4 ms·

You should probably read this: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/masks-work-distorting-science-to-dispute-the-evidence-doesnt/ https://www.scientificam

You should probably read this: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/masks-work-distorting-science-to-dispute-the-evidence-doesnt/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/masks-work-distor... More if you're interested: https://www.statnews.com/2023/05/02/do-masks-work-rcts-randomized-controlled-trials/ https://www.statnews.com/2023/05/02/do-masks-work-rcts-rando... https://www.acsh.org/news/2023/03/14/do-masks-prevent-covid-spoiler-alert-course-they-do-16915 https://www.acsh.org/news/2023/03/14/do-masks-prevent-covid-... The tl;dr is this: Randomized controlled trials are simply not the appropriate tool for the job and we've got a mountain of other evidence already.

jMyles 3y ago
...this link is not a new RCT. It is an article about the Cochrane review which we all read a long time ago. And, despite the (somewhat reasonable) chagrin expressed by the authors, the Cochrane review did indeed show that masks are largely ineffective (and cloth masks, completely so) at stopping viral transmission - the link is right there in the article to which you've linked. What we need are sober, old-school RCTs powered to assess both filtration and source control across individuals (and sure, some for community transmission as well). And then we need them replicated. And then we can finally stop this ridiculous 'debate'. Today's humans are the most scientifically literate society in history; there's no reason we need to make important social and political decisions with such shitty data.
- autoexec 3y ago
  > the Cochrane review did indeed show that masks are largely ineffective (and cloth masks, completely so) at stopping viral transmission - the link is right there in the article to which you've linked. That's actually not what it showed. That bit of misinformation is probably best addressed in another article (https://www.acsh.org/news/2023/03/14/do-masks-prevent-covid-spoiler-alert-course-they-do-16915 https://www.acsh.org/news/2023/03/14/do-masks-prevent-covid-...) Here's the most important part: Many commentators have claimed that a recently updated Cochrane review shows that ‘masks don’t work,’ which is an inaccurate and misleading interpretation,” Karla Soares-Weiser, the editor in chief of the Cochrane Library, said in a statement. “The review examined whether interventions to promote mask wearing help to slow the spread of respiratory viruses,” Soares-Weiser said, adding, “Given the limitations in the primary evidence, the review is not able to address the question of whether mask wearing itself reduces people’s risk of contracting or spreading respiratory viruses.” She said that “this wording was open to misinterpretation, for which we apologize,” and that Cochrane would revise the summary. Soares-Weiser also said, though, that one of the lead authors of the review even more seriously misinterpreted its finding on masks by saying in an interview that it proved “there is just no evidence that they make any difference.” In fact, Soares-Weiser said, “that statement is not an accurate representation of what the review found.”
  - gadders 3y ago
    You are guilty of pushing the very misinformation that you claim to be against. The review itself said: ‘Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza‐like illness / Covid‐19-like illness compared with not wearing masks… Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza / SARS‐CoV‐2 compared with not wearing masks.’ The fact that the editor-in-chief of Cochrane embarrassed herself due to the pressure of an opinion-piece by a non-expert in the NYT is irrelevant. You can read the views of one of the reports actual authors here: https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/07/19/the-junk-science-behind-face-masks/ https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/07/19/the-junk-science-be...
    - autoexec 3y ago
      If you think that Cochrane revises their reviews based on "pressure of an opinion-piece by a non-expert in the NYT" I doubt any amount of research will change your mind from what you've decided to believe. I think it's clear that Tom Jefferson was embarrassed at being called out for misinterpreting the evidence, but he's plainly wrong that she never provided a reason. She was clear that it was due to the "limitations in the primary evidence", something many others pointed out as well.
      - jMyles 3y ago
