26 ms·

Missouri found mask mandates work, but didn’t make findings public

234 points by nojito 5y ago

makomk 5y ago
That is a weird graph. Am I missing something, or does it say that the counties with a mask mandate began to have substantially lower cases than those without starting two months before the first mask mandates were reimposed?
- diognesofsinope 5y ago
  Same thought -- makes you think it has less do you with masks/mandates and more with city-folk being cautious as delta surges. Maybe the mandates encourage this behavior shift? Top points if politicians noticed this difference off the bat and create the mask mandate to engineer the illusion that it was their policy that worked, even though it would've happened anyways -- aka action bias. In any case, I think we can all agree people need to stop (1) using different random X-day moving averages and (2) give us the data. edit: there's an entire literature on methodologies (1) Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) and (2) Difference-in-Difference (DiD) that's designed to address this problem in analysis.
  - mjevans 5y ago
    The reason for a 7 day running average is because there is a great deal of noise in the source data, that is how you clarify the picture to remove short term trends in numbers. Confounding trends might exist for various reasons like: labs want people to have a day or two off, so process less on the weekends or some days of the week in spreading that weekend out. People might interact in different risk settings over the course of a week. (E.G. For some higher risk on the job and shut in on the weekends. For others time to go out clubbing on the weekends and shut in jobs during the week). So the 7 day running average just says: we can't disentangle to get at the true raw numbers, this is the best we can do to get useful data out of the data-feed. PS: The only way to get truly useful data would be sufficient testing capacity to issue fully randomized tests on everyone, in a mandatory way, on a regular basis. A 'well designed survey' would probably still have biases but might approach that. To the best of my knowledge (public news media), currently most tests are probably focused on populations perceived to be at higher risk, who show visible possible symptoms, or who are obviously ill.
    - diognesofsinope 5y ago
      I get why it's used, but I strongly believe people are better off seeing the raw data. Exactly as you said, we can probably infer if there is variation in testing (weekends). Or at the very least show the 7-period SD so we can see if the confidence intervals overlap. You can absolutely use averages to hide data points and data quality. PS: I disagree with your PS -- if we're being wildly theoretical and impractical about this we should just create a second Earth where everyone wears mask and a third Earth where no-one wears masks and compare all the Earths.... And none of what you're saying addresses the core problem I mentioned, which is that the divergence in the series starts before the policy date.
- weezin 5y ago
  Yes, this headline is really misleading. You could argue the gap widened a bit after the mandate, but that is probably more a factor of behavior/vaccination rate compounding than masking. This is anything but conclusive about mask.
- belorn 5y ago
  If I wanted to create a graph that disproved the effectiveness of mask I would use cities near the coast during the summer, one with mask mandates and one without. I would look at all those people that are outdoor in the warm and humid climate. If I wanted to do the opposite I would pick cities that are inland with temperate climate during that fall, with the air dry and most people inside poorly ventilated buildings.
  - eesmith 5y ago
    How is that relevant given these are all in MO, during the same time period?
    - belorn 5y ago
      Sorry, I should have developed the comment a bit more. Transmitting and date rates are determined by multiple factors, many that are known. Risk groups, ability and convenience to do social distancing, population density, ventilation, weather, population movement patterns and more. In this case we got Kansas city vs St. Louis, through the article is trying to making an argument about the world in general. Graphs like this are basically pointless except for one thing. They imply that there might be a benefit of masks, and thus while its not evidence of effectiveness its is not evidence of the opposite. It is what researcher use as support for doing further studies that later accounts for known factors. If however one uses it to jump ahead, someone else can create a similar graph in a different locations and time to create the opposite conclusion. (Small note about the time period). It is worth looking at the period between April and August. The two lines swap places which each other. St. Louis started out with a higher rate than Kansas city, and end up with a lower rate afterward. This is a pretty common pattern and follow the old "even out the curve" concept.
- gumby 5y ago
  Note that this graph was created by the reporters and was not generated by the health department. The labeling is weird. The reinstatement arrow should point SSW not NW. That says that during the surge, those counties* had a lower death rate. Presumably the counties that ever had a mask mandate had higher compliance even during periods when the mandate was lifted, but the article doesn’t discuss any of that, and it’s only a presumption. * I think the blue line should be labeled “death rate in the four counties”.
  - contravariant 5y ago
    How does changing the arrow change the fact that they had significantly lower case rates at the end of June while the mask mandate came into effect on July 26?
  - throwawaylinux 5y ago
    > The reinstatement arrow should point SSW not NW. It points to the the point on the blue line at July 26. Why should it point SSW? Does SSW even intersect with the blue line at any point?
- jtbayly 5y ago
  Even if the change started the day after the mask mandates we would know that the drop wasn’t caused by the mask mandates. Why? Because of incubation times.
  - Retric 5y ago
    You are assuming people would wait until the mandate was in effect to change behavior rather than for example buying masks in preparation for a mandate.
    - jtbayly 5y ago
      So your contention would be that people will wear masks even when they are not mandated? I would agree that could happen. But then, that’s not a result of masks being mandated, is it?
      - Retric 5y ago
        No. I am saying if you create a mandate on date X, people will prepare for it before it comes into effect.
        jtbayly 5y ago
        Yes, lots of things happen before and after lots of other things. But figuring out causes is a lot harder than saying something happened after something else. Regardless, if people are willing to voluntarily wear masks before they are required, like you claim, then one thing is clear: Masks do not need to be mandatory for people to wear them. Imagine if they dropped the speed limit from 70 to 50. How many people would start driving 50 a week early to "prepare"? Not many. If people are so resistant to an idea that it has to be mandated for them to do it, then they aren't going to suddenly do it before it is mandatory. And if they aren't resistant to it, then it won't take a mandate.
        Retric 5y ago
        In theory you might be right, but we don’t have to guess people have collected actually evidence. Also, you can’t fake the response from an impending mandate without a mandate. Most people fill out their taxes early, but if taxes were optional then nobody would be filling them out. The test would simply be to look up when a mandate was announced and then when it took effect.
- cm2187 5y ago
  In fact, the way I read the chart, it rather proves that mask mandate were ineffective as there was no inflection point following the introduction of the mandate. Instead the two curves remained pretty much parallel, suggesting the evolution wasn't related to masks.
  - LongTimeAnon 5y ago
    Excuse me, racist, but those masks were made by minorities, and since math and science are clear signals of white supremacy, I think it's important we raise awareness about what you're really trying to say here.
  - onion2k 5y ago
