…because principled concerns over infringements of Consitutional Liberties aren't good enough, apparently; at the end of May, the injection mandate will be reviewed again, and much more
Someone in Austria must work with occupation safety and hazards?
FFP2 masks are meant to be worn in short intervals no longer than maybe 20 minutes, and are 'wear and waste'-style of equipment. Using 4 or 5 per day when sanding down old wall paper is not unusual - you are not supposed to re-use a mask you've taken off and handled, really.
Surely Austria has both people employed in jobs using masks for real, and an OSHA agency?
Because in a lab where you might work with viruses such as SARS-viruses, you wear containment or brathing suits; full body enclosed with its own air supply. That's a bit impractical for herr und frau Scmitt going to Aldi or Fakta, I think. Not to mention panic inducing.
Oh my, while I admit to not having checked out this particular part of the regulations, I did ask a friend who is the (majority) co-owner of a family practice in Vienna. When I pointed out these particular labour/safety regulations, she said: 'The pandemic trumps labour law.'
Aha. Although I know "sweet mother-eff-all" as the americans say about any actual health&safety-rules in Austria, I suspect that is pure BS.
Did a quick check on the Swedish OSHA page, and it is as i remember it from over 25 years ago:
"Protective breathing gear may only be used as a short-term temporary or emergency solution". Then follows lots of details about what kind of gear for what kind of work and what the tolerance levels for various gases and other chemicals and particles are. The basic rule however is that any problem with contaminated air, for whatever reason, is to be solved by installing proper ventilation.
When exposed to dust, such as sawdust, a P1 mask/filter is acceptable; for sanding and grinding it's a P2, and for metal dust and such it's P3. Also, the mask must fit perfectly tight to the skin, so sweating while weaing it or having stubble or anything which leaves any gap is a violation of protocol (as it makes any protection void).
And al manufacturers of masks, half-masks and filters and breathing apparatus poinst out that a) the mask/filter is to be changed at regular intervals or as needed, and b) that carbon dioxide builds up in the mask, the tighter the mask the quicker, leading to headaches, migraines, loss of focus and impaired cognition.
Which is why we (I've had jobs requiring full mask with separate air, as I may have mentioned) as a rule of thumb only wear them (even P2/FFP2) about 20 minutes at the time.
You might ask your colleague about lgal documentation stating that pandemic rules and regs trumps OSHA law/regs - if such a document exists, it's potential politicial dynamite I think.
I had little time when I posted the earlier comment, so here goes:
My friend is a quite typical exponent of the credulous person: no 'unclean' person was allowed on the premises without a 'negative' test result; when I asked about this--for $ 48 and 49 of the Austrian Physicians' Act (Ärztegesetz) clearly render it illegal to withhold medical care, 'even' in cases the doctor's own life is danger.
Her reply: yeah, you know, if there's a clear and present danger, of course she'd take care of that person without a test.
I followed up on this with the above point about masks. Well, my friend mumbled the above-related statement about 'the pandemic' trumping these rules and regulations.
Over here, the mother of one of my daughter's classmates used to work for McD downtown: she told of two (surgical) facemasks handed out by the employer for each person per workday. They weren't even allowed to take off the mask to drink, I was told.
It's as if people suddenly stopped caring about these labour laws and safety regulations. It's patently absurd, ain't it? This will in all likelihood contribute to a much bigger problem in the future than anything Sars-Cov-2 could do to you or me.
One last thing about the legal dynamite: it would be the case, eh? Couple of former co-workers challenged a big university in Switzerland over the Covid Passports and mask mandates. They also found a lawyer who helped them--to no avail: said lawyer explained that the courts would just drag out the process (due to you guess it: 'Covid-19') until the gov't had ever so slightly amended the mandates, which lead, expetedly to the notion that the judiciary will tell you that it'll take longer for the complaint to be 'adjudicated' than any given mandate will be in place.
Hm, "lawfare" by the courts instead of by "community leaders" is a thing it would seem.
Whatever happened to "Always get sketchy orders in writing!"? That's what I was taught, get it in writing, signed and witnessed. Most bosses in any sector balk at doing that, and I can't think of a clearer sign than that they know they are in the wrong.
All of this of course meshes with the hard push-back of worker's rights, led by Britain and the US alongside with the major unions being party political tools for furthering the EU-agenda. Old hat to us swedes, the Landsorganisation (the union of unions so to speak) was founded by the socialist democrats in order to wrest control of the unions from their members.
Well, 'lawfare' is certainly one part of this, but the willing executioners (e.g., the many physicians) who do so is the flip side of this coin.
I bet that virtually no-one knows about the details of the regulations that you mentioned. hence, it's hardly surprising that this is done, I'd argue, in part because there's not that many workers who regularly don these masks for the reasons you mentioned.
And then there's the 'orders in writing issue', which is also a great contributor here: as is well-known, these rules, regulations, recommendations, etc. change(d) so fast and so often that it's hard for people struggling to make ends meet* to find the time to keep up (yes, I know, but logical thinking isn't what's taught in schools or universities outside mathematics and philosophy classes).
*my friend must pay off two huge loans, one for the house she 'owns' (ahem) and the other derives from the acquisition of the family practice. I know, it's her doing, but still--you could earn a lot of money without being able to put anything aside, which, on top of emotional distress in times of Covid, would keep people from thinking straight.
