4 ms·

Mask wearing in community settings reduces SARS-CoV-2 transmission

20 points by leephillips 4y ago

easytiger 4y ago
The methodology is yet more meta study on top of yet more meta studies with yet more conflation of mask wearing and other NPIs across completely incomparable nation states with completely spurious incomparable data sources. Different nation states also had completely different timelines in terms of when NPIs were enacted. For example they clearly include UK data (some of the best collected data sets available). Even a rudimentary analysis to compare between NI, Scotland, Wales (due to local politics retained mask mandates far longer beyond June 2021) and England will show that it can't be shown to have a significant or indeed measurable impact AT ALL at that stage of the pandemic. That is the most comparable set of data possible to have to A/B compare and yet i note researchers with an axe to grind fail to compare them. > Daily national estimates of mask wearing are derived from the UMD/Facebook COVID-19 World Symptoms Survey (1), which randomly samples from all active Facebook users, and which poststratifies to correct for nonresponse bias and demographic imbalance Surely this can't be serious?
VoidWhisperer 4y ago
I'm not sure why this is that suprising.. wearing a medical grade mask when around other people (and them doing the same) does significantly help reduce the spread of respiratory diseases as these can be spread from your mouth/nose..
- easytiger 4y ago
  But most of the countries in the study didn't mandate medical grade masks.
dehrmann 4y ago
> mean mask-wearing levels corresponding to a 19% decrease in R This is something, but it's also not very helpful at this point with how transmissible BA.2 is. Masks wouldn't even bring BA.2 to BA.1 transmissibility. > According to early research, BA.2 is roughly 30% to 60% more transmissible than BA.1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Omicron_variant#Affected_countries_and_transmissibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Omicron_variant#Aff...

20 points by leephillips 4y ago

The methodology is yet more meta study on top of yet more meta studies with yet more conflation of mask wearing and other NPIs across completely incomparable nation states with completely spurious incomparable data sources. Different nation states also had completely different timelines in terms of when NPIs were enacted. For example they clearly include UK data (some of the best collected data sets available). Even a rudimentary analysis to compare between NI, Scotland, Wales (due to local politics retained mask mandates far longer beyond June 2021) and England will show that it can't be shown to have a significant or indeed measurable impact AT ALL at that stage of the pandemic. That is the most comparable set of data possible to have to A/B compare and yet i note researchers with an axe to grind fail to compare them. > Daily national estimates of mask wearing are derived from the UMD/Facebook COVID-19 World Symptoms Survey (1), which randomly samples from all active Facebook users, and which poststratifies to correct for nonresponse bias and demographic imbalance Surely this can't be serious?

VoidWhisperer 4y ago

I'm not sure why this is that suprising.. wearing a medical grade mask when around other people (and them doing the same) does significantly help reduce the spread of respiratory diseases as these can be spread from your mouth/nose..

easytiger 4y ago
But most of the countries in the study didn't mandate medical grade masks.

dehrmann 4y ago

> mean mask-wearing levels corresponding to a 19% decrease in R This is something, but it's also not very helpful at this point with how transmissible BA.2 is. Masks wouldn't even bring BA.2 to BA.1 transmissibility. > According to early research, BA.2 is roughly 30% to 60% more transmissible than BA.1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Omicron_variant#Affected_countries_and_transmissibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Omicron_variant#Aff...