    it rather proves that mask mandate were ineffective as there was no inflection point following the introduction of the mandate That might indicate that the mask mandate was ineffective and the evolution was due to something else, or it might indicate people didn't abide by the mandate as soon as it came in.
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  When you look at the world through mask tinted glasses, all the mask flags just look like flags.
- gnramires 5y ago
  It depends on interpretation and I think conclusions are unclear from that graph. Try this: shift the blue curve about 15 days to the left. We may then interpret masks acted in lowering the infection peak, since masks were introduced at an earlier infection stage. In other words, if St Louis reinstated masks at the same infection count as Missouri it might have seen a higher infection peak.
- refurb 5y ago
  This is what makes me laugh about everyone trying to figure out which country did it “right”. One country is on the down slope of a wave and get kudos for an effective strategy. Some country on an upslope get trashed. And it changes every few months. We won’t know which countries handled it well for another 5-7 years once analyses can be done that take into account the full impact of strategies. Then add on top their stats aren’t even comparable due to different levels of testing, different categorization, etc. Just looking at raw stats says Africa did really well with Covid even without the vaccine. But if you don’t test, you can’t find cases. No cases, no covid deaths.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
    > Just looking at raw stats says Africa did really well with Covid even without the vaccine. Africa is doing surprising well with COVID-19, considering expectations. Reasons may include: * Not kidding themselves like UK and US did that they were "world leaders", and had this in the bag. (1) * Recent and ongoing experience of combatting other diseases, e.g. HIV, TB, Ebola. 1) "In October 2019, an extensive report two years in the making placed the US and the UK first and second respectively in a global ranking of countries’ pandemic preparedness." https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/uk-coronavirus-pandemic-preparedness-what-went-wrong_uk_5f105b86c5b6d14c3363e8d2 https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/uk-coronavirus-pandem...
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      Another reason may be better ventilation.
      - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
        The last time I was in an African city there wasn't air-conditioning as standard in houses. Sure, windows were open in summer, but closed up in winter. Office buildings had the usual levels of ventilation. I can't really describe this as "better" - how about you?
      - thoughtstheseus 5y ago
- shinydevops 5y ago
  As someone who lives in one of the areas in this study that instituted a mask mandate, I think the clearest explanation of the lower case rates preceding the mandates is the general willingness of the population to mask prior to the dates noted on the graph. Yes, the most recent mask mandates weren't instituted until July 26th, but, for whatever my anecdata is worth, masking use in the more urban areas was already substantially higher than it was in the areas without the mandates. There's also the small matter of the more populous areas having higher vaccination rates than the state's more rural areas. To me, the story here is not the data itself; it's another example of elected officials hiding data that doesn't agree with their position. Is the headline the best interpretation of the data? Not at all. But it's one more data set showing that the areas that are most closely following relevant recommendations are seeing better outcomes than areas that aren't.
- obelos 5y ago
  I think it may ultimately be more useful to think of mask mandates as an effect rather than a cause of reduced disease spread. Communities that are culturally predisposed toward prosociality don't actually need mandates to produce collective behaviors that reduce spread. It's politically viable to impose a mask mandate in those places, even though it's unnecessary for producing a public health impact. The converse, in areas where it's politically infeasible for public officials to impose a mandate, appears in a population where individuals are not predisposed to adopting public health measures on their own.
  - Pxtl 5y ago
    Yep. There's a very strong correlation simply by political affiliation. This Washington Post columnist has some very telling graphs: https://twitter.com/pbump/status/1466261627074920452 https://twitter.com/pbump/status/1466261627074920452 Basically, the more urban and politically blue the county is, the more success they had against COVID, despite the fact that urban locations with higher density and more shared spaces have an intrinsic disadvantage in stopping the spread of disease. By politicizing public health measures, they got outcomes split by political culture.
- orangecat 5y ago
  Exactly. If you remove the labels from the two lines and then ask which set of counties imposed mask mandates in July, there would be no way to tell. If anything, you might think it was the higher line; "see, their cases were spiraling out of control, then they required masks and their cases peaked and declined at the same time as the less hard hit counties". Unless that chart is a horribly misleading presentation of the data (quite possible!), it's evidence against mask mandates having any discernible impact.
Proven 5y ago
Nobody said they don't work, they say the effectiveness is poor considering the burden it creates in everyone. And that is correct. Also, nobody tells you to not wear one. You're simply given the freedom to decide for yourself. Doh...
bigodbiel 5y ago
Without analyzing more closely which jurisdictions were “masked” we can’t make a thorough conclusion on mask mandates. Masks have been shown to have some effectiveness, but not necessarily its mandates, as the latter does not imply appropriate usage.
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  Wouldn't the data they gather include artifacts of improper usage and ultimately feed into their conclusion on whether mandates work?
  - diognesofsinope 5y ago
    If your point is that looking at counties and assigning mask_mandate = 1 vs mask_mandate = 0 isn't rigorous, agreed. If you look at the series the different in case rates started before the mandate, making me think it's more about behavior differences in cities vs rural areas than the mandate (makes sense).
    - qbasic_forever 5y ago
      No, nothing I said at all is in regards to what you mention. I'm replying to the point that mask mandates do not imply proper mask usage, which is almost certainly correct. However the usage errors the general population will make with masks should show up in the overall case rates and be accounted for in the data and conclusions here.
- deleted 5y ago
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- eesmith 5y ago
  We don't need "a thorough conclusion" in order to decide if mask mandates should be enforced, just a good-enough conclusion. Demanding "thorough" is a great way to induce analysis paralysis rather than make an operationally effective decision. It's awfully hard to make any sort of decision if the data isn't made available, yes? The article lists the four jurisdictions which had mandates: St. Louis, St. Louis County, Kansas City and Jackson County. What more do you want? It's fun to cherry-pick the literature: "Our findings show that the Public Mask Mandate significantly lowers the incidence of developing all COVID-19 symptoms by 0.29 percentage points." - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8379388/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8379388/ "The mask mandate is consistently associated with lower infection and mortality rates in the short term. Early adoption of mask-wearing mandates is also consistently associated with lower COVID-19 infection rates in the long term, indicating the link between a government’s intervention speed and policy instrument efficacy." - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/puar.13426 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/puar.13426
austincheney 5y ago
