Anti Maskers/Mask Skeptics claiming vindication after study
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ASPartOfMe
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Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 68
Gender: Male
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Location: Long Island, New York
28 Feb 2023, 7:34 pm
The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned? - Bret Stephens for The New York Times
Quote:
The most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illnesses — including Covid-19 — was published late last month. Its conclusions, said Tom Jefferson, the Oxford epidemiologist who is its lead author, were unambiguous.
“There is just no evidence that they” — masks — “make any difference,” he told the journalist Maryanne Demasi. “Full stop.”
But, wait, hold on. What about N-95 masks, as opposed to lower-quality surgical or cloth masks?
“Makes no difference — none of it,” said Jefferson.
What about the studies that initially persuaded policymakers to impose mask mandates?
“They were convinced by nonrandomized studies, flawed observational studies.”
What about the utility of masks in conjunction with other preventive measures, such as hand hygiene, physical distancing or air filtration?
“There’s no evidence that many of these things make any difference.”
These observations don’t come from just anywhere. Jefferson and 11 colleagues conducted the study for Cochrane, a British nonprofit that is widely considered the gold standard for its reviews of health care data. The conclusions were based on 78 randomized controlled trials, six of them during the Covid pandemic, with a total of 610,872 participants in multiple countries. And they track what has been widely observed in the United States: States with mask mandates fared no better against Covid than those without.
No study — or study of studies — is ever perfect. Science is never absolutely settled. What’s more, the analysis does not prove that proper masks, properly worn, had no benefit at an individual level. People may have good personal reasons to wear masks, and they may have the discipline to wear them consistently. Their choices are their own.
But when it comes to the population-level benefits of masking, the verdict is in: Mask mandates were a bust. Those skeptics who were furiously mocked as cranks and occasionally censored as “misinformers” for opposing mandates were right. The mainstream experts and pundits who supported mandates were wrong. In a better world, it would behoove the latter group to acknowledge their error, along with its considerable physical, psychological, pedagogical and political costs.
Don’t count on it. In congressional testimony this month, Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called into question the Cochrane analysis’s reliance on a small number of Covid-specific randomized controlled trials and insisted that her agency’s guidance on masking in schools wouldn’t change. If she ever wonders why respect for the C.D.C. keeps falling, she could look to herself, and resign, and leave it to someone else to reorganize her agency.
That, too, probably won’t happen: We no longer live in a culture in which resignation is seen as the honorable course for public officials who fail in their jobs.
The C.D.C.’s increasingly mindless adherence to its masking guidance is none of those things. It isn’t merely undermining the trust it requires to operate as an effective public institution. It is turning itself into an unwitting accomplice to the genuine enemies of reason and science — conspiracy theorists and quack-cure peddlers — by so badly representing the values and practices that science is supposed to exemplify.
Yet there was never a chance that mask mandates in the United States would get anywhere close to 100 percent compliance or that people would or could wear masks in a way that would meaningfully reduce transmission. Part of the reason is specific to American habits and culture, part of it to constitutional limits on government power, part of it to human nature, part of it to competing social and economic necessities, part of it to the evolution of the virus itself.
But whatever the reason, mask mandates were a fool’s errand from the start. They may have created a false sense of safety — and thus permission to resume semi-normal life. They did almost nothing to advance safety itself. The Cochrane report ought to be the final nail in this particular coffin.
There’s a final lesson. The last justification for masks is that, even if they proved to be ineffective, they seemed like a relatively low-cost, intuitively effective way of doing something against the virus in the early days of the pandemic. But “do something” is not science, and it shouldn’t have been public policy. And the people who had the courage to say as much deserved to be listened to, not treated with contempt. They may not ever get the apology they deserve, but vindication ought to be enough.
“There is just no evidence that they” — masks — “make any difference,” he told the journalist Maryanne Demasi. “Full stop.”
But, wait, hold on. What about N-95 masks, as opposed to lower-quality surgical or cloth masks?
“Makes no difference — none of it,” said Jefferson.
What about the studies that initially persuaded policymakers to impose mask mandates?
“They were convinced by nonrandomized studies, flawed observational studies.”
What about the utility of masks in conjunction with other preventive measures, such as hand hygiene, physical distancing or air filtration?
“There’s no evidence that many of these things make any difference.”
