3 ms·
1. It's a publication with post-publication peer review. Meaning: It's not been peer reviewed before publication. That's not invalidating its findings, but it's
by hannob 4y ago
1. It's a publication with post-publication peer review. Meaning: It's not been peer reviewed before publication. That's not invalidating its findings, but it's evidence one should rate as potentially of lower quality until other experts have reviewed it.
2. You should never look at one study, but at all the evidence. It is generally difficult to study the effects of something like mask wearing, as you can't easily do something like an RCT (or if you try it may not tell you what you wanted to learn, i.e. it's even harder to test if others are protected by mask wearing). There are no easy answers, but it's been my impression that experts reviewing all the evidence in the past came to the conclusion that mask wearing likely works quite well.
- elcritch 4y agoA single study generally isn't conclusive, especially in a field with as many confounding factors as public health policies. It'll take a lot of time and hard work to decisively say if there's an effect and to what degree. The various studies and meta-analysis I've read appear to indicate that masks somewhat slowed the transmission rate, but overall didn't greatly reduce final case counts. There's enough uncertainty that I believe we'll need solid RCTs to get better answers. There was on large RCT slated to happen in west African country (Rwanda maybe?) where covid-19 hadn't hit.