“A sentence that confirms how the obligation to wear a maskonce the pandemic emergency is over and beyond some limited contexts, be it useless and illegitimate“. Thus to Adnkronos Salute the lawyer Massimiliano Strampelli comments on the ruling of the Military Court of Rome in favor of the non-commissioned officer who had refused to wear the mask, in the phase following the declaration of the emergency over, and who for this reason had been accused of disobedience and subjected to criminal proceedings, with the risk of disciplinary proceedings.
A proceeding in which the lawyer requested the advice of Matteo Bassetti, director of the Infectious Diseases Clinic at the Policlinico San Martino hospital in Genoa, according to which “the mandatory use of the mask as a prevention strategy for Sars-CoV-infection 2 is not currently supported by the scientific evidence available to us.”
“We appointed Professor Bassetti as a consultant – explains Strampelli – arguing that the order to wear a mask at that stage was illegitimate. Once the emergency has passed, with the circulation of an Omicron variant now under control, the use of surgical masks it had become essentially useless. As Bassetti explained, in an environment of healthy, reasonably young and vaccinated individuals, there was no longer the need to keep the mask on. It could have been a recommendation but no longer an obligation, except in RSAs where there are fragile people, as Bassetti was keen to underline. And this probably led the judge to believe, with yesterday's sentence, that he had to acquit the soldier, as we had maintained from the beginning. Now we wait, within 30 days, to know the reasons that I believe will confirm this line.”
The procedure, explains the lawyer, “was not easy for my client”, a fifty-year-old Air Force non-commissioned officer serving in Guidonia. “Also due to the risk of a disciplinary measure, because the administration, once it learned that a criminal case had been opened by the military prosecutor's office, also reserved the right to adopt disciplinary measures for which suspension from service was also foreseen. For a “Refusing to obey a colonel's orders is still an act of insubordination that exposes one to serious consequences,” he concludes.
What Bassetti said
“There is no scientific reason to force people to use masks to reduce the transmission of Sars-Cov2 outside the hospital environment and nursing homes. I'm talking about an obligation to go to the cinema, to the stadium, to have an aperitif or something else. There is no scientific basis”, explains Bassetti to Adnkronos Salute.
“The most serious thing about this affair – Bassetti underlines – is that if this request could still be tolerated in 2021, when there wasn't much information, it couldn't be done when everything was clearer: this soldier was imposed mask use in October 2022. I believe the evidence behind this decision made by the Army was against the science. If the army then decides to use the mask against science, it can do so, but let it not be said that it is a decision based on medical-scientific studies. It is an order and must be considered as such.”
The mandatory use of the mask as a prevention strategy for Sars-Co-2 infection “is not currently supported by the scientific evidence available to us. More studies with greater statistical power are needed to be able to define an effective benefit of this strategy in prevention of the transmission of the virus”, he concludes.
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