An evidence review of face masks against COVID-19

[gimmick]

Here... I found this after about a minute of googling:

https://nypost.com/2021/05/28/twitte...b-leak-theory/

Two days after Facebook confirmed that it would no longer censor posts discussing whether the coronavirus pandemic originated from a Chinese lab leak, Twitter is refusing to say whether it will do the same.

Despite President Biden ordering US spy agencies to conduct a 90-day investigation into whether COVID-19 was released by the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Twitter said it had no updates to share at this time.

It has held firm in the two days since Biden’s order and the immediate move by Facebook.

There ya go. Facebook and Twitter both shut down discussion of the lab leak theory, and only in May 2021 did Facebook finally commit to stop doing that, with Twitter lagging even further behind.

Why should this discussion have been censored in the first place? At the time, it was asserted that "experts" disproved it, so further discussion was just racist misinformation. Now we're back to accepting the very realistic possibility that, yes, it did leak out of a lab.

Trust the "experts", though, amirite? They know best! In fact, they know best to such a large extent that we aren't allowed to publicly disagree with them anymore. Definitely the hallmark of a free country.

SCIENCE!!!

Private companies are FREE to decide what they allow in their platform. Change your laws if you don't like that.

Apparently here were not allowed to post about REDACTED, REDACTED or REDACTED. Because it might negatively effect your image.

It's a good thing we can at least defend your image by calling people niggers and/or faggots.

[gimmick]

Oh...

"A YouTube spokesperson confirmed in a statement Thursday that claims that the virus was man-made or originated in a lab accident do not violate the platform's policies because "there has not been consensus" on its origins. So the company's policy remains unchanged."

...apparently this Big Media Group Think Conspiracy to Silence The Truth didn't include YouTube. I guess it's not relevant then.

[dwai]

Here... I found this after about a minute of googling:

https://nypost.com/2021/05/28/twitte...b-leak-theory/




There ya go. Facebook and Twitter both shut down discussion of the lab leak theory, and only in May 2021 did Facebook finally commit to stop doing that, with Twitter lagging even further behind.

Why should this discussion have been censored in the first place? At the time, it was asserted that "experts" disproved it, so further discussion was just racist misinformation. Now we're back to accepting the very realistic possibility that, yes, it did leak out of a lab.

Trust the "experts", though, amirite? They know best! In fact, they know best to such a large extent that we aren't allowed to publicly disagree with them anymore. Definitely the hallmark of a free country.

SCIENCE!!!

Private companies are FREE to decide what they allow in their platform. Change your laws if you don't like that.

Apparently here were not allowed to post about REDACTED, REDACTED or REDACTED. Because it might negatively effect your image.

It's a good thing we can at least defend your image by calling people niggers and/or faggots.

affect *

[limitles]

Also, it's important to understand that I don't have a distrust for the experts when it comes to non-political scientific issues.

For example, I trust the FDA for the most part when it comes to approving medications for non-politicized ailments.

I just can't trust the "experts" regarding COVID, when there's such intense bias/pressure to come down with recommendations in a certain way. I mean, look, even under Trump, the CDC had the gall to recommend distribution of the vaccine based upon "racial equity" rather than age -- something no other country in the world recommended.

When history looks back on the early 2020s, the biggest mistake will be said to be the politicization of the virus. People in the year 2100 will look back and ask, "Why didn't those morons just cooperate and figure out what was really best for everyone?"

You have lost your mind. It's sad

[gimmick]

Private companies are FREE to decide what they allow in their platform. Change your laws if you don't like that.

Apparently here were not allowed to post about REDACTED, REDACTED or REDACTED. Because it might negatively effect your image.

It's a good thing we can at least defend your image by calling people niggers and/or faggots.

affect *

Nigger faggot.

[gimmick]

Pretty much everything in this thread was talked about in June in the major Covid thread that's mostly AIDS.

Around the page 635.

Team Retard was convinced that Fauci's emails would lock him up.

Druff didn't quite find a single study that supported his rational hatred of masks.

