6 ms·

> cases are skyrocketing And comments like yours are one of the reasons. The study shows that masks do little to protect the wearer - which is kind of obvious

by jiofih 6y ago

> cases are skyrocketing And comments like yours are one of the reasons. The study shows that masks do little to protect the wearer - which is kind of obvious as it’s not going to filter incoming air very efficiently, that has never been the purpose of surgical masks. They don’t protect against airborne pathogens and every medical professional knows it. You need a crítica mass for masks to start reducing transmission rates. Mask use is nowhere near what it should have been, so you cannot take any conclusions out of that.

irq11 6y ago
> Mask use is nowhere near what it should have been All available evidence shows that you’re wrong. Self-reported mask usage rates are over 90%, nationwide. Moreover, many of the places with the highest compliance rates (e.g. Los Angeles) have the fastest-growing case counts: https://delphi.cmu.edu/covidcast/?date=20201018&signalType=value&mode=overview&sensor=fb-survey-smoothed_wearing_mask&level=state https://delphi.cmu.edu/covidcast/?date=20201018&signalType=v... https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/10/23/pandemic-data-chart-masks/%3foutputType=amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/business... https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6943e4.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6943e4.htm
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Because population density and culture are the other factors. In most cases, combined with limiting large groups and reducing the frequency of meetings, it is doing what it is intended to do - reduce the R0 factor. Even in LA. Every Internet pundit who can take one number and divide by another, announces they have proven something or other. Give it a rest.
  - irq11 6y ago
    There’s always an excuse, but there’s never any data backing your claims. Provide even a single shred of evidence that masks affect the R0 of the virus in the real world. Modeling studies and correlations observed in April don’t count: most of the papers published this year looked at areas where case counts subsequently skyrocketed in the fall. My personal favorite is the mask study from Jena, Germany in the spring, which only made it into a journal right as cases were reaching an all-time high in the same area: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/12/02/2015954117 https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/12/02/2015954117 https://gesundheit.jena.de/en/coronavirus https://gesundheit.jena.de/en/coronavirus
    - jiofih 6y ago
      From the first link you mention: > we conclude that 20 d after becoming mandatory face masks have reduced the number of new infections by around 45% A later increase in infections does not invalidate statistical significance for earlier studies. It’s just math, not “an excuse”. You’ll never see the data for how many cases would have been recorded without the measures in place. You can see the full paper here: http://ftp.iza.org/dp13319.pdf http://ftp.iza.org/dp13319.pdf The second link you posted earlier also says conclusively that higher reported mask usage correlated with lower reports of symptoms. Are you even reading your own sources? Or maybe you just have very skewed expectations of the impact? The Jena study estimates a 0.23 reduction in R rate. It is nowhere close to eliminating the disease, but this small reduction in transmission rate has an outsized effect on the total number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths, and that is what really matters (roughly, a 50% increase in transmission would result in 10x more deaths). The inconvenience of wearing a mask is an insignificant price to pay even if the numbers are off by an order of magnitude.
      - irq11 6y ago
        > A later increase in infections does not invalidate statistical significance for earlier studies. It’s just math, not “an excuse”. So your theory is that masks worked then, but stopped working now? Convenient! > You’ll never see the data for how many cases would have been recorded without the measures in place. Well, yes, exactly...these are uncontrolled studies. Which is why they’re such garbage. You can see that in the title of the paper you posted: “a synthetic control study”. That means they didn’t have a control. Which means all they can do is squint at correlations and try to claim they prove cause. (oh also: the WaPo “data” is from a phone survey...so yeah: people who say they wear masks a lot claim they have fewer “symptoms”. Whatever that means.)
        joshuamorton 6y ago
        > So your theory is that masks worked then, but stopped working now? This doesn't follow. It's completely believable that masks have continued to be effective at curbing spread by 40% continuously. However increased holiday travel, as well as colder weather and people hanging out more in doors caused an increase in spread that wasn't present in the summer.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  You believe self reported data? Self reported data is among the least reliable forms of evidence there is.
masonic 6y ago
Can you point me to any data showing that random quality cloth masks even reduce coronavirus transmission? The recent Kaiser San Jose case[0] where one worker infected 44+ fellow staff, all of whom were wearing masks, ... from inside a tree costume would seem to be a great counterexample. [0] https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/01/07/kaiser-san-jose-fined-43000-as-investigation-into-christmas-costume-covid-outbreak-continues/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/01/07/kaiser-san-jose-fined... Essentially everyone I see in the wild has been wearing masks for months, with almost perfect compliance since the Fall surge, including myself. But it seems to be mostly theater. It's like stopping BBs with a volleyball net. It also ignores the fact that the eyes are a bigger attack surface than the nose or a closed mouth. If we had stressed the importance of not touching one's face combined with aggressive sanitization of hands, faces, and surfaces, Covid-19 might have waned into a quiet death even without a vaccine, like SARS and MERS before it.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  > If we had stressed the importance of not touching one's face combined with aggressive sanitization of hands, faces, and surfaces, Covid-19 This...was stressed, significantly. Do you not remember that?
  - masonic 6y ago
    Look at any 20 articles about Covid transmission from February to April. You'd be lucky to find one that stressed not touching surfaces over mask wearing. In 37 California articles I saved from that period, exactly zero even mentioned not touching surfaces in equal or higher importance to wearing masks... and only 8 even mentioned surfaces as a transmission vector (generally, only doorhandles).
    - joshuamorton 6y ago
      > In 37 California articles I saved from that period, exactly zero even mentioned not touching surfaces in equal or higher importance to wearing masks... That's because surfaces aren't a major transmission vector. There was significant early concern about surface transmission, with recommendations to leave packages to quarantine for a period or wipe things with alcohol to sanitize them. There was a period where I'd wipe my phone and credit cards with alcohol everytime I reentered my house. Pretty quickly though, the data showed that didn't matter, and so people (reasonably) stopped caring as much, instead prioritizing airborne particle transmission, which remains the main transmission vector.