Meanwhile my home state continues to quibble about mask mandates in federal court. https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2021/12/01/gov-abbotts-ban-on-school-mask-mandates-back-in-effect-after-appeals-court-decision/ https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2021/12/01/gov-abb... I see legal arguments but no evidence from any party on this matter.
truthwhisperer 5y ago
only professional masks work and they should be replaced after each occasion regular masks will make healthy people only ill. Avoid them
nefitty 5y ago
Is it just me, or does it seem like only one end of the political spectrum has perfected information virality? What is it about these messages that is making them so sticky? Is it volume, medium, semantic construction, social proof? I'm hoping this link's threads manage to remain intellectually directed because I'm really curious what people here think.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  >I'm really curious what people here think HN has its fringes just like anywhere else. And just like anywhere else they tend to be noisy. Anything with a hint of politics attached to it is best ignored (which I'm obviously failing at).
  - nefitty 5y ago
    I guess the clunky efforts people go to here to give the appearance of being neutral and objective console me. Maybe people with different beliefs really can communicate in a dignified way...
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  > only one end of the political spectrum has perfected information virality? The MSM (cnn.com, msnbc.com and abc.com) have all been captured by the left/Marxists. Virtually every major story they're reported since early 2020 has been retracted. msnbc even has an openly racist host, Joy Reid - to her every white person is a white supremacist. What's interesting is that the only channel with a wide audience now is fox, which has the combined audience reach of both cnn and msnbc. cnn has time slots with no viewers, so show hosts are frequently cancelled. It's fascinating to study. The theory is that nobody believes the MSM any more - no journalistic integrity. To see how blind the MSM is at following their "racial justice" narrative, watch this local news segment on record homocides in Chicago in 2021, with 96% of the 1009 deaths due to minority-on-minority violence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTLDc6VQJwk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTLDc6VQJwk Why isn't that reported on national MSM media outlets, since 1,009 homocides is equivalent to 30 years of police killings of blacks? Every time the MSM says "white supremacy", ask why they don't talk about the failure of black families or black education. (The reason is that they don't care about blacks, but they do care about attacking the existing societal power structure - so ethno-Marxism.)
jmnicolas 5y ago
Why look at Missouri which is a really small sample? Look at the rest of the world where mask mandates are in effect. Europe for example, isn't a COVID free haven, quite the opposite. A colleague of mine got sick of COVID last January while he did everything by the book (masks, gel, distancing etc). So the effectiveness of masks is probably marginal IMHO.
- dagw 5y ago
  Europe for example, isn't a COVID free haven, quite the opposite. Do we know if Europe actually has stricter mask mandates (that are observed) and more mask wearing, like you seem to be suggesting? Because based on my casual observation I'd say no.
  - eythian 5y ago
    It'll depend a huge amount on the country in Europe you're referring to. Germany is a lot stricter than the Netherlands, for example.
- antocv 5y ago
  Masks (the N95 kind not the loose dentist kind), gel, distancing, double Pfizer shots. Still got COVID with severe symptoms not even 4th month in after the second shot. Why is there no good statistics over breakthrough infections, not merely how many double vaccinated are in hospital? Why not blast the non-immunity provided by supposed vaccine the same way as "infections per day" is shown everywhere? Show "failure of vaccine to provide immunity cases per day"
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    >Masks (the N95 kind not the loose dentist kind), gel, distancing, double Pfizer shots. Still got COVID with severe symptoms not even 4th month in after the second shot. Ouch. Anecdotes like this really scare me. I also have friends with double Pfizer shots who got the COVID and had strong symptoms. Maybe Pfizer should go back to the drawing board though. Though I assume, without the vaccine they would have probably ended up in the hospital. Glad I got my 3rd dose now.
jansan 5y ago
So this article is an example of what is called "science" nowadays?
- deleted 5y ago
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sampo 5y ago
Here is another study, which was published: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/08/05/Mask-Mandates-Save-Lives-460123 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/08/05/Mas...
- pwned1 5y ago
  "Crucially, we find that the effect of mask mandates depends on the attitudes toward mask wearing at the county level, with larger effects in counties more positively inclined towards mask wearing." and "Importantly, this paper does not estimate the effect of wearing masks, but rather the effect of mandating mask wearing." This indicates that the mask wearing itself may not be the cause, but the behaviors of people who are more "positively inclined" to the mandate. The study does nothing to separate correlation.
temp8964 5y ago
I started to believe these analyses were conducted by people who intentionally wanted to mislead. It’s impossible to find the effect of mask mandates this way. Anybody with a little common sense should know that. Why? Mask mandates were never implemented alone. Places implemented mask mandates usually also have other regulations like social distancing, closing restaurants or indoor dining, or temperatures measuring, etc. Claiming the effects are just masking is intentional misleading.
- simonh 5y ago
  Right, all this graph shows is that jurisdictions that imposed mask mandates had much lower case rates. Presumably that's because they had a lot of policies in place that put together were effective. Clearly they were doing something that worked, and it might even be sensible to use mask mandates as a proxy for that, but the article is a bit misleading. It would be nice to see how mask wearing rates had an effect but I suppose that's not as easy to track over time.
  - 5040 5y ago
    It may also be that people in these places took more precautions of their own initiative.
    - simonh 5y ago
      It seems a bit unlikely that mass co-ordinated behaviour that's this effective would spontaneously arise like that.
- dboreham 5y ago
  Also, at least based on the area where I live, the locations with a higher proportion of believers in science, less in "freedom", and so on, are the places that impose mask mandates. So there may be some tail wagging dog going on.
  - temp8964 5y ago
    Exactly. Regions implemented mandates have different population than regions didn’t. This kind of one variable comparison is totally junk science.
TheProbes 5y ago
I live in Japan and everyone here wears a mask, but more importantly, wears them properly. Many Japanese people are already attuned to wearing them during flu season, and everyone wears them if they think they are getting a cold so it's no big deal for everyone to wear them the whole time, kids included. I'm not Japanese, but I get with the program and after a while, you don't notice it. Masks are, of course, effective. Again, if you wear them properly and constantly, and everyone wears them. The people who DON'T want to wear them and who wish to make it a political act will dredge up all sorts of B.S studies and data showing that "mandates" don't work and therefore extrapolate from that that masks themselves don't work, when any examination of the scene will show 60% of people wearing them 60% of the time, noses hanging out, lifting them up to talk, only putting them on when they've taken a few steps into the shop etc etc. Masks work. If you wish to be honest about it, you'd say "They work, but we can't get our citizens to wear them."
- yostrovs 5y ago
  You offer no evidence that masks work. The only thing you made clear is that the Japanese will obey and do as they're told. It's not like they all read the studies showing that masks work. They only do it because they believe the authorities and have a culture of submission. You can't read anything else from this as it's a unique society we cannot emulate.
