4 ms·

Yep... > "There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there's some evidence t

Yep... > "There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there's some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly," Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO health emergencies program, said at a media briefing in Geneva, Switzerland, on Monday. This was science not that long ago [0]... Then whoops, mandatory masks... "but trust science now, we're surely 100% correct now!". [0] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-masks-recommendation-trnd/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-mas...

chowells 5y ago
What you are seeing is science in action. We started with some guesses and a lack of on-point evidence. And even some common misunderstandings of historical evidence. More evidence was gathered. Guesses turned out to be wrong. Contradictions were found. Recommendations were updated. This what doing science looks like. This is working correctly. You haven't pointed out any flaws, you've pointed out a success case.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  Yeah, sure... until someone doesn't want to get vaccinated, until the vaccines are more throughly tested (especially long-term studies). Then they get called many many science-denying names, and practically forced to do it by their governments.
- darkmatterrat 5y ago
  No it wasn't. Mandates were enforced on flimsy evidence that they might work. It was simply security theatre. In some cases many have even admitted that it was done to make people "feel safe". The Effectiveness (or lack thereof) of specifically the masks has been investigated in many settings with the flu many times before. e.g. This was published back in 2014: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/316198/Masks_and_Respirators_Science_Review.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... Page 44-47 of the PDF goes over in length masks used in a community setting. They specifically talk about compliance, what sort of mask was being worn and whether the mask was fitted and how that may have affected the results of various studies, transmission rates etc. Many studies found that people stopped complying after a certain amount of time, other found it varied on the culture. What did we see with mask usage during COVID? Many people wore the same mask for days on end, or they put them in their pocket, or just stuck one of the passenger seat of their car (like my neighbour did). Some stopped bothering wearing the mask after a few weeks, and there was differences in compliance dependent on the culture. A lot of this was known back in 2014. You can find numerous other studies going back years now on the relative effectiveness of masks and different types of masks and the result for cloth masks (which the types that people were using) weren't great. Are you telling me that all these medical professionals that had the ear of officials didn't know about any of this?
- SquibblesRedux 5y ago
  I would prefer to call recent events science under pressure. One could argue that good science takes time. People need time to think about ideas, time to think about ways to test the ideas, and time to engage in discourse without duress. Both politicians and the media, in my opinion, are a detriment to good science. They may be a necessary evil to provide support for funding, but their short-term goals are antithetical to thoughtful discourse.
- Jensson 5y ago
  He confidently told New Yorkers not to worry and they shouldn't stay at home in march. Pretty sure him saying that increased the deaths by many thousands there. At the time other countries had detected covid cases originating from New York, and New York barely tested but a huge amount of of those tests were positive, everyone who read a bit knew it was bad there but he just ignored it and told them to go on with life as normal. So I don't trust his judgement, at the time it was Democrats position to downplay the disease so that is what he did. Then Democrats switched position and so did he. I really doubt he will always do what is best for people instead of what is best for Democrats. I'd rather listen to scientists who aren't so political. Edit: I'm from Europe so don't assume I'm a Republican just because I criticise him.
- native_samples 5y ago
