It is unfortunate that a moral equivalency is established between the two sides. I understand this tendency to try to appear nonpartisan and reasonable. In some cases, however, the two sides are not so equivalent and the issue of masks is one of those.
The data to support the use of masks is nonexistent. This is not to say that studies do…
It is unfortunate that a moral equivalency is established between the two sides. I understand this tendency to try to appear nonpartisan and reasonable. In some cases, however, the two sides are not so equivalent and the issue of masks is one of those.
The data to support the use of masks is nonexistent. This is not to say that studies don’t exist to claim to support their use. But a close examination of those studies demonstrate they are of the lowest quality and do not in any convincing way support the use of masks. I recommend going into the CDC website and closely analyzing every single study they list (there is probably about 40-60). You will find they represent the most amateur research methods available to clinicians (small sample sizes, lack of control populations, short duration of observation).
What is even more unfortunate is that the climate of fear among physicians (of which I am a part) is so great that any questions risk stigmatization, employment blowback, and possible job loss.
I caution all those who have adopted masks as a type of middle ground between draconian lockdowns and an open society. Half-way wrong is not the same as being existing in truth.
What am I looking for? To quote Carl Sagan "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
The extraordinary claim is this: That we have had a simple tool for over 100 years which could have prevented hundreds of millions of deaths. A tool we tried out in 1918, but then never bothered to use again. A tool we examined in several studies between 2003-2019 (51 by my count) after seeing the practice become in-vogue in a few Asian countries after the 2003 SARS epidemic, and came to the conclusion (quoting CDC and several meta/cohort/systemic reviews) that "very little information is available about the effectiveness of face masks and respirators in controlling the spread of pandemic influenza in community settings." and "more studies are needed".
The extraordinary claim continued, after panic broke out in early 2020, we made a reversal using mostly the same studies we drew conclusion the evidence was weak the week before, we now decided to say "the science is settled".
The extraordinary claim made boasts that "if 80% of the country would wear a mask we would drive the pandemic into the ground" (Redfield I believe?)
The extraordinary claim asserted that the drop in cases in Italy, Spain and elsewhere was due to the adoption of face masks.
I think around July/August it seemed that this was right. Deaths and cases were plummeting, and this did correlate with mask adoption. Scandinavia was a collection of outliers, but overall I can see the logic in making the connection.
Around October is where I think a split occurs between dogma and science.
Cases started exploding across the globe. Spain. US. Italy. France. Germany. South America. Pretty much everywhere that was looking for it found it.
This is where I think we should question "why aren't they working any more".
This is where I started to see a massive amount of goal post shifting, wild claims and theories, none of which supported by observable evidence.
The extraordinary claim suddenly had a lot of caveats, asterisks, modifiers to explain away why places where every single person was wearing a mask cases and deaths exploded anyway. Suddenly "cases would plummet if we all wore masks" was now shifting to "it's one part in a collection of swiss cheese slices in this cute infographic" - a technique of logic that makes disputing anything included in the swiss cheese diagram nearly impossible - as you can always jump to another slice of cheese missing.
It is very likely that a symptomatic person wearing a mask when they are sick will reduce the number of people they infect. That seems plausible, and the studies available seem to support that. That is not an extraordinary claim. Reduce to what degree? We don't know, we are too busy sloganeering that the "science is settled" to take unbiased examination it seems.
It appears very unlikely that making an entire population wear masks for a year can halt influenza like illnesses from spreading. You can come up with a hundred lab controlled studies of Bill Nye struggling to blow out candles, or of dummies wearing masks and being spread with aerosolized sodium chloride, or of mice in cages separated by masks, and it doesn't override the real world evidence we see.
At this point, with some 5+ billion people having tried out masks, I'm not sure what more is even needed.
The only people making the “extraordinary claim” are people who don’t understand the purpose of masks. You yourself admitted that mask wearing lowers the risk. The how much is not entirely relevant (although there’s data to show it’s not an insignificant amount). If we can lower the risk with a minor inconvenience then it’s worth it. Or, at least it’s worth it to anyone who gets the bigger picture.
"The extraordinary claim is this: That we have had a simple tool for over 100 years which could have prevented hundreds of millions of deaths."
Who's claiming that? Just about everything I've read says the same thing. Masks reduce the risk of transmission. They aren't perfect, but they help. And yes, I've read a number of the studies as well.
"It appears very unlikely that making an entire population wear masks for a year can halt influenza like illnesses from spreading."
Even if it could, who would want to. The 10,000 or so flu deaths per year, not worth it.
500,000+ COVID deaths, a bit of inconvenience seems worth it.
Robert Redfield, CDC Director claimed mid July that by saying if we committed to wearing masks "we could drive the pandemic into the ground" in "4-6 weeks".
Half the country now believes there was no flu because we wore masks and many are advocating we always wear them. They have been adopted as a political icon, a visible badge of virtue. Flu deaths average 50,000 in the US, and for the "every single life is worth it" crowd, I expect to see advocates of seasonal mask wearing. Perhaps I am catastrophizing? Could be.