  - jbverschoor 5y ago
    They’ve worn masks since ages. They do it to protect others from getting ill. It’s this whole respect and care for others in society thing they have got going on there. It’s not something forced by the gov.
    - yostrovs 5y ago
      So it seems like your explanation is that it's not a culture of obedience, but rather that the Japanese individuals are just nicer, more caring people. Is that correct?
shapefrog 5y ago
Do schools with a 'no sex' mandate have higher or lower pregnancy and STD rates than those that do? If it is the same - does that mean that everything we thought we knew about the birds and the bees was a big lie? And yes, the birds are not real.
wtcactus 5y ago
This title is a bit sensationalist. According to the article itself, the difference between masked and unmasked confirmed contagion is 5.9 cases per 100,000 population. The death rate for confirmed contagion by COVID is 1.6 % in the USA. So, imposing mask mandates in Missouri would result in 0.096 fewer deaths per 100,000 people, or, in all Missouri with a population of 6,137,428, enforcing mask mandates, would have saved 6 (six, single-digit) people. Is it reasonable, to impose a mandate such as this that negatively alters people daily life to this extent, in order prevent 6 people in the all-state from dying? EDIT: Grammar
- onion2k 5y ago
  The implication of your "logic" is that there is a specific threshold number of people who would need to die for you to decide it's worthwhile asking people to wear masks. That number has to be more than 6, or you'd be saying the mandate was worthwhile and should have been imposed. I wonder how many it is.
  - commandlinefan 5y ago
    The implication of your logic is that any mandate that saves even one life is worth it, no matter how onerous. This is what the authoritarians that want to ban smoking, sugar and alcohol are hoping you agree with.
    - onion2k 5y ago
      The implication of your logic is that any mandate that saves even one life is worth it, no matter how onerous. That's not the logical implication of my post at all. I'm not saying "lives are more important than everything else"; I'm saying "wearing masks isn't onerous, so how many people need to die before you'll wear one?" To suggest that we should totally change our way of life to save people, by giving up alcohol for example, is too much. To make a tiny change that has almost no impact on you to save lives isn't too much.
      - harpersealtako 5y ago
Wolfenstein98k 5y ago
I have no issue with masks, but that graph clearly shows divergence long before masks were mandated, and no obvious change in relative infections once they're introduced.
meiji163 5y ago
What is the bottom line on masks and COVID-19? I am really out of the loop, since the toxicity of the debate was exhausting. The last I heard was that transmission is mostly via aerosolized viral particles, so most masks are essentially useless except N95 or higher grade. Anyone have resources I can check out? thanks
- posix_me_less 5y ago
  Yes respirators are better than cloth. Both make sense when getting close to strangers, like in a bus, train or airplane. They don't make sense outside where people density is low. Effectiveness most probably tanks immensely once you get into a room with bad air exchange were infectors spend longer time. These contraptions can't stop viral particles from saturated air going through the microscopic and macroscopic holes.
- pwned1 5y ago
  The reality no one wants to admit is that there is ample evidence for both "sides" of the argument.
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    "I've convinced myself that this {is, is not} a good idea, now everybody has to agree with because I'm RIGHT!" I cannot wear a mask, it fucks up my breathing badly. Neither side of the debate has room or time for me or those like me. I stayed out of the neighboring county for most of last year because of their mask mandate.
- deleted 5y ago
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- ufo 5y ago
  Another thing about masks is that they're specially effective if the infected person is wearing one. Even if it's not perfect, it reduces the number of droplets and the distance the virus can travel.
jrd79 5y ago
This study is not a randomized controlled study and it lacks even modest efforts at statistically controlling for confounding factors. It is therefore not possible to draw any meaningful conclusions from it. It appears science education is not what it used to be. For a comparison between outcomes for two groups to be informative, those groups must be selected in a way that structurally eliminates the possibility of confounding factors. If that is categorically impossible to achieve, then a well-constructed study will seek to control for all conceivable confounding factors by sampling other variables and statistically controlling for the possible influence of those variables. This is not hard.
- bedhead 5y ago
  I'd say that of the endless studies and pieces of data, 90% indicate masks do nothing. All pre-covid mask studies concluded they do nothing...there was even a paper about why people in Japan wore masks despite them doing nothing. The two most robust studies (Bangladesh and Denmark) concluded masks do nothing. COVID rates in nearby mask vs non-mask places (endless sources of this) show masks do nothing. The few things suggesting masks work are usually the product of data mining, aren't statistically significant, or have other fatal flaws such as not being able to distinguish between causation/correlation or behavioral factors. The CDC's own study was comically flawed, cut off before COVID spikes last November...it doesn't even qualify as amateur hour. The idea that masks work is just wishful thinking from people who are anxiety-ridden. They're placebos, amulets. If people want to wear them, fine, but the notion that there's enough evidence to justify universal mask mandates is truly one of the sorriest aspects of COVID because it's so symbolic of how we've done away with reason and scientific process completely.
posix_me_less 5y ago
Best policy/strategy isn't necessarily the same for every possible place in a country. It is not easy to compare numbers for different places and judge strategies absolutely, when observed differences between counties or larger areas are this low. Also, it's not just the question of whether masks are effective, it's also the question whether enforcing them is warranted. Arresting infectious people and sending them to isolation would also be "effective", but that's not something that civil society principles are compatible with. It's perfectly possible that masks are effective, yet the negatives of enforcing them are so big that people in charge decide to not do that.
- deleted 5y ago
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ldehaan 5y ago
If masks were effective against a virus just show proof. It should be super easy to do. But they won't because They can't. Because if you have two braincells to click together it doesn't make sense. It makes sense to Reduce transmission, but there's No proof that happens, and if there were we'd all know by now. So if you're sneezing or coughing, dont leave the house, you should stay home and our government would support that if they cared, but you have to go to work with a mask, even if you're not sick, it's retarded and just makes people more conformist or picks out the non conformists. If you like other countries that have no choice but to do stupid things like everyone else (ahem, Japan) well you can't move there permanently because they're super super racist, but nobody cares, but go live there for a bit, it sucks, it's extremely conformist and lacks all freedom of individuality, that's why GI's almost always come back after a few years. Think for yourself, question authority.
athenot 5y ago
My dad lived through the seatbelt mandates. People came up will all sorts of justifications why seatbelts were bad, more dangerous, choked them, gave them aches, etc. simply because they didn't want to wear them.
stakkur 5y ago
I’m confused by the conclusions of Missouri’s ‘study’. Did I misread, or are they claiming that a mask policy—whose adherence is nearly impossible to validate—correlates with improved health outcomes? For that to be credible, wouldn’t it require actually verifying mask wearing?