And then we had this post...

https://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sh...l=1#post979776

...and my reply...

https://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sh...l=1#post979844

In case someone isn't aware Fauci wasn't locked up. He also wasn't fired.

[donkdowndonedied]

Masks, lockdowns, they do nothing.

Age adjusted mortality - California vs Florida



/thread

Of course lockdowns do things. I don't care how many graphs you cough up it is beyond common sense. There is an argument to be had as to whether or not they are worth the cost but clearly lockdowns do something. Same exact thing with masks to a slightly lesser extent.

Druff said earlier in this thread that COVID is not a respiratory virus so therefore masks don't work the same way. I'm not sure where you guys get this stuff. Is it the censoring of correct info causing it?

[khalwat]

Large Study Confirms Masks Work to Limit COVID-19 Spread

ref: https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/2021...d-spread-study

yet another large study:

A large, real-world test of face masks in Bangladesh shows that masks reduce community spread of COVID-19. It also shows that surgical masks are more effective than cloth face coverings.

Regarding the "bike helmet" theory:

The study demonstrates the power of careful investigation and offers a host of lessons about mask wearing that will be important worldwide. One key finding of the study, for example, is that wearing a mask doesn't lead people to abandon social distancing, something public health officials had feared might happen if masks gave people a false sense of security.

Will it? Or are people going to discount evidence based on their opinions:

"And so, I think people who have been holding out on wearing masks because [they] felt like there wasn't enough evidence for it, we're hoping this will really help bridge that gap for them," she said.

Roughly 1 in 10 reduction:

Half of the districts were given cloth or surgical face masks along with continual reminders to wear them properly; the other half were tracked with no intervention. Blood tests of people who developed symptoms during the study verified their infections.

Compared to villages that didn't mask, those where masks of any type were worn had about 9% fewer symptomatic cases of COVID-19. The finding was statistically significant and was unlikely to have occurred by chance alone.

I eagerly await the rigorous scientific study that shows that masks did not, in fact, make a difference.

Once more: based on what we currently know today, masks are not merely performative.

[dwai]

affect *

Nigger faggot.

[Dan Druff]

That Bangladesh study has been discussed before... I forgot if it was here or on Twitter, but I commented on it somewhere.

First off, it was just a 9% reduction, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the media's portrayal of masking for the past 18 months. If the message was, "Wear your mask and be 9% safer!", do you think the average person would have felt that masking was the difference between responsible and irresponsible behavior?

But I even doubt that 9% figure. One big problem with this study was that it didn't normalize for actual behavioral patterns -- only in-person observations regarding the level of actual mask wearing.

These villagers weren't wearing their masks for fun, nor were they compensated for wearing these masks. Instead, people voluntarily took them to protect their health. This study did not attempt to track movements of mask wearers. Therefore, it is possible that these mask wearers were also the same people who were already engaging in more cautious behavior regarding COVID, and thus they were willing to wear masks to give themselves even greater protection.

Similarly, if they were handing out free ski helmets at Mammoth Mountain, and the conservative skiers primarily took them, while the reckless skiers did not, you could not make any statitstical conclusions from the incidence of major head injuries with or without those helmets. The only way to assess the effectiveness of these helmets would be to put them on skiers with roughly the same ability and risk-taking profile, and then observe over a long period of time the number of head injuries in each group.

I don't know why we are relying upon studies in primitive villages for this, though. After 18 months, why don't we have any real world examples of mask mandates working? Because they don't. That's a fact which you can't dodge, no matter how many biased studies try to claim otherwise.

Oh... and there is already some skepticism of this study.

This guy, who is pro-mask, admits that the Bangladesh study is extremely marginal whether or not it's significant.

But the right way to look at it is: I have some prior assessment of how likely it is that masks help prevent spread. I’d say quite likely, because the virus travels in water droplets, and presumably a mask traps some of them; and also because of earlier evidence. Let’s say I think it’s 80% likely. Then I get some new evidence, and I use it to update my beliefs. A p=0.05 result might make me update to something like 95% sure, depending on how much you trusted the study.
.
.
.
Whether this study is good evidence is up for debate: a stats-savvy friend warns that when you see p-values around, and especially just under, 0.05, it’s a red flag that some dodgy manipulations have gone on.