  Well, this "science in action" garbage is certainly this week's attempt to save the institutions from self-immolation, but it simply doesn't hold water: 1. The initial statements were not guesses. They were an accurate summary of the state of the scientific literature at the time and were presented as such ("there is no specific evidence", "there is some evidence to suggest the opposite"). 2. The later change, which occurred with whiplash-inducing speed, wasn't based on any new evidence or studies. That's why Fauci had to come up with this story about how they'd been engaging in a noble lie: there was no new evidence for him to point at. 3. There is now clear evidence that mask mandates don't work, namely the real world data, yet recommendations have not changed and all this new evidence has been ignored. Specifically, if large-scale mandates did work then it would be clearly visible in the case curves of each country that introduced them, by definition, because creating clearly visible drops in those curves was the only reason they were introduced. Yet no such drops are visible. You can't look at a country's data and work out when masks were introduced or removed, it's impossible, people have tried. Thus mask mandates failed on their own terms and no further studies or experiments are actually necessary to answer the question of whether they're effective. I don't really know why you're trying to defend "science" in the abstract like this. COVID science is the work of specific groups of people, it's not an abstraction, and it turns out to fall far short of the lofty standards we were taught to expect at school. COVID science in the real world is riddled with obvious hypocrisy and contradictions, routinely ignores or even rubbishes any evidence that would undermine collectivist social policies or make scientists look bad, and just in general is a sad joke. Arguing that this obvious failure is actually a success, and this is what all science looks like, can only make things worse by harming trust in other groups of scientists with higher standards (e.g. maybe physicists?).
  - lr1970 5y ago
    > Specifically, if large-scale mandates did work then it would be clearly visible in the case curves of each country that introduced them, by definition, because creating clearly visible drops in those curves was the only reason they were introduced. Yet no such drops are visible. You can't look at a country's data and work out when masks were introduced or removed, it's impossible, people have tried. Thus mask mandates failed on their own terms and no further studies or experiments are actually necessary to answer the question of whether they're effective. I am sorry, but this is a BS argument. First of all, COVID-19 (classic variant) had a 7 to 14 days incubation period. Upon infection rate curves it acts as a low-pass filter (aka smoothing filter). You will not see sharp drops even if contagion abruptly stops. The curve will decay over one or two weeks. Also, mask mandates were not introduced at random moments of time. Typically they were enacted or enforced when infection was on the rise. At best the expectation was that masks will slow down the up-trend. Obviously, masks do not fully protect against inhaling the virus. But they do limit the blast radius from infected people coughing and sneezing. This is why in Asia people are routinely wearing masks during a regular flu season. Masks do not stop infection but they reduce spread to some degree. Common sense is oftentimes better that shaky science on top of questionable data.
ethanbond 5y ago
Note how the actual quote is filled with qualifiers and suspicion and references to evidence but to no concrete conclusion. Then notice that the made up straw man quote, which no one actually said despite being between quotation marks, you say "trust science now, we're surely 100% correct now." You choose to read "maybe X, maybe Y, we recommend Z" as "we're surely 100% correct now." That's on you.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  Well yeah, but science ("expert groups") also said all the vaccines work and are safe. Then they stopped using astrazeneca here, but the others were safe. Then israel said they don't work enough, and mandated a booster shot. Then a girl died due to Janssen vaccine here in slovenia, and they said that only mRNA vaccines should be used for younger people, because they are safe. Then sweden and denmark stopped with the Moderna vaccines, and the only one left is currently Pfeizer,... atleast for now. And all the time, people saying vaccines are unsafe, or that covid vs vaccines dangers are comparable were marked as stupid science deniers (in slovenia, zero deaths for girls under 25 due to covid, one death due to vaccine, where approximately 50% of 2mio total population got infected).