234 points by nojito 5y ago

That is a weird graph. Am I missing something, or does it say that the counties with a mask mandate began to have substantially lower cases than those without starting two months before the first mask mandates were reimposed?

diognesofsinope 5y ago
Same thought -- makes you think it has less do you with masks/mandates and more with city-folk being cautious as delta surges. Maybe the mandates encourage this behavior shift? Top points if politicians noticed this difference off the bat and create the mask mandate to engineer the illusion that it was their policy that worked, even though it would've happened anyways -- aka action bias. In any case, I think we can all agree people need to stop (1) using different random X-day moving averages and (2) give us the data. edit: there's an entire literature on methodologies (1) Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) and (2) Difference-in-Difference (DiD) that's designed to address this problem in analysis.
- mjevans 5y ago
  The reason for a 7 day running average is because there is a great deal of noise in the source data, that is how you clarify the picture to remove short term trends in numbers. Confounding trends might exist for various reasons like: labs want people to have a day or two off, so process less on the weekends or some days of the week in spreading that weekend out. People might interact in different risk settings over the course of a week. (E.G. For some higher risk on the job and shut in on the weekends. For others time to go out clubbing on the weekends and shut in jobs during the week). So the 7 day running average just says: we can't disentangle to get at the true raw numbers, this is the best we can do to get useful data out of the data-feed. PS: The only way to get truly useful data would be sufficient testing capacity to issue fully randomized tests on everyone, in a mandatory way, on a regular basis. A 'well designed survey' would probably still have biases but might approach that. To the best of my knowledge (public news media), currently most tests are probably focused on populations perceived to be at higher risk, who show visible possible symptoms, or who are obviously ill.
  - diognesofsinope 5y ago
    I get why it's used, but I strongly believe people are better off seeing the raw data. Exactly as you said, we can probably infer if there is variation in testing (weekends). Or at the very least show the 7-period SD so we can see if the confidence intervals overlap. You can absolutely use averages to hide data points and data quality. PS: I disagree with your PS -- if we're being wildly theoretical and impractical about this we should just create a second Earth where everyone wears mask and a third Earth where no-one wears masks and compare all the Earths.... And none of what you're saying addresses the core problem I mentioned, which is that the divergence in the series starts before the policy date.
weezin 5y ago
Yes, this headline is really misleading. You could argue the gap widened a bit after the mandate, but that is probably more a factor of behavior/vaccination rate compounding than masking. This is anything but conclusive about mask.
belorn 5y ago
If I wanted to create a graph that disproved the effectiveness of mask I would use cities near the coast during the summer, one with mask mandates and one without. I would look at all those people that are outdoor in the warm and humid climate. If I wanted to do the opposite I would pick cities that are inland with temperate climate during that fall, with the air dry and most people inside poorly ventilated buildings.
- eesmith 5y ago
  How is that relevant given these are all in MO, during the same time period?
  - belorn 5y ago
    Sorry, I should have developed the comment a bit more. Transmitting and date rates are determined by multiple factors, many that are known. Risk groups, ability and convenience to do social distancing, population density, ventilation, weather, population movement patterns and more. In this case we got Kansas city vs St. Louis, through the article is trying to making an argument about the world in general. Graphs like this are basically pointless except for one thing. They imply that there might be a benefit of masks, and thus while its not evidence of effectiveness its is not evidence of the opposite. It is what researcher use as support for doing further studies that later accounts for known factors. If however one uses it to jump ahead, someone else can create a similar graph in a different locations and time to create the opposite conclusion. (Small note about the time period). It is worth looking at the period between April and August. The two lines swap places which each other. St. Louis started out with a higher rate than Kansas city, and end up with a lower rate afterward. This is a pretty common pattern and follow the old "even out the curve" concept.
gumby 5y ago
Note that this graph was created by the reporters and was not generated by the health department. The labeling is weird. The reinstatement arrow should point SSW not NW. That says that during the surge, those counties* had a lower death rate. Presumably the counties that ever had a mask mandate had higher compliance even during periods when the mandate was lifted, but the article doesn’t discuss any of that, and it’s only a presumption. * I think the blue line should be labeled “death rate in the four counties”.
- contravariant 5y ago
  How does changing the arrow change the fact that they had significantly lower case rates at the end of June while the mask mandate came into effect on July 26?
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  > The reinstatement arrow should point SSW not NW. It points to the the point on the blue line at July 26. Why should it point SSW? Does SSW even intersect with the blue line at any point?
jtbayly 5y ago
Even if the change started the day after the mask mandates we would know that the drop wasn’t caused by the mask mandates. Why? Because of incubation times.
- Retric 5y ago
  You are assuming people would wait until the mandate was in effect to change behavior rather than for example buying masks in preparation for a mandate.
  - jtbayly 5y ago
    So your contention would be that people will wear masks even when they are not mandated? I would agree that could happen. But then, that’s not a result of masks being mandated, is it?
    - Retric 5y ago
      No. I am saying if you create a mandate on date X, people will prepare for it before it comes into effect.
      - jtbayly 5y ago
        Yes, lots of things happen before and after lots of other things. But figuring out causes is a lot harder than saying something happened after something else. Regardless, if people are willing to voluntarily wear masks before they are required, like you claim, then one thing is clear: Masks do not need to be mandatory for people to wear them. Imagine if they dropped the speed limit from 70 to 50. How many people would start driving 50 a week early to "prepare"? Not many. If people are so resistant to an idea that it has to be mandated for them to do it, then they aren't going to suddenly do it before it is mandatory. And if they aren't resistant to it, then it won't take a mandate.
        Retric 5y ago
        In theory you might be right, but we don’t have to guess people have collected actually evidence. Also, you can’t fake the response from an impending mandate without a mandate. Most people fill out their taxes early, but if taxes were optional then nobody would be filling them out. The test would simply be to look up when a mandate was announced and then when it took effect.
cm2187 5y ago
In fact, the way I read the chart, it rather proves that mask mandate were ineffective as there was no inflection point following the introduction of the mandate. Instead the two curves remained pretty much parallel, suggesting the evolution wasn't related to masks.
- LongTimeAnon 5y ago
  Excuse me, racist, but those masks were made by minorities, and since math and science are clear signals of white supremacy, I think it's important we raise awareness about what you're really trying to say here.
- onion2k 5y ago
  it rather proves that mask mandate were ineffective as there was no inflection point following the introduction of the mandate That might indicate that the mask mandate was ineffective and the evolution was due to something else, or it might indicate people didn't abide by the mandate as soon as it came in.
tinus_hn 5y ago
When you look at the world through mask tinted glasses, all the mask flags just look like flags.
gnramires 5y ago
It depends on interpretation and I think conclusions are unclear from that graph. Try this: shift the blue curve about 15 days to the left. We may then interpret masks acted in lowering the infection peak, since masks were introduced at an earlier infection stage. In other words, if St Louis reinstated masks at the same infection count as Missouri it might have seen a higher infection peak.
refurb 5y ago
This is what makes me laugh about everyone trying to figure out which country did it “right”. One country is on the down slope of a wave and get kudos for an effective strategy. Some country on an upslope get trashed. And it changes every few months. We won’t know which countries handled it well for another 5-7 years once analyses can be done that take into account the full impact of strategies. Then add on top their stats aren’t even comparable due to different levels of testing, different categorization, etc. Just looking at raw stats says Africa did really well with Covid even without the vaccine. But if you don’t test, you can’t find cases. No cases, no covid deaths.
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
  > Just looking at raw stats says Africa did really well with Covid even without the vaccine. Africa is doing surprising well with COVID-19, considering expectations. Reasons may include: * Not kidding themselves like UK and US did that they were "world leaders", and had this in the bag. (1) * Recent and ongoing experience of combatting other diseases, e.g. HIV, TB, Ebola. 1) "In October 2019, an extensive report two years in the making placed the US and the UK first and second respectively in a global ranking of countries’ pandemic preparedness." https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/uk-coronavirus-pandemic-preparedness-what-went-wrong_uk_5f105b86c5b6d14c3363e8d2 https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/uk-coronavirus-pandem...
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    Another reason may be better ventilation.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
      The last time I was in an African city there wasn't air-conditioning as standard in houses. Sure, windows were open in summer, but closed up in winter. Office buildings had the usual levels of ventilation. I can't really describe this as "better" - how about you?
    - thoughtstheseus 5y ago
shinydevops 5y ago
As someone who lives in one of the areas in this study that instituted a mask mandate, I think the clearest explanation of the lower case rates preceding the mandates is the general willingness of the population to mask prior to the dates noted on the graph. Yes, the most recent mask mandates weren't instituted until July 26th, but, for whatever my anecdata is worth, masking use in the more urban areas was already substantially higher than it was in the areas without the mandates. There's also the small matter of the more populous areas having higher vaccination rates than the state's more rural areas. To me, the story here is not the data itself; it's another example of elected officials hiding data that doesn't agree with their position. Is the headline the best interpretation of the data? Not at all. But it's one more data set showing that the areas that are most closely following relevant recommendations are seeing better outcomes than areas that aren't.
obelos 5y ago
I think it may ultimately be more useful to think of mask mandates as an effect rather than a cause of reduced disease spread. Communities that are culturally predisposed toward prosociality don't actually need mandates to produce collective behaviors that reduce spread. It's politically viable to impose a mask mandate in those places, even though it's unnecessary for producing a public health impact. The converse, in areas where it's politically infeasible for public officials to impose a mandate, appears in a population where individuals are not predisposed to adopting public health measures on their own.
- Pxtl 5y ago
  Yep. There's a very strong correlation simply by political affiliation. This Washington Post columnist has some very telling graphs: https://twitter.com/pbump/status/1466261627074920452 https://twitter.com/pbump/status/1466261627074920452 Basically, the more urban and politically blue the county is, the more success they had against COVID, despite the fact that urban locations with higher density and more shared spaces have an intrinsic disadvantage in stopping the spread of disease. By politicizing public health measures, they got outcomes split by political culture.
orangecat 5y ago
Exactly. If you remove the labels from the two lines and then ask which set of counties imposed mask mandates in July, there would be no way to tell. If anything, you might think it was the higher line; "see, their cases were spiraling out of control, then they required masks and their cases peaked and declined at the same time as the less hard hit counties". Unless that chart is a horribly misleading presentation of the data (quite possible!), it's evidence against mask mandates having any discernible impact.