These observations don’t come from just anywhere. Jefferson and 11 colleagues conducted the study for Cochrane, a British nonprofit that is widely considered the gold standard for its reviews of health care data. The conclusions were based on 78 randomized controlled trials, six of them during the Covid pandemic, with a total of 610,872 participants in multiple countries. And they track what has been widely observed in the United States: States with mask mandates fared no better against Covid than those without.
No study — or study of studies — is ever perfect. Science is never absolutely settled. What’s more, the analysis does not prove that proper masks, properly worn, had no benefit at an individual level. People may have good personal reasons to wear masks, and they may have the discipline to wear them consistently. Their choices are their own.
But when it comes to the population-level benefits of masking, the verdict is in: Mask mandates were a bust. Those skeptics who were furiously mocked as cranks and occasionally censored as “misinformers” for opposing mandates were right. The mainstream experts and pundits who supported mandates were wrong. In a better world, it would behoove the latter group to acknowledge their error, along with its considerable physical, psychological, pedagogical and political costs.
Don’t count on it. In congressional testimony this month, Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called into question the Cochrane analysis’s reliance on a small number of Covid-specific randomized controlled trials and insisted that her agency’s guidance on masking in schools wouldn’t change. If she ever wonders why respect for the C.D.C. keeps falling, she could look to herself, and resign, and leave it to someone else to reorganize her agency.
That, too, probably won’t happen: We no longer live in a culture in which resignation is seen as the honorable course for public officials who fail in their jobs.
The C.D.C.’s increasingly mindless adherence to its masking guidance is none of those things. It isn’t merely undermining the trust it requires to operate as an effective public institution. It is turning itself into an unwitting accomplice to the genuine enemies of reason and science — conspiracy theorists and quack-cure peddlers — by so badly representing the values and practices that science is supposed to exemplify.
Yet there was never a chance that mask mandates in the United States would get anywhere close to 100 percent compliance or that people would or could wear masks in a way that would meaningfully reduce transmission. Part of the reason is specific to American habits and culture, part of it to constitutional limits on government power, part of it to human nature, part of it to competing social and economic necessities, part of it to the evolution of the virus itself.
But whatever the reason, mask mandates were a fool’s errand from the start. They may have created a false sense of safety — and thus permission to resume semi-normal life. They did almost nothing to advance safety itself. The Cochrane report ought to be the final nail in this particular coffin.
There’s a final lesson. The last justification for masks is that, even if they proved to be ineffective, they seemed like a relatively low-cost, intuitively effective way of doing something against the virus in the early days of the pandemic. But “do something” is not science, and it shouldn’t have been public policy. And the people who had the courage to say as much deserved to be listened to, not treated with contempt. They may not ever get the apology they deserve, but vindication ought to be enough.
This is the "civilized" NYT style response. Most are along the lines "We always knew you sheep"
Fact check: Were mask mandates really a ‘bust?’ UNC expert points out problems with study behind controversial NY Times column
Quote:
t’s been nearly two full years since North Carolina had a COVID-19 mask mandate.
Since then, one question has lingered: Did it work?
A total of 39 states, including North Carolina, put mask mandates of some type into place early in the pandemic.
In a column that drew plenty of outcry this week on social media, an opinion writer at one of the nation’s largest newspapers of record argues they didn’t work, and points to new scientific research into masking as proof of that.
But an authority on masks from the University of North Carolina’s medical school says that not only does the study lacks context, the columnist is reading it the wrong way.
THE CLAIM: An opinion piece in The New York Times headlined “The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned?” argues that mask mandates were “a bust” and “a fool’s errand from the start,” and calls the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s adherence to masking recommendations “mindless.”
THE FACTS: Dr. Emily Sickbert-Bennett, who has conducted extensive research on masks and their effectiveness, said she was “surprised to see such a strong statement … considering how strong I think the data are in many ways.”
Columnist Bret Stephens bases his argument on a study with a conclusion that seems to undermine his position.
He quotes author Tom Jefferson, an Oxford epidemiologist, as telling journalist Maryanne Demasi that “there is just no evidence that they (masks) make any difference.”
Demasi’s earlier work included an accusation that the Food and Drug Administration is misleading doctors about COVID vaccines, and an interview with a doctor who is calling for the vaccines to be suspended.
And there are plenty of issues with the study Stephens cited.
Even the first sentence of its conclusion seems to serve as a warning to readers, pointing out several factors that it says “hampers drawing firm conclusions.”
Published last month by UK-based nonprofit Cochrane, it looks at multiple studies of several groups of people across different time frames in what’s called a meta-analysis — or, a “study of many studies,” Sickbert-Bennett said.