  - ethanbond 5y ago
    150 Americans die each year from acetaminophen (Tylenol) yet people take it for routine headaches. Some people even take Tylenol for headaches and it doesn’t cure their headache! What’s your point?
    - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
      Is someone forcing them to take tylenol? I mean.. is there a government mandate, saying you can't go to (eg.) a clothes store if you didn't take a tylenol first? Or did those people take the tylenol and the risks willingly and voluntarily?
      - llamaimperative 5y ago
someone7x 5y ago
> This was science not that long ago [0]... Then whoops, mandatory masks... "but trust science now, we're surely 100% correct now!". The findings from the scientific method are not infallible, just better in every way than the findings from any other method. Better than the words of charlatans, better even than the words of the wisest humans to ever live. It's not perfect and it's not magic. It's just significantly better than anything else by leaps and bounds. I think it's fucking amazing and I wish you could see that too.
burnished 5y ago
How many other times have you seen a public reversal on policy because of new information?
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  It's not a problem with a public reversal of something, it's forcing people to do X, censoring them online (twitter, youtube), and then 'whoops'. People who were buying masks then were branded as conspiracy theorists, loonatics, got lauged at by commenters everywhere. And our scientists still claim, that the current findings are true, that they won't change, and that everyone not doing as instructed by the expert groups is an idiot again.
ravi-delia 5y ago
To be clear, neither statement is contradictory. The problem is that "there is no specific evidence for x" and "x is not true" are taken to mean the same thing when they really aren't. Was there much evidence at the beginning of the pandemic? No. Should that have overridden putting a little bit of thought into the problem? Also no.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  For the record, I'm vaccinated. Is there specific evidence that vaccines don't cause long-term harm? And if in time, evidence shows that they do cause harm, who will be responsible? (in slovenia, all the vaccines were safe and effective, then we first stopped using astrazeneca due to clots and a woman dying, then israel said they don't work enough, and mandated a third shot, then a girl died in slovenia due to Janssen, and only mrna vaccines were recommended for young people, then sweden and denmark stopped using moderna, so we're down to one safe vaccine). Even the stupidests little things, like sanitizing the living crap out of stuff, even before the mask mandates, was something that was 'true' back then, then the 'truth' changed, and we still had to pay for all the useless crap... we had mandated sanitizers in elevators, all the high buildings paid a shitton of money for them (because the dispensers were expensive then and hard to get), then someone though about fire codes, and "woops, remove them". TLDR: the problem is not that science changes, the problem is, that we do very socially and economically dangerous and expensive stuff now by blindly trusting whatever the current scientific idea is, not thinking about "what if the science is wrong?" (eg. if covid is transmitted mostly by air and not by touching infected surfaces).
- slowmovintarget 5y ago
  Here's the problem with that phrasing: masks were known to be effective long before the mandates in Western nations. It was called SARS-CoV-2 and "coronavirus" very early on, and we had plenty of evidence with other viruses of that kind, including the original SARS that you should wear a mask around others to retard transmission. "No specific evidence" is weasel-wording. I have family in China. Before the spread here in the West, people were buying up N95 masks and sending them to Asia because they knew what was coming. I'm of the opinion that the advice to not bother with masks early on was intended to address an expected shortfall for medical personnel. That is, it was manipulation.