Proven 5y ago

Nobody said they don't work, they say the effectiveness is poor considering the burden it creates in everyone. And that is correct. Also, nobody tells you to not wear one. You're simply given the freedom to decide for yourself. Doh...

bigodbiel 5y ago

Without analyzing more closely which jurisdictions were “masked” we can’t make a thorough conclusion on mask mandates. Masks have been shown to have some effectiveness, but not necessarily its mandates, as the latter does not imply appropriate usage.

qbasic_forever 5y ago
Wouldn't the data they gather include artifacts of improper usage and ultimately feed into their conclusion on whether mandates work?
- diognesofsinope 5y ago
  If your point is that looking at counties and assigning mask_mandate = 1 vs mask_mandate = 0 isn't rigorous, agreed. If you look at the series the different in case rates started before the mandate, making me think it's more about behavior differences in cities vs rural areas than the mandate (makes sense).
  - qbasic_forever 5y ago
    No, nothing I said at all is in regards to what you mention. I'm replying to the point that mask mandates do not imply proper mask usage, which is almost certainly correct. However the usage errors the general population will make with masks should show up in the overall case rates and be accounted for in the data and conclusions here.
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eesmith 5y ago
We don't need "a thorough conclusion" in order to decide if mask mandates should be enforced, just a good-enough conclusion. Demanding "thorough" is a great way to induce analysis paralysis rather than make an operationally effective decision. It's awfully hard to make any sort of decision if the data isn't made available, yes? The article lists the four jurisdictions which had mandates: St. Louis, St. Louis County, Kansas City and Jackson County. What more do you want? It's fun to cherry-pick the literature: "Our findings show that the Public Mask Mandate significantly lowers the incidence of developing all COVID-19 symptoms by 0.29 percentage points." - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8379388/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8379388/ "The mask mandate is consistently associated with lower infection and mortality rates in the short term. Early adoption of mask-wearing mandates is also consistently associated with lower COVID-19 infection rates in the long term, indicating the link between a government’s intervention speed and policy instrument efficacy." - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/puar.13426 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/puar.13426

austincheney 5y ago

Meanwhile my home state continues to quibble about mask mandates in federal court. https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2021/12/01/gov-abbotts-ban-on-school-mask-mandates-back-in-effect-after-appeals-court-decision/ https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2021/12/01/gov-abb... I see legal arguments but no evidence from any party on this matter.