But that creates some apples-to-oranges comparisons. For example, it combines trials where masks or respirators were worn some of the time with those when they were worn all the time.
And Sickbert-Bennett, the director of infection prevention at the UNC School of Medicine, pointed out another comparison that doesn’t square.
The authors specifically say it doesn’t apply to healthcare settings — such as crowded hospitals where sick patients could be breathing out viral particles, making transmission much riskier.
In fact, the largest study of the project — and the only one conducted during the COVID pandemic — showed what Sickbert-Bennett called a “clinically meaningful and statistical improvement:” A 13 percent relative reduction that increased to 35 percent when looking at the highest-risk population of those 60 and older.
“We don’t really want to take one summary of summaries across multiple time points without really understanding the context of it all,” Sickbert-Bennett said.
Another problem: Most of those trials only looked at part of the issue — whether the mask-wearer was protected.
But it didn’t address the other half — whether masks kept an infected person from infecting others. That was part of the allure of the masking movement: Your mask protects me, my mask protects you.
Also, COVID-19 makes up only a fraction of the viruses involved in the studies. Others include the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009, non-epidemic flu seasons and epidemic flu seasons up to 2016.
That means most of those don’t take into account what makes COVID unique — namely, that it’s twice as infectious as the flu, and masking wasn’t nearly as widespread in a pre-COVID world.
There’s also a difference between arguing that masks didn’t work and that mask mandates didn’t work.
Since then, one question has lingered: Did it work?
A total of 39 states, including North Carolina, put mask mandates of some type into place early in the pandemic.
In a column that drew plenty of outcry this week on social media, an opinion writer at one of the nation’s largest newspapers of record argues they didn’t work, and points to new scientific research into masking as proof of that.
But an authority on masks from the University of North Carolina’s medical school says that not only does the study lacks context, the columnist is reading it the wrong way.
THE CLAIM: An opinion piece in The New York Times headlined “The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned?” argues that mask mandates were “a bust” and “a fool’s errand from the start,” and calls the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s adherence to masking recommendations “mindless.”
THE FACTS: Dr. Emily Sickbert-Bennett, who has conducted extensive research on masks and their effectiveness, said she was “surprised to see such a strong statement … considering how strong I think the data are in many ways.”
Columnist Bret Stephens bases his argument on a study with a conclusion that seems to undermine his position.
He quotes author Tom Jefferson, an Oxford epidemiologist, as telling journalist Maryanne Demasi that “there is just no evidence that they (masks) make any difference.”
Demasi’s earlier work included an accusation that the Food and Drug Administration is misleading doctors about COVID vaccines, and an interview with a doctor who is calling for the vaccines to be suspended.
And there are plenty of issues with the study Stephens cited.
Even the first sentence of its conclusion seems to serve as a warning to readers, pointing out several factors that it says “hampers drawing firm conclusions.”
Published last month by UK-based nonprofit Cochrane, it looks at multiple studies of several groups of people across different time frames in what’s called a meta-analysis — or, a “study of many studies,” Sickbert-Bennett said.
But that creates some apples-to-oranges comparisons. For example, it combines trials where masks or respirators were worn some of the time with those when they were worn all the time.
And Sickbert-Bennett, the director of infection prevention at the UNC School of Medicine, pointed out another comparison that doesn’t square.
The authors specifically say it doesn’t apply to healthcare settings — such as crowded hospitals where sick patients could be breathing out viral particles, making transmission much riskier.
In fact, the largest study of the project — and the only one conducted during the COVID pandemic — showed what Sickbert-Bennett called a “clinically meaningful and statistical improvement:” A 13 percent relative reduction that increased to 35 percent when looking at the highest-risk population of those 60 and older.
“We don’t really want to take one summary of summaries across multiple time points without really understanding the context of it all,” Sickbert-Bennett said.
Another problem: Most of those trials only looked at part of the issue — whether the mask-wearer was protected.
But it didn’t address the other half — whether masks kept an infected person from infecting others. That was part of the allure of the masking movement: Your mask protects me, my mask protects you.
Also, COVID-19 makes up only a fraction of the viruses involved in the studies. Others include the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009, non-epidemic flu seasons and epidemic flu seasons up to 2016.
That means most of those don’t take into account what makes COVID unique — namely, that it’s twice as infectious as the flu, and masking wasn’t nearly as widespread in a pre-COVID world.