Note that a hypothesis that the new variants aren't blocked by masks but the previous variants were fits this data. Or that the new variants aren't blocked as well.
Not sure if you've looked at Eastern Europe, but all of those countries as of Sept 2020 had about 50 deaths per million. Then during the winter 2020 surge they caught up and mostly passed all Western European countries and US in 4-5 months had 2000 deaths per million. That is to say, they had all the same pattern of deaths, but had it in one half to one third of the time.
The best hypothesis I’ve seen is that the BCG vaccine (for tuberculosis) that these populations get at 6 months of age was protective against the original virus wild type but not against the new mutations. BCG is known to have broader coverage than just TB. This makes the most sense given that it’s highly unlikely that these populations changed their habits that much between the summer and fall of 2020; in fact most of them were wide open, I had friends from several of the countries telling me how awesome their visit there was since it was wide open.
Note that as former Eastern Bloc members, Austria and residents of East Germany also got BCG as youths through late 1970s or so I think. Austria and Germany had a one half to one third of the deaths per million of Switzerland as of June 2020 and now are roughly 80% and 90%.
That's flat wrong. There are studies of high quality that clearly show that masks work.
Not many people know this very well, but masks do not work to block influenza particles upon exhaling. That was the reason we didn't have mask mandates early, people assumed that coronavirus would act the same. In April 2020 the first article came out that showed that masks could block coronavirus particles - and in the same experiment still did not block influenza particles. Very exquisite results. I don't think that the reason for the differences has been well explored.
Ah I see. You are citing a study with n=246, which studied people between 2014-2016 in a laboratory setting, wasn't actually studying Covid-19 (as it hadn't appeared yet).
It's interesting that this appears to have been "file drawer" study, that is, a study which after not seeing interesting results the authors set aside to work on something else (a huge issue in science and medicine). Study was essentially concluded in 2016 but the authors didn't see the need to publish until Covid 19 hit. Curious.
Honestly I think you would love Science Fictions. Plugging it again (keep in mind the author would likely disagree with my position here, so it's not like I am recommending something from my echo chamber).
Note that the Nature study concludes with:
"Our findings indicate that surgical masks can efficaciously reduce the emission of influenza virus particles into the environment in respiratory droplets, but not in aerosols"
That's influenza. "We also demonstrated the efficacy of surgical masks to reduce coronavirus detection and viral copies in large respiratory droplets and in aerosols"
BTW, I think one thing to clarify is what "masks work" means. I think that a facemask, properly applied as in this study, reduces aerosolization and thus transmission. I don't think that broad use of facemasks ends community transmission, which is what your 148/150 assessment tests. But once one accepts that there is serious lack of compliance with mandates, you're not even running the study. It's probably impossible to run an RCT in the population due to lack of compliance, and so we have to use preponderance of evidence. You can't give no weight to anything that's not an RCT, we wouldn't have coronary artery bypass surgeries and a thousand other medical interventions if we went that route.
Also, not sure what you attribute transmission from patients to healthcare professionals essentially going to near nothing after a few months, other than PPE.
One thing the US probably did fairly stupidly (thanks, Fauci!) was allow "masks" to somehow become "cloth masks are just as good as surgical", which created a false sense of security. All of the "successful" Asian countries very much use surgical masks, use of which was already widespread in the culture and expected for sick people appearing in public. Interestingly, Japan had breakout surges despite its controls and heavy mask use, which I think suggest that the variants' higher transmissibility might be an evolutionary response to widespread mask use.
It's definitely the case though, that we shouldn't have been walking around wearing cloth masks everywhere. N95's became widely available again by what, late summer last year? Imagine all the lives that could have been saved with a campaign promoting the use of them.
BTW check out Dr. Pierre Kory's story. He championed the use of steroids against COVID, Ron Johnson brought him into the Senate. The "expert" community pooh poohed him and he got canned from UWisconsin Health. A month later steroids were the standard of care across US medicine because of his entreaties.
Now he's backing Ivermectin which shows amazing results (better then HCQ). https://ivmmeta.com/ Ron Johnson brought him back to the Senate to discuss it and YouTube blocked the videos of the testimony. Best example out there of how we suffer as a society when idiot elitists who think they know everything call the shots.
You can also see other treatment results from the top navigation bar there.
Steroids are what changed the death rates last year around June, the rate of deaths dropped dramatically by using steroids to dampen the body's immune response against the lungs.
You are absolutely correct. I have made a point of reading the studies purporting to show mask efficacy and have yet to find one even mildly convincing.
The fact that the CDC and Fauci say otherwise just further undermines the minimal credibility they still have.
The notion that these studies reflect good science is absurd.
Plain dishonesty! What Haim is saying is clear to a 4 year old but it doesn't fit your narrative so you instantly assume a confrontational stance and try to put words in his mouth that clearly are not in his post.