chowells 5y ago

What you are seeing is science in action. We started with some guesses and a lack of on-point evidence. And even some common misunderstandings of historical evidence. More evidence was gathered. Guesses turned out to be wrong. Contradictions were found. Recommendations were updated. This what doing science looks like. This is working correctly. You haven't pointed out any flaws, you've pointed out a success case.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
Yeah, sure... until someone doesn't want to get vaccinated, until the vaccines are more throughly tested (especially long-term studies). Then they get called many many science-denying names, and practically forced to do it by their governments.
darkmatterrat 5y ago
No it wasn't. Mandates were enforced on flimsy evidence that they might work. It was simply security theatre. In some cases many have even admitted that it was done to make people "feel safe". The Effectiveness (or lack thereof) of specifically the masks has been investigated in many settings with the flu many times before. e.g. This was published back in 2014: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/316198/Masks_and_Respirators_Science_Review.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... Page 44-47 of the PDF goes over in length masks used in a community setting. They specifically talk about compliance, what sort of mask was being worn and whether the mask was fitted and how that may have affected the results of various studies, transmission rates etc. Many studies found that people stopped complying after a certain amount of time, other found it varied on the culture. What did we see with mask usage during COVID? Many people wore the same mask for days on end, or they put them in their pocket, or just stuck one of the passenger seat of their car (like my neighbour did). Some stopped bothering wearing the mask after a few weeks, and there was differences in compliance dependent on the culture. A lot of this was known back in 2014. You can find numerous other studies going back years now on the relative effectiveness of masks and different types of masks and the result for cloth masks (which the types that people were using) weren't great. Are you telling me that all these medical professionals that had the ear of officials didn't know about any of this?
SquibblesRedux 5y ago
I would prefer to call recent events science under pressure. One could argue that good science takes time. People need time to think about ideas, time to think about ways to test the ideas, and time to engage in discourse without duress. Both politicians and the media, in my opinion, are a detriment to good science. They may be a necessary evil to provide support for funding, but their short-term goals are antithetical to thoughtful discourse.
Jensson 5y ago
He confidently told New Yorkers not to worry and they shouldn't stay at home in march. Pretty sure him saying that increased the deaths by many thousands there. At the time other countries had detected covid cases originating from New York, and New York barely tested but a huge amount of of those tests were positive, everyone who read a bit knew it was bad there but he just ignored it and told them to go on with life as normal. So I don't trust his judgement, at the time it was Democrats position to downplay the disease so that is what he did. Then Democrats switched position and so did he. I really doubt he will always do what is best for people instead of what is best for Democrats. I'd rather listen to scientists who aren't so political. Edit: I'm from Europe so don't assume I'm a Republican just because I criticise him.
native_samples 5y ago
Well, this "science in action" garbage is certainly this week's attempt to save the institutions from self-immolation, but it simply doesn't hold water: 1. The initial statements were not guesses. They were an accurate summary of the state of the scientific literature at the time and were presented as such ("there is no specific evidence", "there is some evidence to suggest the opposite"). 2. The later change, which occurred with whiplash-inducing speed, wasn't based on any new evidence or studies. That's why Fauci had to come up with this story about how they'd been engaging in a noble lie: there was no new evidence for him to point at. 3. There is now clear evidence that mask mandates don't work, namely the real world data, yet recommendations have not changed and all this new evidence has been ignored. Specifically, if large-scale mandates did work then it would be clearly visible in the case curves of each country that introduced them, by definition, because creating clearly visible drops in those curves was the only reason they were introduced. Yet no such drops are visible. You can't look at a country's data and work out when masks were introduced or removed, it's impossible, people have tried. Thus mask mandates failed on their own terms and no further studies or experiments are actually necessary to answer the question of whether they're effective. I don't really know why you're trying to defend "science" in the abstract like this. COVID science is the work of specific groups of people, it's not an abstraction, and it turns out to fall far short of the lofty standards we were taught to expect at school. COVID science in the real world is riddled with obvious hypocrisy and contradictions, routinely ignores or even rubbishes any evidence that would undermine collectivist social policies or make scientists look bad, and just in general is a sad joke. Arguing that this obvious failure is actually a success, and this is what all science looks like, can only make things worse by harming trust in other groups of scientists with higher standards (e.g. maybe physicists?).
- lr1970 5y ago
  > Specifically, if large-scale mandates did work then it would be clearly visible in the case curves of each country that introduced them, by definition, because creating clearly visible drops in those curves was the only reason they were introduced. Yet no such drops are visible. You can't look at a country's data and work out when masks were introduced or removed, it's impossible, people have tried. Thus mask mandates failed on their own terms and no further studies or experiments are actually necessary to answer the question of whether they're effective. I am sorry, but this is a BS argument. First of all, COVID-19 (classic variant) had a 7 to 14 days incubation period. Upon infection rate curves it acts as a low-pass filter (aka smoothing filter). You will not see sharp drops even if contagion abruptly stops. The curve will decay over one or two weeks. Also, mask mandates were not introduced at random moments of time. Typically they were enacted or enforced when infection was on the rise. At best the expectation was that masks will slow down the up-trend. Obviously, masks do not fully protect against inhaling the virus. But they do limit the blast radius from infected people coughing and sneezing. This is why in Asia people are routinely wearing masks during a regular flu season. Masks do not stop infection but they reduce spread to some degree. Common sense is oftentimes better that shaky science on top of questionable data.