There’s also a difference between arguing that masks didn’t work and that mask mandates didn’t work.
Bret Stephens made that very distinction in my bolded sentence in his column
_________________
“Self Acceptance is a process not a performance”
“You are autistic enough. And you always have been”
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity.
01 Mar 2023, 10:29 am
ASPartOfMe wrote:
The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned? - Bret Stephens for The New York Times
This is the "civilized" NYT style response. Most are along the lines "We always knew you sheep"
Fact check: Were mask mandates really a ‘bust?’ UNC expert points out problems with study behind controversial NY Times column
Bret Stephens made that very distinction in my bolded sentence in his column
Quote:
The most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illnesses — including Covid-19 — was published late last month. Its conclusions, said Tom Jefferson, the Oxford epidemiologist who is its lead author, were unambiguous.
“There is just no evidence that they” — masks — “make any difference,” he told the journalist Maryanne Demasi. “Full stop.”
But, wait, hold on. What about N-95 masks, as opposed to lower-quality surgical or cloth masks?
“Makes no difference — none of it,” said Jefferson.
What about the studies that initially persuaded policymakers to impose mask mandates?
“They were convinced by nonrandomized studies, flawed observational studies.”
What about the utility of masks in conjunction with other preventive measures, such as hand hygiene, physical distancing or air filtration?
“There’s no evidence that many of these things make any difference.”
These observations don’t come from just anywhere. Jefferson and 11 colleagues conducted the study for Cochrane, a British nonprofit that is widely considered the gold standard for its reviews of health care data. The conclusions were based on 78 randomized controlled trials, six of them during the Covid pandemic, with a total of 610,872 participants in multiple countries. And they track what has been widely observed in the United States: States with mask mandates fared no better against Covid than those without.
No study — or study of studies — is ever perfect. Science is never absolutely settled. What’s more, the analysis does not prove that proper masks, properly worn, had no benefit at an individual level. People may have good personal reasons to wear masks, and they may have the discipline to wear them consistently. Their choices are their own.
But when it comes to the population-level benefits of masking, the verdict is in: Mask mandates were a bust. Those skeptics who were furiously mocked as cranks and occasionally censored as “misinformers” for opposing mandates were right. The mainstream experts and pundits who supported mandates were wrong. In a better world, it would behoove the latter group to acknowledge their error, along with its considerable physical, psychological, pedagogical and political costs.
Don’t count on it. In congressional testimony this month, Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called into question the Cochrane analysis’s reliance on a small number of Covid-specific randomized controlled trials and insisted that her agency’s guidance on masking in schools wouldn’t change. If she ever wonders why respect for the C.D.C. keeps falling, she could look to herself, and resign, and leave it to someone else to reorganize her agency.
That, too, probably won’t happen: We no longer live in a culture in which resignation is seen as the honorable course for public officials who fail in their jobs.
The C.D.C.’s increasingly mindless adherence to its masking guidance is none of those things. It isn’t merely undermining the trust it requires to operate as an effective public institution. It is turning itself into an unwitting accomplice to the genuine enemies of reason and science — conspiracy theorists and quack-cure peddlers — by so badly representing the values and practices that science is supposed to exemplify.
Yet there was never a chance that mask mandates in the United States would get anywhere close to 100 percent compliance or that people would or could wear masks in a way that would meaningfully reduce transmission. Part of the reason is specific to American habits and culture, part of it to constitutional limits on government power, part of it to human nature, part of it to competing social and economic necessities, part of it to the evolution of the virus itself.
But whatever the reason, mask mandates were a fool’s errand from the start. They may have created a false sense of safety — and thus permission to resume semi-normal life. They did almost nothing to advance safety itself. The Cochrane report ought to be the final nail in this particular coffin.
There’s a final lesson. The last justification for masks is that, even if they proved to be ineffective, they seemed like a relatively low-cost, intuitively effective way of doing something against the virus in the early days of the pandemic. But “do something” is not science, and it shouldn’t have been public policy. And the people who had the courage to say as much deserved to be listened to, not treated with contempt. They may not ever get the apology they deserve, but vindication ought to be enough.
“There is just no evidence that they” — masks — “make any difference,” he told the journalist Maryanne Demasi. “Full stop.”
But, wait, hold on. What about N-95 masks, as opposed to lower-quality surgical or cloth masks?
“Makes no difference — none of it,” said Jefferson.