        Please, I beg for your sensibility and brief attention here. This issue continues to tear fissures in what seem like otherwise reasonable and literate communities. The sentence in question is: "Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza-like illness (ILI)/COVID-19 like illness compared to not wearing masks (risk ratio (RR) 0.95, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.84 to 1.09; 9 trials, 276,917 participants;" This is very typical wording, and a very typical application of limited data, for a Cochrane review. There's nothing here that jumps out, on first read or after ingestion of all of the primaries, which I'm guessing we've all done multiple times. I think we all agree with you (and thus, with Soares-Weiser) about the frustration (heck, downright confounding) resulting from the lack of evidence. Top experts from every one of the big 5 have repeatedly called for and proposed RCTs to solve this problem. ...but there is absolutely nothing wrong with looking at these data and concluding that, in each statistically-significant case, masking "probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of" ILI. Is it possible that a larger, properly-powered RCT will find that some form of N95 application will have some effect on community transmission? Sure. We'd all love to know about that. It it possible that a larger, properly-powered RCT will find a similar outcome from cloth masks? No. Not unless all of the current data on the matter is completely flawed. Is it possible that even a small, properly-powered RCT will find statistically significant reductions in individual transmission from source control measures? Yes! That's possible! And that's the topic of this entire thread - we're talking about an individual patient largely confined to an iron lung. Has that RCT been performed? No. Can we all agree on at least these limited, well-defined assessments of the available data?
- 1224530282 3y ago
  First, as the sibling comment pointed out, the Cochrane review article didn't show that masks were ineffective. "Relatively low numbers of people followed the guidance about wearing masks or about hand hygiene, which may have affected the results of the studies" [1]. Their results were inconclusive since the people the asks to wear masks, didn't. But there's still evidence that masks are effective. The question of whether N95 filter media can block virus-carrying droplets is a _physics_ question-- which has been replicated in experiment after experiment since the 90s ([2] is a recent study). I've done a lot of looking, but I've yet to find any explanation as to why if someone is wearing a (properly fitted) N95, so their air goes through a filter media, which has been repeatedly shown to block droplets, they could still inhale disease-carrying droplets. [1]: https://www.cochrane.org/news/featured-review-physical-interventions-interrupt-or-reduce-spread-respiratory-viruses https://www.cochrane.org/news/featured-review-physical-inter... [2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9947910/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9947910/
  - autoexec 3y ago
    > I've yet to find any explanation as to why if someone is wearing a (properly fitted) N95, so their air goes through a filter media, which has been repeatedly shown to block droplets, they could still inhale disease-carrying droplets. It's worth keeping in mind that even if someone wearing an N95 mask does manage to inhale some percentage of the airborne disease-carrying droplets around them, viral load matters a lot. A tiny amount of virus could be fought off by the immune system before it has a chance to take hold in the body, and even if that fails and the virus does infect the body, larger exposures tend to result in worse outcomes. Even an imperfect protection can have a beneficial effect. It's the same for people spreading the virus. Even if a mask isn't perfect, that doesn't make it useless. Putting just about anything in front of someone's virus spewing face holes is going to reduce the amount of virus that gets into the air and limit how far it spreads. This is why we teach small children to "vampire cough". Not because the inside of our elbows provide N95 levels of protection, but because doing so still helps to prevent the spread of disease.
  - gadders 3y ago
    >>Their results were inconclusive since the people the asks to wear masks, didn't. Their review was at the macro, population level. If people aren't wearing masks properly through carelessness or ignorance, this proves their point. Shooting a virus at a masked mannequin in a lab might show some prevention, but in the real world people forget and scratch their nose, rub their eyes, get sneezed on by a stranger etc.