This professor feels the same way:

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/#!/x/status/1433117569020465153

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/#!/x/status/1433117573722292230



There's also a cost to wearing masks, and a greater cost to mask mandtes. The economy suffers under mask mandates, for example. Even you discussed on radio that you might decline to attend a conference because of the inconvenience of having to wear a mask on a long flight, and indeed that was a reasonable thought process.

If we are getting a 9% gain from masking -- which I still doubt -- I don't think that comes close to justifying mask mandates, and it certainly doesn't justify masking up little kids.

[Dan Druff]

Masks, lockdowns, they do nothing.

Age adjusted mortality - California vs Florida



/thread

Of course lockdowns do things. I don't care how many graphs you cough up it is beyond common sense. There is an argument to be had as to whether or not they are worth the cost but clearly lockdowns do something. Same exact thing with masks to a slightly lesser extent.

Druff said earlier in this thread that COVID is not a respiratory virus so therefore masks don't work the same way. I'm not sure where you guys get this stuff. Is it the censoring of correct info causing it?

Nice putting words in my mouth, but no, I didn't say that.

I said that conclusions from "respiratory viruses" cannot be applied to COVID, because it transmits differently.

The common cold, for example, transmits in several ways COVID does not, such as surfaces and saliva. The common cold does transmit through aerosol like COVID does, but it isn't as contagious as COVID, and it may be transmitting more in droplets than tiny aerosol particles.

This is actually why it's much easier to avoid getting COVID than something like the common cold. The common cold transmits in so many ways that it's extremely difficult to avoid. COVID has fewer methods of transmission, and thus a COVID-positive person touching a doorknob or coughing on your takeout food isn't likely to transmit it to you, whereas the common cold often will transmit that way. Indeed, I've had 3 colds in the past 18 months (including right now), while I have not gotten COVID.

It is also possible that kids barely transmit COVID, whereas we know they transmit colds very well.

My point was that you can throw everything out the window what works to "prevent respiratory virus transmission", because COVID behaves differently.

[Dan Druff]

Oh...

"A YouTube spokesperson confirmed in a statement Thursday that claims that the virus was man-made or originated in a lab accident do not violate the platform's policies because "there has not been consensus" on its origins. So the company's policy remains unchanged."

...apparently this Big Media Group Think Conspiracy to Silence The Truth didn't include YouTube. I guess it's not relevant then.

Yeah, who cares about tiny platforms like Twitter and Facebook? Nobody uses those anymore.

No big deal that they engaged in censorship regarding the lab leak theory. Nothing to see here.

I'm sure it's also a coincidence that the mainstream media refused in 2020 to discuss the possibility of the lab leak theory being valid, and only brought up the topic occasionally to point out how racist Trump and his supporters were.

Nothing to see here, though. Very free and unbiased media and social media companies, doing great journalism.

[gimmick]

Oh...

"A YouTube spokesperson confirmed in a statement Thursday that claims that the virus was man-made or originated in a lab accident do not violate the platform's policies because "there has not been consensus" on its origins. So the company's policy remains unchanged."

...apparently this Big Media Group Think Conspiracy to Silence The Truth didn't include YouTube. I guess it's not relevant then.

Yeah, who cares about tiny platforms like Twitter and Facebook? Nobody uses those anymore.

No big deal that they engaged in censorship regarding the lab leak theory. Nothing to see here.

I'm sure it's also a coincidence that the mainstream media refused in 2020 to discuss the possibility of the lab leak theory being valid, and only brought up the topic occasionally to point out how racist Trump and his supporters were.

Nothing to see here, though. Very free and unbiased media and social media companies, doing great journalism.

So Fox News was silent about it? There seems to be some holes in your, nobody was "allowed" to talk about it theory.

[gimmick]

That Bangladesh study has been discussed before... I forgot if it was here or on Twitter, but I commented on it somewhere.

First off, it was just a 9% reduction, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the media's portrayal of masking for the past 18 months. If the message was, "Wear your mask and be 9% safer!", do you think the average person would have felt that masking was the difference between responsible and irresponsible behavior?