What about the studies that initially persuaded policymakers to impose mask mandates?
“They were convinced by nonrandomized studies, flawed observational studies.”
What about the utility of masks in conjunction with other preventive measures, such as hand hygiene, physical distancing or air filtration?
“There’s no evidence that many of these things make any difference.”
These observations don’t come from just anywhere. Jefferson and 11 colleagues conducted the study for Cochrane, a British nonprofit that is widely considered the gold standard for its reviews of health care data. The conclusions were based on 78 randomized controlled trials, six of them during the Covid pandemic, with a total of 610,872 participants in multiple countries. And they track what has been widely observed in the United States: States with mask mandates fared no better against Covid than those without.
No study — or study of studies — is ever perfect. Science is never absolutely settled. What’s more, the analysis does not prove that proper masks, properly worn, had no benefit at an individual level. People may have good personal reasons to wear masks, and they may have the discipline to wear them consistently. Their choices are their own.
But when it comes to the population-level benefits of masking, the verdict is in: Mask mandates were a bust. Those skeptics who were furiously mocked as cranks and occasionally censored as “misinformers” for opposing mandates were right. The mainstream experts and pundits who supported mandates were wrong. In a better world, it would behoove the latter group to acknowledge their error, along with its considerable physical, psychological, pedagogical and political costs.
Don’t count on it. In congressional testimony this month, Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called into question the Cochrane analysis’s reliance on a small number of Covid-specific randomized controlled trials and insisted that her agency’s guidance on masking in schools wouldn’t change. If she ever wonders why respect for the C.D.C. keeps falling, she could look to herself, and resign, and leave it to someone else to reorganize her agency.
That, too, probably won’t happen: We no longer live in a culture in which resignation is seen as the honorable course for public officials who fail in their jobs.
The C.D.C.’s increasingly mindless adherence to its masking guidance is none of those things. It isn’t merely undermining the trust it requires to operate as an effective public institution. It is turning itself into an unwitting accomplice to the genuine enemies of reason and science — conspiracy theorists and quack-cure peddlers — by so badly representing the values and practices that science is supposed to exemplify.
Yet there was never a chance that mask mandates in the United States would get anywhere close to 100 percent compliance or that people would or could wear masks in a way that would meaningfully reduce transmission. Part of the reason is specific to American habits and culture, part of it to constitutional limits on government power, part of it to human nature, part of it to competing social and economic necessities, part of it to the evolution of the virus itself.
But whatever the reason, mask mandates were a fool’s errand from the start. They may have created a false sense of safety — and thus permission to resume semi-normal life. They did almost nothing to advance safety itself. The Cochrane report ought to be the final nail in this particular coffin.
There’s a final lesson. The last justification for masks is that, even if they proved to be ineffective, they seemed like a relatively low-cost, intuitively effective way of doing something against the virus in the early days of the pandemic. But “do something” is not science, and it shouldn’t have been public policy. And the people who had the courage to say as much deserved to be listened to, not treated with contempt. They may not ever get the apology they deserve, but vindication ought to be enough.
This is the "civilized" NYT style response. Most are along the lines "We always knew you sheep"
Fact check: Were mask mandates really a ‘bust?’ UNC expert points out problems with study behind controversial NY Times column
Quote:
t’s been nearly two full years since North Carolina had a COVID-19 mask mandate.
Since then, one question has lingered: Did it work?
A total of 39 states, including North Carolina, put mask mandates of some type into place early in the pandemic.
In a column that drew plenty of outcry this week on social media, an opinion writer at one of the nation’s largest newspapers of record argues they didn’t work, and points to new scientific research into masking as proof of that.
But an authority on masks from the University of North Carolina’s medical school says that not only does the study lacks context, the columnist is reading it the wrong way.
THE CLAIM: An opinion piece in The New York Times headlined “The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned?” argues that mask mandates were “a bust” and “a fool’s errand from the start,” and calls the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s adherence to masking recommendations “mindless.”
THE FACTS: Dr. Emily Sickbert-Bennett, who has conducted extensive research on masks and their effectiveness, said she was “surprised to see such a strong statement … considering how strong I think the data are in many ways.”
Columnist Bret Stephens bases his argument on a study with a conclusion that seems to undermine his position.
He quotes author Tom Jefferson, an Oxford epidemiologist, as telling journalist Maryanne Demasi that “there is just no evidence that they (masks) make any difference.”