ethanbond 5y ago

Note how the actual quote is filled with qualifiers and suspicion and references to evidence but to no concrete conclusion. Then notice that the made up straw man quote, which no one actually said despite being between quotation marks, you say "trust science now, we're surely 100% correct now." You choose to read "maybe X, maybe Y, we recommend Z" as "we're surely 100% correct now." That's on you.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
Well yeah, but science ("expert groups") also said all the vaccines work and are safe. Then they stopped using astrazeneca here, but the others were safe. Then israel said they don't work enough, and mandated a booster shot. Then a girl died due to Janssen vaccine here in slovenia, and they said that only mRNA vaccines should be used for younger people, because they are safe. Then sweden and denmark stopped with the Moderna vaccines, and the only one left is currently Pfeizer,... atleast for now. And all the time, people saying vaccines are unsafe, or that covid vs vaccines dangers are comparable were marked as stupid science deniers (in slovenia, zero deaths for girls under 25 due to covid, one death due to vaccine, where approximately 50% of 2mio total population got infected).
- ethanbond 5y ago
  150 Americans die each year from acetaminophen (Tylenol) yet people take it for routine headaches. Some people even take Tylenol for headaches and it doesn’t cure their headache! What’s your point?
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    Is someone forcing them to take tylenol? I mean.. is there a government mandate, saying you can't go to (eg.) a clothes store if you didn't take a tylenol first? Or did those people take the tylenol and the risks willingly and voluntarily?
    - llamaimperative 5y ago

someone7x 5y ago

> This was science not that long ago [0]... Then whoops, mandatory masks... "but trust science now, we're surely 100% correct now!". The findings from the scientific method are not infallible, just better in every way than the findings from any other method. Better than the words of charlatans, better even than the words of the wisest humans to ever live. It's not perfect and it's not magic. It's just significantly better than anything else by leaps and bounds. I think it's fucking amazing and I wish you could see that too.

burnished 5y ago

How many other times have you seen a public reversal on policy because of new information?

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
It's not a problem with a public reversal of something, it's forcing people to do X, censoring them online (twitter, youtube), and then 'whoops'. People who were buying masks then were branded as conspiracy theorists, loonatics, got lauged at by commenters everywhere. And our scientists still claim, that the current findings are true, that they won't change, and that everyone not doing as instructed by the expert groups is an idiot again.

ravi-delia 5y ago

To be clear, neither statement is contradictory. The problem is that "there is no specific evidence for x" and "x is not true" are taken to mean the same thing when they really aren't. Was there much evidence at the beginning of the pandemic? No. Should that have overridden putting a little bit of thought into the problem? Also no.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
For the record, I'm vaccinated. Is there specific evidence that vaccines don't cause long-term harm? And if in time, evidence shows that they do cause harm, who will be responsible? (in slovenia, all the vaccines were safe and effective, then we first stopped using astrazeneca due to clots and a woman dying, then israel said they don't work enough, and mandated a third shot, then a girl died in slovenia due to Janssen, and only mrna vaccines were recommended for young people, then sweden and denmark stopped using moderna, so we're down to one safe vaccine). Even the stupidests little things, like sanitizing the living crap out of stuff, even before the mask mandates, was something that was 'true' back then, then the 'truth' changed, and we still had to pay for all the useless crap... we had mandated sanitizers in elevators, all the high buildings paid a shitton of money for them (because the dispensers were expensive then and hard to get), then someone though about fire codes, and "woops, remove them". TLDR: the problem is not that science changes, the problem is, that we do very socially and economically dangerous and expensive stuff now by blindly trusting whatever the current scientific idea is, not thinking about "what if the science is wrong?" (eg. if covid is transmitted mostly by air and not by touching infected surfaces).
slowmovintarget 5y ago
Here's the problem with that phrasing: masks were known to be effective long before the mandates in Western nations. It was called SARS-CoV-2 and "coronavirus" very early on, and we had plenty of evidence with other viruses of that kind, including the original SARS that you should wear a mask around others to retard transmission. "No specific evidence" is weasel-wording. I have family in China. Before the spread here in the West, people were buying up N95 masks and sending them to Asia because they knew what was coming. I'm of the opinion that the advice to not bother with masks early on was intended to address an expected shortfall for medical personnel. That is, it was manipulation.