Major Study Finds Masks Don’t Reduce COVID-19 Infection Rates

[Humility]

My point in posting is that citing this study to prove that “masks don’t work” is disingenuous - even the people who wrote the study say that’s not what the study is saying. A link to the actual study is linked in the article.

 

[Cathoholic]

That does not mean that masks in general don’t reduce covid infection rates.

Why did you feel the need to change my premise from mandated masks being used in society to
“masks in general”?

Cathoholic . . .

You can’t make broad-based recomendations and conclusions based upon one study.

LeafByNiggle . . .

No one is doing that.

That’s right LeafByNiggle. It’s worse.

People are making mandated mask recomendations based upon NO STUDIES.

Cathoholic . . .

The reduction you see is in “rates”.

LeafByNiggle (implicitly ASSUMING there is only upside) . . .

Which is still better than not reducing infection rates.

How do you know??
Where are not just the benefits but the RISKS taken into consideration?

Frankly I can’t think of one post from you where you have ever talked about the risks.
Why not? I talk about the benefits of mask wearing.

I know there is good AND bad and ALL things need to be considered.
I’m am fully open to looking at risks AND benefits.

Where have you done that Leaf? Can you link me to a couple?

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

That does not mean that masks in general don’t reduce covid infection rates.

Why did you feel the need to change my premise from mandated masks being used in society to
“masks in general”?

OK, change it to “That does not mean that masks used in society don’t reduce covid infection rates.” Better?

Cathoholic . . .

You can’t make broad-based recomendations and conclusions based upon one study.

LeafByNiggle . . .

No one is doing that.

That’s right LeafByNiggle. It’s worse.

People are making mandated mask recomendations based upon NO STUDIES.

The CDC is making recommendations based upon years of knowledge. Just because they have not offer Cathoholic a graduate level class in epidemiology and virology so that he can understand that knowledge as well as the experts, that does not mean our public health experts do no have that knowledge.

Cathoholic . . .

The reduction you see is in “rates”.

LeafByNiggle (implicitly ASSUMING there is only upside) . . .

Which is still better than not reducing infection rates.

How do you know??
Where are not just the benefits but the RISKS taken into consideration?

Because the CDC says so. I trust them.

 

[Cathoholic]

Cathoholic . . .

People are making mandated mask recomendations based upon NO STUDIES.

LeafByNiggle . . .

The CDC is making recommendations based upon years of knowledge.

Really. I thought corona virus has only been around 1 year.

And if you think there is cross-application with other viruses, let me know how last year’s MANDATED societal masking policies went against influenza.

Of course there wasn’t any. (The above was a rhetorical statement).

There are no “years” of experience that the cdc has with mandatory masking of society.

LeafByNiggle pivoting away from the fact he has roundly ignored risk-benefit discussions and the reason given . . . .

Because the CDC says so. I trust them.

Well Leaf. The cdc has “said so” regarding a false sense of security, and incorrect usage and incorre t wearing too.

And I still have not seen you discuss thos points from the cdc.

To everybody else.

This MANDATED shenanigans is about power.
This is not about public health, at least yet.

It can’t be, because they are going without anything backing them up for such widespread draconian measures.

Maybe it will turn out great. And I will be the first to applaud it.

But right now, there is nothing but conjecture from the scientific community and superstition from SOME (not all) of the lay people, especially in the media.

(Funny thing is, the Democrats [by their actions] many times don’t believe in this stuff either. But that doesn’t stop them from telling you they do.

See here, here, and here

And the medical community has missed on conjecture in the past.

This is about power as an end. At least that’s my opinion.

 

[jsarroforum]

Philippines mainly uses those cheap disposable masks. The Far East countries (japan, vietnam, south korea, taiwan) have done a good job of controlling covid. Masks reduce viral load on other people. If you inhale a million virus particles or a thousand virus particles, you may get sick in both cases, but you are more likely to suffer more severe symptoms if you inhale more.

 

[Jen95]

If WHO, CDC and Fauci want us to wear masks now, they screwed up badly when they told us not to in March.
They might be more believable now if they would admit that.

 

[BT3241]

I swear off expert and get all my truths from opinion pieces what do experts know I am the internet expert. The Government wouldn’t tell use how to prevent or slow the virus. My source says its a hoax The internet has all the answers experts are no longer required. How dare they make any mistakes and tell me what to do.

I believe the opposite.

 

[F_Marturana]

I’ve been wearing a mask since right after lockdown in mid March. The fatalities in New York and the understanding of community spread were just happening.

PPE was very limited. There weren’t enough masks available for hospitals. My county had drives for people to donate unused masks so they could be used in the hospitals. Nurses in some hospitals were forced to use garbage bags as PPE.