Demasi’s earlier work included an accusation that the Food and Drug Administration is misleading doctors about COVID vaccines, and an interview with a doctor who is calling for the vaccines to be suspended.
And there are plenty of issues with the study Stephens cited.
Even the first sentence of its conclusion seems to serve as a warning to readers, pointing out several factors that it says “hampers drawing firm conclusions.”
Published last month by UK-based nonprofit Cochrane, it looks at multiple studies of several groups of people across different time frames in what’s called a meta-analysis — or, a “study of many studies,” Sickbert-Bennett said.
But that creates some apples-to-oranges comparisons. For example, it combines trials where masks or respirators were worn some of the time with those when they were worn all the time.
And Sickbert-Bennett, the director of infection prevention at the UNC School of Medicine, pointed out another comparison that doesn’t square.
The authors specifically say it doesn’t apply to healthcare settings — such as crowded hospitals where sick patients could be breathing out viral particles, making transmission much riskier.
In fact, the largest study of the project — and the only one conducted during the COVID pandemic — showed what Sickbert-Bennett called a “clinically meaningful and statistical improvement:” A 13 percent relative reduction that increased to 35 percent when looking at the highest-risk population of those 60 and older.
“We don’t really want to take one summary of summaries across multiple time points without really understanding the context of it all,” Sickbert-Bennett said.
Another problem: Most of those trials only looked at part of the issue — whether the mask-wearer was protected.
But it didn’t address the other half — whether masks kept an infected person from infecting others. That was part of the allure of the masking movement: Your mask protects me, my mask protects you.
Also, COVID-19 makes up only a fraction of the viruses involved in the studies. Others include the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009, non-epidemic flu seasons and epidemic flu seasons up to 2016.
That means most of those don’t take into account what makes COVID unique — namely, that it’s twice as infectious as the flu, and masking wasn’t nearly as widespread in a pre-COVID world.
There’s also a difference between arguing that masks didn’t work and that mask mandates didn’t work.
Since then, one question has lingered: Did it work?
A total of 39 states, including North Carolina, put mask mandates of some type into place early in the pandemic.
In a column that drew plenty of outcry this week on social media, an opinion writer at one of the nation’s largest newspapers of record argues they didn’t work, and points to new scientific research into masking as proof of that.
But an authority on masks from the University of North Carolina’s medical school says that not only does the study lacks context, the columnist is reading it the wrong way.
THE CLAIM: An opinion piece in The New York Times headlined “The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned?” argues that mask mandates were “a bust” and “a fool’s errand from the start,” and calls the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s adherence to masking recommendations “mindless.”
THE FACTS: Dr. Emily Sickbert-Bennett, who has conducted extensive research on masks and their effectiveness, said she was “surprised to see such a strong statement … considering how strong I think the data are in many ways.”
Columnist Bret Stephens bases his argument on a study with a conclusion that seems to undermine his position.
He quotes author Tom Jefferson, an Oxford epidemiologist, as telling journalist Maryanne Demasi that “there is just no evidence that they (masks) make any difference.”
Demasi’s earlier work included an accusation that the Food and Drug Administration is misleading doctors about COVID vaccines, and an interview with a doctor who is calling for the vaccines to be suspended.
And there are plenty of issues with the study Stephens cited.
Even the first sentence of its conclusion seems to serve as a warning to readers, pointing out several factors that it says “hampers drawing firm conclusions.”
Published last month by UK-based nonprofit Cochrane, it looks at multiple studies of several groups of people across different time frames in what’s called a meta-analysis — or, a “study of many studies,” Sickbert-Bennett said.
But that creates some apples-to-oranges comparisons. For example, it combines trials where masks or respirators were worn some of the time with those when they were worn all the time.
And Sickbert-Bennett, the director of infection prevention at the UNC School of Medicine, pointed out another comparison that doesn’t square.
The authors specifically say it doesn’t apply to healthcare settings — such as crowded hospitals where sick patients could be breathing out viral particles, making transmission much riskier.
In fact, the largest study of the project — and the only one conducted during the COVID pandemic — showed what Sickbert-Bennett called a “clinically meaningful and statistical improvement:” A 13 percent relative reduction that increased to 35 percent when looking at the highest-risk population of those 60 and older.
“We don’t really want to take one summary of summaries across multiple time points without really understanding the context of it all,” Sickbert-Bennett said.
Another problem: Most of those trials only looked at part of the issue — whether the mask-wearer was protected.