If we are getting a 9% gain from masking -- which I still doubt -- I don't think that comes close to justifying mask mandates, and it certainly doesn't justify masking up little kids.

I guess you would have to understand what exponential means to have any clue how much 9% is.

For the cost per reduction in infections/hospitalizations/deaths it's the single best value you're ever going to get at a certain point in the epidemic.

[donkdowndonedied]

That Bangladesh study has been discussed before... I forgot if it was here or on Twitter, but I commented on it somewhere.

First off, it was just a 9% reduction, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the media's portrayal of masking for the past 18 months. If the message was, "Wear your mask and be 9% safer!", do you think the average person would have felt that masking was the difference between responsible and irresponsible behavior?

But I even doubt that 9% figure. One big problem with this study was that it didn't normalize for actual behavioral patterns -- only in-person observations regarding the level of actual mask wearing.

These villagers weren't wearing their masks for fun, nor were they compensated for wearing these masks. Instead, people voluntarily took them to protect their health. This study did not attempt to track movements of mask wearers. Therefore, it is possible that these mask wearers were also the same people who were already engaging in more cautious behavior regarding COVID, and thus they were willing to wear masks to give themselves even greater protection.

Similarly, if they were handing out free ski helmets at Mammoth Mountain, and the conservative skiers primarily took them, while the reckless skiers did not, you could not make any statitstical conclusions from the incidence of major head injuries with or without those helmets. The only way to assess the effectiveness of these helmets would be to put them on skiers with roughly the same ability and risk-taking profile, and then observe over a long period of time the number of head injuries in each group.

I don't know why we are relying upon studies in primitive villages for this, though. After 18 months, why don't we have any real world examples of mask mandates working? Because they don't. That's a fact which you can't dodge, no matter how many biased studies try to claim otherwise.

Oh... and there is already some skepticism of this study.

This guy, who is pro-mask, admits that the Bangladesh study is extremely marginal whether or not it's significant.

But the right way to look at it is: I have some prior assessment of how likely it is that masks help prevent spread. I’d say quite likely, because the virus travels in water droplets, and presumably a mask traps some of them; and also because of earlier evidence. Let’s say I think it’s 80% likely. Then I get some new evidence, and I use it to update my beliefs. A p=0.05 result might make me update to something like 95% sure, depending on how much you trusted the study.
.
.
.
Whether this study is good evidence is up for debate: a stats-savvy friend warns that when you see p-values around, and especially just under, 0.05, it’s a red flag that some dodgy manipulations have gone on.

This professor feels the same way:

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/#!/x/status/1433117569020465153

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/#!/x/status/1433117573722292230



There's also a cost to wearing masks, and a greater cost to mask mandtes. The economy suffers under mask mandates, for example. Even you discussed on radio that you might decline to attend a conference because of the inconvenience of having to wear a mask on a long flight, and indeed that was a reasonable thought process.

If we are getting a 9% gain from masking -- which I still doubt -- I don't think that comes close to justifying mask mandates, and it certainly doesn't justify masking up little kids.

The 9% is over 8 weeks, so one would assume that if you actually take the compounding effect the reduction is quite a bit higher over the course of a year. It isn't clear and the webmd overview kinda skimmed over this. So many people bad with numbers. The important part to realize is that the 9% is meaningless without a timeframe. Lets see, .91 ^ 6 (thats 6 periods of 8 weeks in a year) is .52 or about half as many people catch it per year. Very simple analysis but I think it is far more accurate than saying "doh gee only 9% that is nothing".

[donkdowndonedied]

Of course lockdowns do things. I don't care how many graphs you cough up it is beyond common sense. There is an argument to be had as to whether or not they are worth the cost but clearly lockdowns do something. Same exact thing with masks to a slightly lesser extent.

Druff said earlier in this thread that COVID is not a respiratory virus so therefore masks don't work the same way. I'm not sure where you guys get this stuff. Is it the censoring of correct info causing it?

Nice putting words in my mouth, but no, I didn't say that.

I said that conclusions from "respiratory viruses" cannot be applied to COVID, because it transmits differently.

