, wiped out one or two entire flu seasons, with the B/Yamagata strain being wiped out by accident.

We have the technology. Mass respiratory infection is a choice, now. Our (across multiple countries) hospitals are choosing to permit mass infection. Our public health agencies are choosing to let infection spread without saying anything. Our health care workers are (mostly) choosing to get infected.