But it didn’t address the other half — whether masks kept an infected person from infecting others. That was part of the allure of the masking movement: Your mask protects me, my mask protects you.
Also, COVID-19 makes up only a fraction of the viruses involved in the studies. Others include the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009, non-epidemic flu seasons and epidemic flu seasons up to 2016.
That means most of those don’t take into account what makes COVID unique — namely, that it’s twice as infectious as the flu, and masking wasn’t nearly as widespread in a pre-COVID world.
There’s also a difference between arguing that masks didn’t work and that mask mandates didn’t work.
Bret Stephens made that very distinction in my bolded sentence in his column
What's the differences between masks not working and mask mandates not working?
funeralxempire
Veteran
Joined: 27 Oct 2014
Age: 41
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 34,202
Location: Right over your left shoulder
01 Mar 2023, 11:33 am
Dengashinobi wrote:
What's the differences between masks not working and mask mandates not working?
As the second article states, there's differing measures of effectiveness when it comes to masking. Many of the studies suggesting no benefit only looked at benefits to the wearer and overlooked healthcare settings.
The blanket statement masks didn't work isn't correct, the study the article references concedes that complicating factors “hampers drawing firm conclusions.”
Mask mandates on the other hand depend on high and consistent compliance, which didn't really exist. As the article concedes:
Quote:
Yet there was never a chance that mask mandates in the United States would get anywhere close to 100 percent compliance or that people would or could wear masks in a way that would meaningfully reduce transmission. Part of the reason is specific to American habits and culture, part of it to constitutional limits on government power, part of it to human nature, part of it to competing social and economic necessities, part of it to the evolution of the virus itself.
_________________
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. —Malcolm X
Just a reminder: under international law, an occupying power has no right of self-defense, and those who are occupied have the right and duty to liberate themselves by any means possible.
01 Mar 2023, 11:49 am
funeralxempire wrote:
Dengashinobi wrote:
What's the differences between masks not working and mask mandates not working?
As the second article states, there's differing measures of effectiveness when it comes to masking. Many of the studies suggesting no benefit only looked at benefits to the wearer and overlooked healthcare settings.
The blanket statement masks didn't work isn't correct, the study the article references concedes that complicating factors “hampers drawing firm conclusions.”
Mask mandates on the other hand depend on high and consistent compliance, which didn't really exist. As the article concedes:
Quote:
Yet there was never a chance that mask mandates in the United States would get anywhere close to 100 percent compliance or that people would or could wear masks in a way that would meaningfully reduce transmission. Part of the reason is specific to American habits and culture, part of it to constitutional limits on government power, part of it to human nature, part of it to competing social and economic necessities, part of it to the evolution of the virus itself.
If they don't benefit the wearer the how do they benefit the healthcare setting?
funeralxempire
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01 Mar 2023, 11:57 am
Dengashinobi wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
Dengashinobi wrote:
What's the differences between masks not working and mask mandates not working?
As the second article states, there's differing measures of effectiveness when it comes to masking. Many of the studies suggesting no benefit only looked at benefits to the wearer and overlooked healthcare settings.
The blanket statement masks didn't work isn't correct, the study the article references concedes that complicating factors “hampers drawing firm conclusions.”
Mask mandates on the other hand depend on high and consistent compliance, which didn't really exist. As the article concedes:
Quote:
Yet there was never a chance that mask mandates in the United States would get anywhere close to 100 percent compliance or that people would or could wear masks in a way that would meaningfully reduce transmission. Part of the reason is specific to American habits and culture, part of it to constitutional limits on government power, part of it to human nature, part of it to competing social and economic necessities, part of it to the evolution of the virus itself.
If they don't benefit the wearer the how do they benefit the healthcare setting?
They can benefit the wearer, everyone else or both.
If they reduce risks for everyone else in the room, that's a benefit.
_________________
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. —Malcolm X
Just a reminder: under international law, an occupying power has no right of self-defense, and those who are occupied have the right and duty to liberate themselves by any means possible.
01 Mar 2023, 12:02 pm
funeralxempire wrote:
Dengashinobi wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
Dengashinobi wrote:
What's the differences between masks not working and mask mandates not working?
As the second article states, there's differing measures of effectiveness when it comes to masking. Many of the studies suggesting no benefit only looked at benefits to the wearer and overlooked healthcare settings.
The blanket statement masks didn't work isn't correct, the study the article references concedes that complicating factors “hampers drawing firm conclusions.”