truthwhisperer 5y ago

only professional masks work and they should be replaced after each occasion regular masks will make healthy people only ill. Avoid them

nefitty 5y ago

Is it just me, or does it seem like only one end of the political spectrum has perfected information virality? What is it about these messages that is making them so sticky? Is it volume, medium, semantic construction, social proof? I'm hoping this link's threads manage to remain intellectually directed because I'm really curious what people here think.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
>I'm really curious what people here think HN has its fringes just like anywhere else. And just like anywhere else they tend to be noisy. Anything with a hint of politics attached to it is best ignored (which I'm obviously failing at).
- nefitty 5y ago
  I guess the clunky efforts people go to here to give the appearance of being neutral and objective console me. Maybe people with different beliefs really can communicate in a dignified way...
redis_mlc 5y ago
> only one end of the political spectrum has perfected information virality? The MSM (cnn.com, msnbc.com and abc.com) have all been captured by the left/Marxists. Virtually every major story they're reported since early 2020 has been retracted. msnbc even has an openly racist host, Joy Reid - to her every white person is a white supremacist. What's interesting is that the only channel with a wide audience now is fox, which has the combined audience reach of both cnn and msnbc. cnn has time slots with no viewers, so show hosts are frequently cancelled. It's fascinating to study. The theory is that nobody believes the MSM any more - no journalistic integrity. To see how blind the MSM is at following their "racial justice" narrative, watch this local news segment on record homocides in Chicago in 2021, with 96% of the 1009 deaths due to minority-on-minority violence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTLDc6VQJwk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTLDc6VQJwk Why isn't that reported on national MSM media outlets, since 1,009 homocides is equivalent to 30 years of police killings of blacks? Every time the MSM says "white supremacy", ask why they don't talk about the failure of black families or black education. (The reason is that they don't care about blacks, but they do care about attacking the existing societal power structure - so ethno-Marxism.)

jmnicolas 5y ago

Why look at Missouri which is a really small sample? Look at the rest of the world where mask mandates are in effect. Europe for example, isn't a COVID free haven, quite the opposite. A colleague of mine got sick of COVID last January while he did everything by the book (masks, gel, distancing etc). So the effectiveness of masks is probably marginal IMHO.

dagw 5y ago
Europe for example, isn't a COVID free haven, quite the opposite. Do we know if Europe actually has stricter mask mandates (that are observed) and more mask wearing, like you seem to be suggesting? Because based on my casual observation I'd say no.
- eythian 5y ago
  It'll depend a huge amount on the country in Europe you're referring to. Germany is a lot stricter than the Netherlands, for example.
antocv 5y ago
Masks (the N95 kind not the loose dentist kind), gel, distancing, double Pfizer shots. Still got COVID with severe symptoms not even 4th month in after the second shot. Why is there no good statistics over breakthrough infections, not merely how many double vaccinated are in hospital? Why not blast the non-immunity provided by supposed vaccine the same way as "infections per day" is shown everywhere? Show "failure of vaccine to provide immunity cases per day"
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  >Masks (the N95 kind not the loose dentist kind), gel, distancing, double Pfizer shots. Still got COVID with severe symptoms not even 4th month in after the second shot. Ouch. Anecdotes like this really scare me. I also have friends with double Pfizer shots who got the COVID and had strong symptoms. Maybe Pfizer should go back to the drawing board though. Though I assume, without the vaccine they would have probably ended up in the hospital. Glad I got my 3rd dose now.

jansan 5y ago

So this article is an example of what is called "science" nowadays?

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sampo 5y ago

Here is another study, which was published: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/08/05/Mask-Mandates-Save-Lives-460123 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/08/05/Mas...

pwned1 5y ago
"Crucially, we find that the effect of mask mandates depends on the attitudes toward mask wearing at the county level, with larger effects in counties more positively inclined towards mask wearing." and "Importantly, this paper does not estimate the effect of wearing masks, but rather the effect of mandating mask wearing." This indicates that the mask wearing itself may not be the cause, but the behaviors of people who are more "positively inclined" to the mandate. The study does nothing to separate correlation.

temp8964 5y ago

I started to believe these analyses were conducted by people who intentionally wanted to mislead. It’s impossible to find the effect of mask mandates this way. Anybody with a little common sense should know that. Why? Mask mandates were never implemented alone. Places implemented mask mandates usually also have other regulations like social distancing, closing restaurants or indoor dining, or temperatures measuring, etc. Claiming the effects are just masking is intentional misleading.

simonh 5y ago
Right, all this graph shows is that jurisdictions that imposed mask mandates had much lower case rates. Presumably that's because they had a lot of policies in place that put together were effective. Clearly they were doing something that worked, and it might even be sensible to use mask mandates as a proxy for that, but the article is a bit misleading. It would be nice to see how mask wearing rates had an effect but I suppose that's not as easy to track over time.
- 5040 5y ago
  It may also be that people in these places took more precautions of their own initiative.
  - simonh 5y ago
    It seems a bit unlikely that mass co-ordinated behaviour that's this effective would spontaneously arise like that.
dboreham 5y ago
Also, at least based on the area where I live, the locations with a higher proportion of believers in science, less in "freedom", and so on, are the places that impose mask mandates. So there may be some tail wagging dog going on.
- temp8964 5y ago
  Exactly. Regions implemented mandates have different population than regions didn’t. This kind of one variable comparison is totally junk science.

TheProbes 5y ago

I live in Japan and everyone here wears a mask, but more importantly, wears them properly. Many Japanese people are already attuned to wearing them during flu season, and everyone wears them if they think they are getting a cold so it's no big deal for everyone to wear them the whole time, kids included. I'm not Japanese, but I get with the program and after a while, you don't notice it. Masks are, of course, effective. Again, if you wear them properly and constantly, and everyone wears them. The people who DON'T want to wear them and who wish to make it a political act will dredge up all sorts of B.S studies and data showing that "mandates" don't work and therefore extrapolate from that that masks themselves don't work, when any examination of the scene will show 60% of people wearing them 60% of the time, noses hanging out, lifting them up to talk, only putting them on when they've taken a few steps into the shop etc etc. Masks work. If you wish to be honest about it, you'd say "They work, but we can't get our citizens to wear them."

yostrovs 5y ago
You offer no evidence that masks work. The only thing you made clear is that the Japanese will obey and do as they're told. It's not like they all read the studies showing that masks work. They only do it because they believe the authorities and have a culture of submission. You can't read anything else from this as it's a unique society we cannot emulate.
- jbverschoor 5y ago
  They’ve worn masks since ages. They do it to protect others from getting ill. It’s this whole respect and care for others in society thing they have got going on there. It’s not something forced by the gov.
  - yostrovs 5y ago
    So it seems like your explanation is that it's not a culture of obedience, but rather that the Japanese individuals are just nicer, more caring people. Is that correct?