Still, it's also a function of 'wanting to know', and my friend clearly doesn't want to.
Someone in Austria must work with occupation safety and hazards?
FFP2 masks are meant to be worn in short intervals no longer than maybe 20 minutes, and are 'wear and waste'-style of equipment. Using 4 or 5 per day when sanding down old wall paper is not unusual - you are not supposed to re-use a mask you've taken off and handled, really.
Surely Austria has both people employed in jobs using masks for real, and an OSHA agency?
Because in a lab where you might work with viruses such as SARS-viruses, you wear containment or brathing suits; full body enclosed with its own air supply. That's a bit impractical for herr und frau Scmitt going to Aldi or Fakta, I think. Not to mention panic inducing.
Oh my, while I admit to not having checked out this particular part of the regulations, I did ask a friend who is the (majority) co-owner of a family practice in Vienna. When I pointed out these particular labour/safety regulations, she said: 'The pandemic trumps labour law.'
Aha. Although I know "sweet mother-eff-all" as the americans say about any actual health&safety-rules in Austria, I suspect that is pure BS.
Did a quick check on the Swedish OSHA page, and it is as i remember it from over 25 years ago:
"Protective breathing gear may only be used as a short-term temporary or emergency solution". Then follows lots of details about what kind of gear for what kind of work and what the tolerance levels for various gases and other chemicals and particles are. The basic rule however is that any problem with contaminated air, for whatever reason, is to be solved by installing proper ventilation.
When exposed to dust, such as sawdust, a P1 mask/filter is acceptable; for sanding and grinding it's a P2, and for metal dust and such it's P3. Also, the mask must fit perfectly tight to the skin, so sweating while weaing it or having stubble or anything which leaves any gap is a violation of protocol (as it makes any protection void).
And al manufacturers of masks, half-masks and filters and breathing apparatus poinst out that a) the mask/filter is to be changed at regular intervals or as needed, and b) that carbon dioxide builds up in the mask, the tighter the mask the quicker, leading to headaches, migraines, loss of focus and impaired cognition.
Which is why we (I've had jobs requiring full mask with separate air, as I may have mentioned) as a rule of thumb only wear them (even P2/FFP2) about 20 minutes at the time.
You might ask your colleague about lgal documentation stating that pandemic rules and regs trumps OSHA law/regs - if such a document exists, it's potential politicial dynamite I think.
I had little time when I posted the earlier comment, so here goes:
My friend is a quite typical exponent of the credulous person: no 'unclean' person was allowed on the premises without a 'negative' test result; when I asked about this--for $ 48 and 49 of the Austrian Physicians' Act (Ärztegesetz) clearly render it illegal to withhold medical care, 'even' in cases the doctor's own life is danger.
Her reply: yeah, you know, if there's a clear and present danger, of course she'd take care of that person without a test.
I followed up on this with the above point about masks. Well, my friend mumbled the above-related statement about 'the pandemic' trumping these rules and regulations.
Over here, the mother of one of my daughter's classmates used to work for McD downtown: she told of two (surgical) facemasks handed out by the employer for each person per workday. They weren't even allowed to take off the mask to drink, I was told.
It's as if people suddenly stopped caring about these labour laws and safety regulations. It's patently absurd, ain't it? This will in all likelihood contribute to a much bigger problem in the future than anything Sars-Cov-2 could do to you or me.
One last thing about the legal dynamite: it would be the case, eh? Couple of former co-workers challenged a big university in Switzerland over the Covid Passports and mask mandates. They also found a lawyer who helped them--to no avail: said lawyer explained that the courts would just drag out the process (due to you guess it: 'Covid-19') until the gov't had ever so slightly amended the mandates, which lead, expetedly to the notion that the judiciary will tell you that it'll take longer for the complaint to be 'adjudicated' than any given mandate will be in place.
Hm, "lawfare" by the courts instead of by "community leaders" is a thing it would seem.
Whatever happened to "Always get sketchy orders in writing!"? That's what I was taught, get it in writing, signed and witnessed. Most bosses in any sector balk at doing that, and I can't think of a clearer sign than that they know they are in the wrong.
All of this of course meshes with the hard push-back of worker's rights, led by Britain and the US alongside with the major unions being party political tools for furthering the EU-agenda. Old hat to us swedes, the Landsorganisation (the union of unions so to speak) was founded by the socialist democrats in order to wrest control of the unions from their members.
Well, 'lawfare' is certainly one part of this, but the willing executioners (e.g., the many physicians) who do so is the flip side of this coin.
I bet that virtually no-one knows about the details of the regulations that you mentioned. hence, it's hardly surprising that this is done, I'd argue, in part because there's not that many workers who regularly don these masks for the reasons you mentioned.
And then there's the 'orders in writing issue', which is also a great contributor here: as is well-known, these rules, regulations, recommendations, etc. change(d) so fast and so often that it's hard for people struggling to make ends meet* to find the time to keep up (yes, I know, but logical thinking isn't what's taught in schools or universities outside mathematics and philosophy classes).
*my friend must pay off two huge loans, one for the house she 'owns' (ahem) and the other derives from the acquisition of the family practice. I know, it's her doing, but still--you could earn a lot of money without being able to put anything aside, which, on top of emotional distress in times of Covid, would keep people from thinking straight.
Still, it's also a function of 'wanting to know', and my friend clearly doesn't want to.
Sigh.