jMyles 3y ago

...this link is not a new RCT. It is an article about the Cochrane review which we all read a long time ago. And, despite the (somewhat reasonable) chagrin expressed by the authors, the Cochrane review did indeed show that masks are largely ineffective (and cloth masks, completely so) at stopping viral transmission - the link is right there in the article to which you've linked. What we need are sober, old-school RCTs powered to assess both filtration and source control across individuals (and sure, some for community transmission as well). And then we need them replicated. And then we can finally stop this ridiculous 'debate'. Today's humans are the most scientifically literate society in history; there's no reason we need to make important social and political decisions with such shitty data.

autoexec 3y ago
> the Cochrane review did indeed show that masks are largely ineffective (and cloth masks, completely so) at stopping viral transmission - the link is right there in the article to which you've linked. That's actually not what it showed. That bit of misinformation is probably best addressed in another article (https://www.acsh.org/news/2023/03/14/do-masks-prevent-covid-spoiler-alert-course-they-do-16915 https://www.acsh.org/news/2023/03/14/do-masks-prevent-covid-...) Here's the most important part: Many commentators have claimed that a recently updated Cochrane review shows that ‘masks don’t work,’ which is an inaccurate and misleading interpretation,” Karla Soares-Weiser, the editor in chief of the Cochrane Library, said in a statement. “The review examined whether interventions to promote mask wearing help to slow the spread of respiratory viruses,” Soares-Weiser said, adding, “Given the limitations in the primary evidence, the review is not able to address the question of whether mask wearing itself reduces people’s risk of contracting or spreading respiratory viruses.” She said that “this wording was open to misinterpretation, for which we apologize,” and that Cochrane would revise the summary. Soares-Weiser also said, though, that one of the lead authors of the review even more seriously misinterpreted its finding on masks by saying in an interview that it proved “there is just no evidence that they make any difference.” In fact, Soares-Weiser said, “that statement is not an accurate representation of what the review found.”
- gadders 3y ago
  You are guilty of pushing the very misinformation that you claim to be against. The review itself said: ‘Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza‐like illness / Covid‐19-like illness compared with not wearing masks… Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza / SARS‐CoV‐2 compared with not wearing masks.’ The fact that the editor-in-chief of Cochrane embarrassed herself due to the pressure of an opinion-piece by a non-expert in the NYT is irrelevant. You can read the views of one of the reports actual authors here: https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/07/19/the-junk-science-behind-face-masks/ https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/07/19/the-junk-science-be...
  - autoexec 3y ago
    If you think that Cochrane revises their reviews based on "pressure of an opinion-piece by a non-expert in the NYT" I doubt any amount of research will change your mind from what you've decided to believe. I think it's clear that Tom Jefferson was embarrassed at being called out for misinterpreting the evidence, but he's plainly wrong that she never provided a reason. She was clear that it was due to the "limitations in the primary evidence", something many others pointed out as well.
    - jMyles 3y ago
      Please, I beg for your sensibility and brief attention here. This issue continues to tear fissures in what seem like otherwise reasonable and literate communities. The sentence in question is: "Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza-like illness (ILI)/COVID-19 like illness compared to not wearing masks (risk ratio (RR) 0.95, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.84 to 1.09; 9 trials, 276,917 participants;" This is very typical wording, and a very typical application of limited data, for a Cochrane review. There's nothing here that jumps out, on first read or after ingestion of all of the primaries, which I'm guessing we've all done multiple times. I think we all agree with you (and thus, with Soares-Weiser) about the frustration (heck, downright confounding) resulting from the lack of evidence. Top experts from every one of the big 5 have repeatedly called for and proposed RCTs to solve this problem. ...but there is absolutely nothing wrong with looking at these data and concluding that, in each statistically-significant case, masking "probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of" ILI. Is it possible that a larger, properly-powered RCT will find that some form of N95 application will have some effect on community transmission? Sure. We'd all love to know about that. It it possible that a larger, properly-powered RCT will find a similar outcome from cloth masks? No. Not unless all of the current data on the matter is completely flawed. Is it possible that even a small, properly-powered RCT will find statistically significant reductions in individual transmission from source control measures? Yes! That's possible! And that's the topic of this entire thread - we're talking about an individual patient largely confined to an iron lung. Has that RCT been performed? No. Can we all agree on at least these limited, well-defined assessments of the available data?
1224530282 3y ago
First, as the sibling comment pointed out, the Cochrane review article didn't show that masks were ineffective. "Relatively low numbers of people followed the guidance about wearing masks or about hand hygiene, which may have affected the results of the studies" [1]. Their results were inconclusive since the people the asks to wear masks, didn't. But there's still evidence that masks are effective. The question of whether N95 filter media can block virus-carrying droplets is a _physics_ question-- which has been replicated in experiment after experiment since the 90s ([2] is a recent study). I've done a lot of looking, but I've yet to find any explanation as to why if someone is wearing a (properly fitted) N95, so their air goes through a filter media, which has been repeatedly shown to block droplets, they could still inhale disease-carrying droplets. [1]: https://www.cochrane.org/news/featured-review-physical-interventions-interrupt-or-reduce-spread-respiratory-viruses https://www.cochrane.org/news/featured-review-physical-inter... [2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9947910/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9947910/
- autoexec 3y ago
  > I've yet to find any explanation as to why if someone is wearing a (properly fitted) N95, so their air goes through a filter media, which has been repeatedly shown to block droplets, they could still inhale disease-carrying droplets. It's worth keeping in mind that even if someone wearing an N95 mask does manage to inhale some percentage of the airborne disease-carrying droplets around them, viral load matters a lot. A tiny amount of virus could be fought off by the immune system before it has a chance to take hold in the body, and even if that fails and the virus does infect the body, larger exposures tend to result in worse outcomes. Even an imperfect protection can have a beneficial effect. It's the same for people spreading the virus. Even if a mask isn't perfect, that doesn't make it useless. Putting just about anything in front of someone's virus spewing face holes is going to reduce the amount of virus that gets into the air and limit how far it spreads. This is why we teach small children to "vampire cough". Not because the inside of our elbows provide N95 levels of protection, but because doing so still helps to prevent the spread of disease.
- gadders 3y ago
  >>Their results were inconclusive since the people the asks to wear masks, didn't. Their review was at the macro, population level. If people aren't wearing masks properly through carelessness or ignorance, this proves their point. Shooting a virus at a masked mannequin in a lab might show some prevention, but in the real world people forget and scratch their nose, rub their eyes, get sneezed on by a stranger etc.