The common cold, for example, transmits in several ways COVID does not, such as surfaces and saliva. The common cold does transmit through aerosol like COVID does, but it isn't as contagious as COVID, and it may be transmitting more in droplets than tiny aerosol particles.

This is actually why it's much easier to avoid getting COVID than something like the common cold. The common cold transmits in so many ways that it's extremely difficult to avoid. COVID has fewer methods of transmission, and thus a COVID-positive person touching a doorknob or coughing on your takeout food isn't likely to transmit it to you, whereas the common cold often will transmit that way. Indeed, I've had 3 colds in the past 18 months (including right now), while I have not gotten COVID.

It is also possible that kids barely transmit COVID, whereas we know they transmit colds very well.

My point was that you can throw everything out the window what works to "prevent respiratory virus transmission", because COVID behaves differently.

You said they were a "whole different animal" or maybe it was beast. You suggested it wasn't a respiratory virus. The fact that you casually make such proclamations that you later seem to not believe is strong evidence to what degree you are being influenced by groupthink.

If a cold has more vectors of transmission then evidence should be stronger for covid+masks when extrapolating from cold+mask results, no? What am I missing?

[donkdowndonedied]

Oh...

"A YouTube spokesperson confirmed in a statement Thursday that claims that the virus was man-made or originated in a lab accident do not violate the platform's policies because "there has not been consensus" on its origins. So the company's policy remains unchanged."

...apparently this Big Media Group Think Conspiracy to Silence The Truth didn't include YouTube. I guess it's not relevant then.

Cuz youtube ain't memeable. You can't go click the shiny button to share with your friends. Who wants to actually make a video and have their own thoughts? With memes your thoughts are directly controlled so of course FB and Twitter are more important.

[gimmick]

Oh...

"A YouTube spokesperson confirmed in a statement Thursday that claims that the virus was man-made or originated in a lab accident do not violate the platform's policies because "there has not been consensus" on its origins. So the company's policy remains unchanged."

...apparently this Big Media Group Think Conspiracy to Silence The Truth didn't include YouTube. I guess it's not relevant then.

Cuz youtube ain't memeable. You can't go click the shiny button to share with your friends. Who wants to actually make a video and have their own thoughts? With memes your thoughts are directly controlled so of course FB and Twitter are more important.

Wonder what the partisan divide is with FB/Twitter being the main source of news/information?

[gimmick]

Exponential growth cannot happen when there's a cap on the total number -- in this case the size of the population. With 20% or so infected already, the worst possible growth at this point is a factor of 5. That's not considered exponential.

Even the idiot leftists at the CDC don't claim that their distribution plan is likely to stop the spread or stop "exponential growth", but somehow gimmick of Poker Fraud Alert is sure that's the reason for it.

The exponential growth bit is from this post. In the original Covid thread from around December.

https://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sh...l=1#post948613

In relation to why it makes sense to vaccine highly mobile/"social" people to slow the spread after taking care of the most vulnerable. Say a 25 year old cashier that is in contact of hundreds of people before a random poker player in his 50s.

[Dan Druff]

Exponential growth cannot happen when there's a cap on the total number -- in this case the size of the population. With 20% or so infected already, the worst possible growth at this point is a factor of 5. That's not considered exponential.

Even the idiot leftists at the CDC don't claim that their distribution plan is likely to stop the spread or stop "exponential growth", but somehow gimmick of Poker Fraud Alert is sure that's the reason for it.

The exponential growth bit is from this post. In the original Covid thread from around December.

https://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sh...l=1#post948613

In relation to why it makes sense to vaccine highly mobile/"social" people to slow the spread after taking care of the most vulnerable. Say a 25 year old cashier that is in contact of hundreds of people before a random poker player in his 50s.

gimmick is stuck on semantics regarding "exponential growth" because these are the type of arguments he resorts to when he starts to run into basic inconvenient facts. Such as the fact that 20 months into a pandemic, we aren't seeing mask mandates working anywhere in the real world.

Next he will be arguing that the term gay is inaccurate because all gay people aren't necessarily happy.