by jiofih 6y ago

irq11 6y ago

> Mask use is nowhere near what it should have been All available evidence shows that you’re wrong. Self-reported mask usage rates are over 90%, nationwide. Moreover, many of the places with the highest compliance rates (e.g. Los Angeles) have the fastest-growing case counts: https://delphi.cmu.edu/covidcast/?date=20201018&signalType=value&mode=overview&sensor=fb-survey-smoothed_wearing_mask&level=state https://delphi.cmu.edu/covidcast/?date=20201018&signalType=v... https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/10/23/pandemic-data-chart-masks/%3foutputType=amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/business... https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6943e4.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6943e4.htm

JoeAltmaier 6y ago
Because population density and culture are the other factors. In most cases, combined with limiting large groups and reducing the frequency of meetings, it is doing what it is intended to do - reduce the R0 factor. Even in LA. Every Internet pundit who can take one number and divide by another, announces they have proven something or other. Give it a rest.
- irq11 6y ago
  There’s always an excuse, but there’s never any data backing your claims. Provide even a single shred of evidence that masks affect the R0 of the virus in the real world. Modeling studies and correlations observed in April don’t count: most of the papers published this year looked at areas where case counts subsequently skyrocketed in the fall. My personal favorite is the mask study from Jena, Germany in the spring, which only made it into a journal right as cases were reaching an all-time high in the same area: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/12/02/2015954117 https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/12/02/2015954117 https://gesundheit.jena.de/en/coronavirus https://gesundheit.jena.de/en/coronavirus
  - jiofih 6y ago
    From the first link you mention: > we conclude that 20 d after becoming mandatory face masks have reduced the number of new infections by around 45% A later increase in infections does not invalidate statistical significance for earlier studies. It’s just math, not “an excuse”. You’ll never see the data for how many cases would have been recorded without the measures in place. You can see the full paper here: http://ftp.iza.org/dp13319.pdf http://ftp.iza.org/dp13319.pdf The second link you posted earlier also says conclusively that higher reported mask usage correlated with lower reports of symptoms. Are you even reading your own sources? Or maybe you just have very skewed expectations of the impact? The Jena study estimates a 0.23 reduction in R rate. It is nowhere close to eliminating the disease, but this small reduction in transmission rate has an outsized effect on the total number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths, and that is what really matters (roughly, a 50% increase in transmission would result in 10x more deaths). The inconvenience of wearing a mask is an insignificant price to pay even if the numbers are off by an order of magnitude.
    - irq11 6y ago
      > A later increase in infections does not invalidate statistical significance for earlier studies. It’s just math, not “an excuse”. So your theory is that masks worked then, but stopped working now? Convenient! > You’ll never see the data for how many cases would have been recorded without the measures in place. Well, yes, exactly...these are uncontrolled studies. Which is why they’re such garbage. You can see that in the title of the paper you posted: “a synthetic control study”. That means they didn’t have a control. Which means all they can do is squint at correlations and try to claim they prove cause. (oh also: the WaPo “data” is from a phone survey...so yeah: people who say they wear masks a lot claim they have fewer “symptoms”. Whatever that means.)
      - joshuamorton 6y ago
        > So your theory is that masks worked then, but stopped working now? This doesn't follow. It's completely believable that masks have continued to be effective at curbing spread by 40% continuously. However increased holiday travel, as well as colder weather and people hanging out more in doors caused an increase in spread that wasn't present in the summer.
pmiller2 6y ago
You believe self reported data? Self reported data is among the least reliable forms of evidence there is.

masonic 6y ago

Can you point me to any data showing that random quality cloth masks even reduce coronavirus transmission? The recent Kaiser San Jose case[0] where one worker infected 44+ fellow staff, all of whom were wearing masks, ... from inside a tree costume would seem to be a great counterexample. [0] https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/01/07/kaiser-san-jose-fined-43000-as-investigation-into-christmas-costume-covid-outbreak-continues/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/01/07/kaiser-san-jose-fined... Essentially everyone I see in the wild has been wearing masks for months, with almost perfect compliance since the Fall surge, including myself. But it seems to be mostly theater. It's like stopping BBs with a volleyball net. It also ignores the fact that the eyes are a bigger attack surface than the nose or a closed mouth. If we had stressed the importance of not touching one's face combined with aggressive sanitization of hands, faces, and surfaces, Covid-19 might have waned into a quiet death even without a vaccine, like SARS and MERS before it.

joshuamorton 6y ago
> If we had stressed the importance of not touching one's face combined with aggressive sanitization of hands, faces, and surfaces, Covid-19 This...was stressed, significantly. Do you not remember that?
- masonic 6y ago
  Look at any 20 articles about Covid transmission from February to April. You'd be lucky to find one that stressed not touching surfaces over mask wearing. In 37 California articles I saved from that period, exactly zero even mentioned not touching surfaces in equal or higher importance to wearing masks... and only 8 even mentioned surfaces as a transmission vector (generally, only doorhandles).
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    > In 37 California articles I saved from that period, exactly zero even mentioned not touching surfaces in equal or higher importance to wearing masks... That's because surfaces aren't a major transmission vector. There was significant early concern about surface transmission, with recommendations to leave packages to quarantine for a period or wipe things with alcohol to sanitize them. There was a period where I'd wipe my phone and credit cards with alcohol everytime I reentered my house. Pretty quickly though, the data showed that didn't matter, and so people (reasonably) stopped caring as much, instead prioritizing airborne particle transmission, which remains the main transmission vector.