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Massive confounding factor here is that starting around April seasonality into summer was putting massive downward pressure on the epidemic across Europe anyway

Massive confounding factor here is that starting around April seasonality into summer was putting massive downward pressure on the epidemic across Europe anyway. There's no mention of attempting to control for this effect in the paper. As it happens the UK's second wave kicked into exponential increase around mid August - the only major public health policy intervention coincident with this was mandatory mask wearing. So yeah.

tikkabhuna 6y ago
Mid-August was also half way into "Eat out to help out"[1]. 1 - https://www.gov.uk/guidance/get-a-discount-with-the-eat-out-to-help-out-scheme https://www.gov.uk/guidance/get-a-discount-with-the-eat-out-...
- regularfry 6y ago
  Not only that, but back-projections of R0 across summer show a distinct upwards turn from below 1.0 at the start of August, exactly when EOtHO started.
doctorfoo 6y ago
It was July the lockdown was lifted and pubs and restaurants were reopened. I think that counts as major.
input_sh 6y ago
Anecdotal, but my city made masks mandatory both indoors and outdoors about a month ago with €250 fine for non-compliance. Other measures roughly stayed the same. Prior to that, roughly one in every 88 people were considered to be active cases. Today, that number is one in every 121. Of course this is just my rough calculation (latest population census divided by the number of active cases), and the number is expected to improve somewhat as the amount of population with antibodies increases, but I'm pretty sure masks help.
klmr 6y ago
> Massive confounding factor here is that starting around April seasonality … was putting massive downward pressure on the epidemic. That’s wrong, the opposite is the case. The study controls for this by looking at a synthetic control over the same time period, which consists of other populations without mandatory mask-wearing. It’s an observational study so it can’t control for everything but it does control for seasonality, even if “seasonality” isn’t specifically mentioned in the paper.

tikkabhuna 6y ago

Mid-August was also half way into "Eat out to help out"[1]. 1 - https://www.gov.uk/guidance/get-a-discount-with-the-eat-out-to-help-out-scheme https://www.gov.uk/guidance/get-a-discount-with-the-eat-out-...

regularfry 6y ago
Not only that, but back-projections of R0 across summer show a distinct upwards turn from below 1.0 at the start of August, exactly when EOtHO started.

doctorfoo 6y ago

It was July the lockdown was lifted and pubs and restaurants were reopened. I think that counts as major.

input_sh 6y ago

Anecdotal, but my city made masks mandatory both indoors and outdoors about a month ago with €250 fine for non-compliance. Other measures roughly stayed the same. Prior to that, roughly one in every 88 people were considered to be active cases. Today, that number is one in every 121. Of course this is just my rough calculation (latest population census divided by the number of active cases), and the number is expected to improve somewhat as the amount of population with antibodies increases, but I'm pretty sure masks help.

klmr 6y ago

> Massive confounding factor here is that starting around April seasonality … was putting massive downward pressure on the epidemic. That’s wrong, the opposite is the case. The study controls for this by looking at a synthetic control over the same time period, which consists of other populations without mandatory mask-wearing. It’s an observational study so it can’t control for everything but it does control for seasonality, even if “seasonality” isn’t specifically mentioned in the paper.