Fauci didn’t want everyone to go and buy masks that were in limited supply.

I know I couldn’t find any for a long time. I couldn’t even get bandanas they were on back order. My husband had a few thankfully.

But there were tutorials for homemade masks. I remember my sister made some masks from old t shirts. I used a scarf a few times I went out.

I’m convinced that the spread in nursing homes was partially due to lack of PPE. They just didn’t have the supplies necessary because they weren’t available.

 

[Theo520]

weird, my source gets a different view but uses the same data source (John Hopkins). It doesn’t dispute your comment on masks.

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

 

[Cathoholic]

I suspect that broad mask usage in these crowded venues might have attenuated their initial surge.

I am sure you are right.

That’s what masks are all about . . . attenuation. Tapering. Mitigation.

 

[Kobayashi-Maru]

Same data source but different metric. I had posted cumulative totalized cases and the one you used is new daily cases (7 day avg)

 

[Zzyzx_Road]

Here is a cumulative study maintained since 2007 in which papers were gathered from various sources and studied. Current to April 1 this year.

https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub5/full

Critical quotes:

Background​

Viral epidemics or pandemics of acute respiratory infections (ARIs) pose a global threat. Examples are influenza (H1N1) caused by the H1N1pdm09 virus in 2009, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003, and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) caused by SARS‐CoV‐2 in 2019. Antiviral drugs and vaccines may be insufficient to prevent their spread. This is an update of a Cochrane Review published in 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011. The evidence summarised in this review does not include results from studies from the current COVID‐19 pandemic.
.
.
.
Medical/surgical masks compared to no masks

We included nine trials (of which eight were cluster‐RCTs) comparing medical/surgical masks versus no masks to prevent the spread of viral respiratory illness (two trials with healthcare workers and seven in the community). There is low certainty evidence from nine trials (3507 participants) that wearing a mask may make little or no difference to the outcome of influenza‐like illness (ILI) compared to not wearing a mask (risk ratio (RR) 0.99, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.82 to 1.18. There is moderate certainty evidence that wearing a mask probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza compared to not wearing a mask (RR 0.91, 95% CI 0.66 to 1.26; 6 trials; 3005 participants). Harms were rarely measured and poorly reported. Two studies during COVID‐19 plan to recruit a total of 72,000 people. One evaluates medical/surgical masks (N = 6000) (published Annals of Internal Medicine , 18 Nov 2020), and one evaluates cloth masks (N = 66,000).

Continued on next post

 

[Zzyzx_Road]

Continued from last post

And the authors’ conclusions (emphasis mine):

The high risk of bias in the trials, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low compliance with the interventions during the studies hamper drawing firm conclusions and generalising the findings to the current COVID‐19 pandemic.

There is uncertainty about the effects of face masks. The low‐moderate certainty of the evidence means our confidence in the effect estimate is limited, and that the true effect may be different from the observed estimate of the effect. The pooled results of randomised trials did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks during seasonal influenza. There were no clear differences between the use of medical/surgical masks compared with N95/P2 respirators in healthcare workers when used in routine care to reduce respiratory viral infection. Hand hygiene is likely to modestly reduce the burden of respiratory illness. Harms associated with physical interventions were under‐investigated.

There is a need for large, well‐designed RCTs addressing the effectiveness of many of these interventions in multiple settings and populations, especially in those most at risk of ARIs.

To be sure, they do not include studies directly connected to Covid-19, but they do point out that at least two large scale studies are ongoing. From the article:

Two studies during COVID‐19 plan to recruit a total of 72,000 people. One evaluates medical/surgical masks (N = 6000) (published Annals of Internal Medicine , 18 Nov 2020), and one evaluates cloth masks (N = 66,000).

For Leaf’s benefit, this is the background from which Dr Fauci was speaking on March 8 to 60 Minutes. Notice no one has supplied a paper that wholeheartedly supports mask use for influenza pre-2020. Maybe because there isn’t one?

 

[Zzyzx_Road]

While we’re at it, let’s tackle the current state of Covid-19 testing.

The critical question on the floor: why is no one telling us what Ct count was used to find a positive test? Maybe it’s because even Dr Fauci was heard saying that a positive test at Ct > 35 does not show that the person tested has a virus that is “replication competent”. So what are they using? And why is the public not entitled to know that?

I’ve suspected this usage of overly high Ct levels since the first second wave results hit the news, that we are experiencing a high rate of false positives.

So the best way to get a handle on this is with actual hospitalization numbers. Which do not match the rising cases the way they did months ago. Remember the hospitals are fuller now because they have been letting people get treated for non-Covid non-emergency issues. Something that was not happening from March til June. Can tell you my local hospital is busy, but they’re not close to full.

Scaring us much?