4 ms·

The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned?

7 points by nsoonhui 4y ago

lorenzo95 4y ago
https://archive.ph/Nmxc2 https://archive.ph/Nmxc2
anonymouskimmer 4y ago
It's worth reading the link in the first sentence of the article. > The high risk of bias in the trials, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low adherence with the interventions during the studies hampers drawing firm conclusions. ... > There is a need for large, well‐designed RCTs addressing the effectiveness of many of these interventions in multiple settings and populations, as well as the impact of adherence on effectiveness, especially in those most at risk of ARIs. Hypothesis mine: Mask mandates don't work because people slack off. I've heard too many anecdotes of people getting COVID because some member of their extended family decided that everyone was going to get it anyway, so why bother, and then spreading it to the rest of the family without warning.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  > Hypothesis mine: Mask mandates don't work because people slack off. I can see that being true. But if a policy only has any of its beneficial effects if it gets 100% compliance, but always has its detrimental effects, then it's probably not a good policy to implement.
  - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
    I would need to see what the measured parameters were. If it was just whether or not people came down with COVID during the measurement period then the length of the period obviously matters. Stretching out when people are sick is typically a lot better than having everyone sick at once. This is true for the populace at large, but is also true for smaller subsets of the populace. I recall an anecdote from a person who said they worked at a small firm where almost everyone was anti-mask except them. During the winter 21/22 Omicron wave basically everyone except them came down with COVID at once leaving that one person to hold everything together for a week.
  - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
    According to another opinion piece this was a bad meta-analysis for policy on masks and SARS-CoV-2 transmission: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/2/22/23609499/masks-covid-coronavirus-cochrane-review-pandemic-science-studies-infection https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/2/22/23609499/masks-... "The review includes 78 studies. Only six were actually conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic" ... "Only two of the studies are about Covid and masking in particular." "Those studies that did take on Covid and masks directly often painted a different picture than the broader conclusions from the meta-analysis. One of the largest studies of mask-wearing during the Covid pandemic was conducted in Bangladesh, with more than 170,000 people in the intervention group and similar numbers in the control group. The authors studied a series of public announcements and mask distributions which raised the frequency of mask-wearing. In the end, around 40 percent of the experimental group wore masks, compared to around 10 percent in the control group. The result, the study found, was a substantial reduction in the share of people with Covid-19-like symptoms, and in antibodies that would suggest a Covid-19 infection: “In surgical mask villages, we observe a 35.3% reduction in symptomatic seroprevalence among individuals ≥60 years old ... We see larger reductions in symptoms and symptomatic seropositivity in villages that experienced larger increases in mask use.” That looks like pretty substantial evidence that mask-wearing reduces Covid-19! And this article is one of only two studies of mask-wearing included in the Cochrane review which happened during the Covid-19 pandemic."
anonymouskimmer 4y ago
Counterpoint: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/2/22/23609499/masks-covid-coronavirus-cochrane-review-pandemic-science-studies-infection https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/2/22/23609499/masks-... emphasis, mine "The review includes 78 studies. Only six were actually conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic, so the bulk of the evidence the Cochrane team took into account wasn’t able to tell us much about what was specifically happening during the worst pandemic in a century. Instead, most of them looked at flu transmission in normal conditions, and many of them were about other interventions like hand-washing. Only two of the studies are about Covid and masking in particular. Furthermore, neither of those studies looked directly at whether people wear masks, but instead at whether people were encouraged or told to wear masks by researchers. If telling people to wear masks doesn’t lead to reduced infections, it may be because masks just don’t work, or it could be because people don’t wear masks when they’re told, or aren’t wearing them correctly."

7 points by nsoonhui 4y ago

https://archive.ph/Nmxc2 https://archive.ph/Nmxc2

It's worth reading the link in the first sentence of the article. > The high risk of bias in the trials, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low adherence with the interventions during the studies hampers drawing firm conclusions. ... > There is a need for large, well‐designed RCTs addressing the effectiveness of many of these interventions in multiple settings and populations, as well as the impact of adherence on effectiveness, especially in those most at risk of ARIs. Hypothesis mine: Mask mandates don't work because people slack off. I've heard too many anecdotes of people getting COVID because some member of their extended family decided that everyone was going to get it anyway, so why bother, and then spreading it to the rest of the family without warning.

josephcsible 4y ago
> Hypothesis mine: Mask mandates don't work because people slack off. I can see that being true. But if a policy only has any of its beneficial effects if it gets 100% compliance, but always has its detrimental effects, then it's probably not a good policy to implement.
- anonymouskimmer 4y ago
  I would need to see what the measured parameters were. If it was just whether or not people came down with COVID during the measurement period then the length of the period obviously matters. Stretching out when people are sick is typically a lot better than having everyone sick at once. This is true for the populace at large, but is also true for smaller subsets of the populace. I recall an anecdote from a person who said they worked at a small firm where almost everyone was anti-mask except them. During the winter 21/22 Omicron wave basically everyone except them came down with COVID at once leaving that one person to hold everything together for a week.
- anonymouskimmer 4y ago
  According to another opinion piece this was a bad meta-analysis for policy on masks and SARS-CoV-2 transmission: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/2/22/23609499/masks-covid-coronavirus-cochrane-review-pandemic-science-studies-infection https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/2/22/23609499/masks-... "The review includes 78 studies. Only six were actually conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic" ... "Only two of the studies are about Covid and masking in particular." "Those studies that did take on Covid and masks directly often painted a different picture than the broader conclusions from the meta-analysis. One of the largest studies of mask-wearing during the Covid pandemic was conducted in Bangladesh, with more than 170,000 people in the intervention group and similar numbers in the control group. The authors studied a series of public announcements and mask distributions which raised the frequency of mask-wearing. In the end, around 40 percent of the experimental group wore masks, compared to around 10 percent in the control group. The result, the study found, was a substantial reduction in the share of people with Covid-19-like symptoms, and in antibodies that would suggest a Covid-19 infection: “In surgical mask villages, we observe a 35.3% reduction in symptomatic seroprevalence among individuals ≥60 years old ... We see larger reductions in symptoms and symptomatic seropositivity in villages that experienced larger increases in mask use.” That looks like pretty substantial evidence that mask-wearing reduces Covid-19! And this article is one of only two studies of mask-wearing included in the Cochrane review which happened during the Covid-19 pandemic."

anonymouskimmer 4y ago

Counterpoint: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/2/22/23609499/masks-covid-coronavirus-cochrane-review-pandemic-science-studies-infection https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/2/22/23609499/masks-... emphasis, mine "The review includes 78 studies. Only six were actually conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic, so the bulk of the evidence the Cochrane team took into account wasn’t able to tell us much about what was specifically happening during the worst pandemic in a century. Instead, most of them looked at flu transmission in normal conditions, and many of them were about other interventions like hand-washing. Only two of the studies are about Covid and masking in particular. Furthermore, neither of those studies looked directly at whether people wear masks, but instead at whether people were encouraged or told to wear masks by researchers. If telling people to wear masks doesn’t lead to reduced infections, it may be because masks just don’t work, or it could be because people don’t wear masks when they’re told, or aren’t wearing them correctly."