Mask mandates on the other hand depend on high and consistent compliance, which didn't really exist. As the article concedes:
Quote:
Yet there was never a chance that mask mandates in the United States would get anywhere close to 100 percent compliance or that people would or could wear masks in a way that would meaningfully reduce transmission. Part of the reason is specific to American habits and culture, part of it to constitutional limits on government power, part of it to human nature, part of it to competing social and economic necessities, part of it to the evolution of the virus itself.
If they don't benefit the wearer the how do they benefit the healthcare setting?
They can benefit the wearer, everyone else or both.
If they reduce risks for everyone else in the room, that's a benefit.
Yes but how does that work?
funeralxempire
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Joined: 27 Oct 2014
Age: 41
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 34,202
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01 Mar 2023, 12:09 pm
Dengashinobi wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
Dengashinobi wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
Dengashinobi wrote:
What's the differences between masks not working and mask mandates not working?
As the second article states, there's differing measures of effectiveness when it comes to masking. Many of the studies suggesting no benefit only looked at benefits to the wearer and overlooked healthcare settings.
The blanket statement masks didn't work isn't correct, the study the article references concedes that complicating factors “hampers drawing firm conclusions.”
Mask mandates on the other hand depend on high and consistent compliance, which didn't really exist. As the article concedes:
Quote:
Yet there was never a chance that mask mandates in the United States would get anywhere close to 100 percent compliance or that people would or could wear masks in a way that would meaningfully reduce transmission. Part of the reason is specific to American habits and culture, part of it to constitutional limits on government power, part of it to human nature, part of it to competing social and economic necessities, part of it to the evolution of the virus itself.
If they don't benefit the wearer the how do they benefit the healthcare setting?
They can benefit the wearer, everyone else or both.
If they reduce risks for everyone else in the room, that's a benefit.
Yes but how does that work?
You mean how does something in front of your mouth and nose limit the spread of things from your mouth and nose?
Quote:
There is evidence that shows that masks reduce the exhaled aerosols from infections and asymptomatic individuals. (Konda et al., 2020) Masks like these are mostly used to protect others and act as a physical barrier. During a cough or a sneeze, a cloud of droplets containing the virus can propel from an individual and spread up to 25 feet.
_________________
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. —Malcolm X
Just a reminder: under international law, an occupying power has no right of self-defense, and those who are occupied have the right and duty to liberate themselves by any means possible.
01 Mar 2023, 12:43 pm
funeralxempire wrote:
Dengashinobi wrote:
You mean how does something in front of your mouth and nose limit the spread of things from your mouth and nose?
Quote:
There is evidence that shows that masks reduce the exhaled aerosols from infections and asymptomatic individuals. (Konda et al., 2020) Masks like these are mostly used to protect others and act as a physical barrier. During a cough or a sneeze, a cloud of droplets containing the virus can propel from an individual and spread up to 25 feet.
I see.
RetroGamer87
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22 Apr 2023, 3:15 am
It does not make sense, the COVID virus is spread through very fine droplets which people inhale.
While a surgical mask does not offer much protection to the wearer, some industrial respirators provide a lot of protection to the wearer against fine particles.
During some of the worst times in the COVID crisis I was wearing a P3 respirator while out in public, I managed to stay infection free even while using public transport each day.
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Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity
I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man ! Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.
24 Apr 2023, 3:29 pm
I've always been skeptical about the usefulness of those cheap masks. I think any good they might do is probably quite marginal, and that incorrect use and handling could make them do more harm than good. That was the official received wisdom at the start of the pandemic. It then got overturned, though the "new evidence" they cited didn't look all that convincing to me. Then the health authority said that they'd only told us masks were ineffective because they'd thought the demand for them might deprive the health workers of masks. And even before that health authority u-turn, while they were warning about the danger of the false sense of security masks might give, Boris Johnson was saying he wanted people to wear masks to give them the confidence to go back to work. So it looked pretty clear that there was something political going on that was interfering with the honest dissemination of the truth by our leaders. I can't say I was surprised to notice that, though I was surprised when they admitted lying to us on that one occasion, because that was rather blowing their own credibility.
But I'm not highly vehement about masks even though I don't believe the difference they make is more than marginal at best. I just wore a mask when those in control insisted on it, and say what I think when I'm invited to. And I tended to think that if they were telling me to wear a mask, I should consider the safer option of leaving the area. Like somebody here suggested, that's a rather more effective "mask."
