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Your conclusions here don’t really seem in line with your comment about still not knowing if masks work. Not sure why you feel like this is a worthy hair to sp
by ses1984 5y ago
Your conclusions here don’t really seem in line with your comment about still not knowing if masks work.
Not sure why you feel like this is a worthy hair to split.
This kind of attitude is why the western response could have been better. Western medicine is hews rigorously close to the “do no harm” ideal and interpret it that you need to have conclusive evidence before recommending a treatment, even something as harmless as mask wearing.
In Asian countries they just do it and so what if it hasn’t been demonstrated as a causal factor in a dozen studies.
Lay people see the indecision, the hemming and hawing, the hand wringing.
The cdc says shit like people shouldn’t wear masks.
This shit is actively harmful and thousands of people have died because of it.
- mlyle 5y agoWe have confounded evidence of a weak effect. If I had to bet (and we all have had to), I'd say they do have a small benefit on a population scale. But if more evidence showed up saying they didn't, I would be completely unsurprised. I think it's worthwhile to have doubt and be skeptical. I'll note that, at the beginning of the pandemic, I was saying that masks may or may not work, but they should still be recommended at a time that the CDC was implying that they might even be harmful. This is all completely consistent with what I originally said: "To be honest, we still don't really know if masks work. They look like they probably do something, but the evidence is weak and the effect size small."