An evidence review of face masks against COVID-19

[donkdowndonedied]

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".

That's not how it works, due to several factors including transmission patterns, mutations, and many other things.

This is why no country has eliminated COVID, even ones with very high vaccination rates, and even with vaccination being a MUCH stronger factor in elimination than mask wearing.

Still, the 9% itself is very suspect, based upon the factors I mentioned in the other post.

There's also the study sharing bias. Let's say I wanted to prove that chewing Hubba Bubba gum would prevent COVID. I could keep studying vairous populations, where I hand out to Hubba Bubba to one group, and don't hand out Hubba Bubba to another. I would likely keep coming up with nothing, but occasionally an outlier would show up (maybe because the gum chewers in one population were also more likely to practice social distancing), and suddenly I'd have a perfect "study" on my hands to prove the efficacy of Hubba Bubba.

What about the other 100 studies I did, which failed? Well, I just wouldn't ever have to mention I performed any of those.

I have a feeling that if we looked into the people behind the Bangladesh mask studies, almost all of them would have been very pro-mask prior to the study being undertaken.

You simply cannot trust a single study about something like this, especially with statistically marginal results. As that article I linked mentioned, whenever a study barely reaches what is generally accepted to be statistically significant, there's a high chance something "dodgy" went on to get there.



Given all the mask mandates we've seen around the world, surely we would see a signfiicant difference by now. We don't. I'm not saying cloth masks have zero utility in preventing COVID transmissions, but they don't have enough utility to justify their mandated usage.

Furthermore, it's child abuse to be forcing them on our children like this, given the likely low pediatric transmission rates and excellent COVID outcomes among children. We are treating 8-year-olds the same way we treat 50-year-olds, despite a exponentially disparate risk profile (there's that word again, gimmick), and it's horrible.

I don't particularly disagree with anything here except that even after this, you have to agree that just saying "9% isn't enough" is not a serious discussion. 9% over what period?! It wasn't even mentioned, just that 9% is not worth it.

So you do agree that masks do something. Thats kinda a sign of sanity. We can argue whether mask mandates are worth it. I am not sure at this point. I rarely wear a mask anymore. I feel as if I likely caught it at some point post vaccinated. I just become so annoyed when people argue that masks do nothing or what have you. That was my impression previous to this.

It seems to me that there is always something that comes up that is overplayed as some threat to someone's freedoms. Looking back over my lifetime, I see wearing a helmet on a motorcycle, forcing people to wear their seatbelts, and now we have masks as the rallying cry. I look around and I see things with far more issues in regards to our freedom. While masks are an immediate and direct nuisance (like helmets and seatbelts) they're not really particularly relevant to how one truly experiences their life. You're not having to work more in any capacity to compensate for them. Yet, it seems that this has been put forth as the biggest threat to democracy in many decades. I wish I could just laugh but ugh. "sheep".