Oh I _wish_ more debates had people waving around arxiv pre-prints like that, it would be a huge step up. Most people debating on the internet aren’t using scie

Oh I _wish_ more debates had people waving around arxiv pre-prints like that, it would be a huge step up. Most people debating on the internet aren’t using scientific sources at all. Sure, there’s been a lot of back-and-forth in the scientific community about the best way to prevent spread and so on. But most real world covid debates aren’t “we agree cloth/surgical masks are cheap and _might_ prevent spread, so it’s worth giving them a shot, but should we really be pushing people towards N-95s? These two preprints on the topic disagree!” They more often center on easily disprovable things like “will wearing a surgical mask (which surgeons wear for hours a day while performing _surgery_) cause me to suffocate from loss of oxygen? Everything has pros and cons you know!”