shapefrog 5y ago

Do schools with a 'no sex' mandate have higher or lower pregnancy and STD rates than those that do? If it is the same - does that mean that everything we thought we knew about the birds and the bees was a big lie? And yes, the birds are not real.

wtcactus 5y ago

This title is a bit sensationalist. According to the article itself, the difference between masked and unmasked confirmed contagion is 5.9 cases per 100,000 population. The death rate for confirmed contagion by COVID is 1.6 % in the USA. So, imposing mask mandates in Missouri would result in 0.096 fewer deaths per 100,000 people, or, in all Missouri with a population of 6,137,428, enforcing mask mandates, would have saved 6 (six, single-digit) people. Is it reasonable, to impose a mandate such as this that negatively alters people daily life to this extent, in order prevent 6 people in the all-state from dying? EDIT: Grammar

onion2k 5y ago
The implication of your "logic" is that there is a specific threshold number of people who would need to die for you to decide it's worthwhile asking people to wear masks. That number has to be more than 6, or you'd be saying the mandate was worthwhile and should have been imposed. I wonder how many it is.
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  The implication of your logic is that any mandate that saves even one life is worth it, no matter how onerous. This is what the authoritarians that want to ban smoking, sugar and alcohol are hoping you agree with.
  - onion2k 5y ago
    The implication of your logic is that any mandate that saves even one life is worth it, no matter how onerous. That's not the logical implication of my post at all. I'm not saying "lives are more important than everything else"; I'm saying "wearing masks isn't onerous, so how many people need to die before you'll wear one?" To suggest that we should totally change our way of life to save people, by giving up alcohol for example, is too much. To make a tiny change that has almost no impact on you to save lives isn't too much.
    - harpersealtako 5y ago

Wolfenstein98k 5y ago

I have no issue with masks, but that graph clearly shows divergence long before masks were mandated, and no obvious change in relative infections once they're introduced.

meiji163 5y ago

What is the bottom line on masks and COVID-19? I am really out of the loop, since the toxicity of the debate was exhausting. The last I heard was that transmission is mostly via aerosolized viral particles, so most masks are essentially useless except N95 or higher grade. Anyone have resources I can check out? thanks

posix_me_less 5y ago
Yes respirators are better than cloth. Both make sense when getting close to strangers, like in a bus, train or airplane. They don't make sense outside where people density is low. Effectiveness most probably tanks immensely once you get into a room with bad air exchange were infectors spend longer time. These contraptions can't stop viral particles from saturated air going through the microscopic and macroscopic holes.
pwned1 5y ago
The reality no one wants to admit is that there is ample evidence for both "sides" of the argument.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  "I've convinced myself that this {is, is not} a good idea, now everybody has to agree with because I'm RIGHT!" I cannot wear a mask, it fucks up my breathing badly. Neither side of the debate has room or time for me or those like me. I stayed out of the neighboring county for most of last year because of their mask mandate.
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ufo 5y ago
Another thing about masks is that they're specially effective if the infected person is wearing one. Even if it's not perfect, it reduces the number of droplets and the distance the virus can travel.

jrd79 5y ago

This study is not a randomized controlled study and it lacks even modest efforts at statistically controlling for confounding factors. It is therefore not possible to draw any meaningful conclusions from it. It appears science education is not what it used to be. For a comparison between outcomes for two groups to be informative, those groups must be selected in a way that structurally eliminates the possibility of confounding factors. If that is categorically impossible to achieve, then a well-constructed study will seek to control for all conceivable confounding factors by sampling other variables and statistically controlling for the possible influence of those variables. This is not hard.

bedhead 5y ago
I'd say that of the endless studies and pieces of data, 90% indicate masks do nothing. All pre-covid mask studies concluded they do nothing...there was even a paper about why people in Japan wore masks despite them doing nothing. The two most robust studies (Bangladesh and Denmark) concluded masks do nothing. COVID rates in nearby mask vs non-mask places (endless sources of this) show masks do nothing. The few things suggesting masks work are usually the product of data mining, aren't statistically significant, or have other fatal flaws such as not being able to distinguish between causation/correlation or behavioral factors. The CDC's own study was comically flawed, cut off before COVID spikes last November...it doesn't even qualify as amateur hour. The idea that masks work is just wishful thinking from people who are anxiety-ridden. They're placebos, amulets. If people want to wear them, fine, but the notion that there's enough evidence to justify universal mask mandates is truly one of the sorriest aspects of COVID because it's so symbolic of how we've done away with reason and scientific process completely.

posix_me_less 5y ago

Best policy/strategy isn't necessarily the same for every possible place in a country. It is not easy to compare numbers for different places and judge strategies absolutely, when observed differences between counties or larger areas are this low. Also, it's not just the question of whether masks are effective, it's also the question whether enforcing them is warranted. Arresting infectious people and sending them to isolation would also be "effective", but that's not something that civil society principles are compatible with. It's perfectly possible that masks are effective, yet the negatives of enforcing them are so big that people in charge decide to not do that.

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ldehaan 5y ago

If masks were effective against a virus just show proof. It should be super easy to do. But they won't because They can't. Because if you have two braincells to click together it doesn't make sense. It makes sense to Reduce transmission, but there's No proof that happens, and if there were we'd all know by now. So if you're sneezing or coughing, dont leave the house, you should stay home and our government would support that if they cared, but you have to go to work with a mask, even if you're not sick, it's retarded and just makes people more conformist or picks out the non conformists. If you like other countries that have no choice but to do stupid things like everyone else (ahem, Japan) well you can't move there permanently because they're super super racist, but nobody cares, but go live there for a bit, it sucks, it's extremely conformist and lacks all freedom of individuality, that's why GI's almost always come back after a few years. Think for yourself, question authority.

athenot 5y ago

My dad lived through the seatbelt mandates. People came up will all sorts of justifications why seatbelts were bad, more dangerous, choked them, gave them aches, etc. simply because they didn't want to wear them.

stakkur 5y ago

I’m confused by the conclusions of Missouri’s ‘study’. Did I misread, or are they claiming that a mask policy—whose adherence is nearly impossible to validate—correlates with improved health outcomes? For that to be credible, wouldn’t it require actually verifying mask wearing?