Barney Fife blows his whistle hard, points at the offensive comment, adjusts his free speech, anti cancel culture badge, points at Galleta and yells frantically, “Citizen arrest! Citizen arrest!”
Hahahahaha. Take yerself a bit more seriously ‘tard
"The Editorial Committee concluded that the author’s hypothesis is misleading on the following basis:
1. A broader review of existing scientific evidence clearly shows that approved masks with correct certification, and worn in compliance with guidelines, are an effective prevention of COVID-19 transmission.
2. The manuscript misquotes and selectively cites published papers. References #16, 17, 25 and 26 are all misquoted.
3. Table 1. Physiological and Psychological Effects of Wearing Facemask and Their Potential Health Consequences, generated by the author. All data in the table is unverified, and there are several speculative statements.
4. The author submitted that he is currently affiliated to Stanford University, and VA Palo Alto Health Care System. However, both institutions have confirmed that Dr Vainshelboim ended his connection with them in 2016."
It is unfortunate that a moral equivalency is established between the two sides. I understand this tendency to try to appear nonpartisan and reasonable. In some cases, however, the two sides are not so equivalent and the issue of masks is one of those.
The data to support the use of masks is nonexistent. This is not to say that studies don’t exist to claim to support their use. But a close examination of those studies demonstrate they are of the lowest quality and do not in any convincing way support the use of masks. I recommend going into the CDC website and closely analyzing every single study they list (there is probably about 40-60). You will find they represent the most amateur research methods available to clinicians (small sample sizes, lack of control populations, short duration of observation).
What is even more unfortunate is that the climate of fear among physicians (of which I am a part) is so great that any questions risk stigmatization, employment blowback, and possible job loss.
I caution all those who have adopted masks as a type of middle ground between draconian lockdowns and an open society. Half-way wrong is not the same as being existing in truth.
There’s no data to support the use masks? Yea. There is. Quite a bit. What exactly are you looking for?
What am I looking for? To quote Carl Sagan "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
The extraordinary claim is this: That we have had a simple tool for over 100 years which could have prevented hundreds of millions of deaths. A tool we tried out in 1918, but then never bothered to use again. A tool we examined in several studies between 2003-2019 (51 by my count) after seeing the practice become in-vogue in a few Asian countries after the 2003 SARS epidemic, and came to the conclusion (quoting CDC and several meta/cohort/systemic reviews) that "very little information is available about the effectiveness of face masks and respirators in controlling the spread of pandemic influenza in community settings." and "more studies are needed".
The extraordinary claim continued, after panic broke out in early 2020, we made a reversal using mostly the same studies we drew conclusion the evidence was weak the week before, we now decided to say "the science is settled".
The extraordinary claim made boasts that "if 80% of the country would wear a mask we would drive the pandemic into the ground" (Redfield I believe?)
The extraordinary claim asserted that the drop in cases in Italy, Spain and elsewhere was due to the adoption of face masks.
I think around July/August it seemed that this was right. Deaths and cases were plummeting, and this did correlate with mask adoption. Scandinavia was a collection of outliers, but overall I can see the logic in making the connection.
Around October is where I think a split occurs between dogma and science.
Cases started exploding across the globe. Spain. US. Italy. France. Germany. South America. Pretty much everywhere that was looking for it found it.
This is where I think we should question "why aren't they working any more".
This is where I started to see a massive amount of goal post shifting, wild claims and theories, none of which supported by observable evidence.
The extraordinary claim suddenly had a lot of caveats, asterisks, modifiers to explain away why places where every single person was wearing a mask cases and deaths exploded anyway. Suddenly "cases would plummet if we all wore masks" was now shifting to "it's one part in a collection of swiss cheese slices in this cute infographic" - a technique of logic that makes disputing anything included in the swiss cheese diagram nearly impossible - as you can always jump to another slice of cheese missing.
It is very likely that a symptomatic person wearing a mask when they are sick will reduce the number of people they infect. That seems plausible, and the studies available seem to support that. That is not an extraordinary claim. Reduce to what degree? We don't know, we are too busy sloganeering that the "science is settled" to take unbiased examination it seems.
It appears very unlikely that making an entire population wear masks for a year can halt influenza like illnesses from spreading. You can come up with a hundred lab controlled studies of Bill Nye struggling to blow out candles, or of dummies wearing masks and being spread with aerosolized sodium chloride, or of mice in cages separated by masks, and it doesn't override the real world evidence we see.
At this point, with some 5+ billion people having tried out masks, I'm not sure what more is even needed.
The only people making the “extraordinary claim” are people who don’t understand the purpose of masks. You yourself admitted that mask wearing lowers the risk. The how much is not entirely relevant (although there’s data to show it’s not an insignificant amount). If we can lower the risk with a minor inconvenience then it’s worth it. Or, at least it’s worth it to anyone who gets the bigger picture.
"The extraordinary claim is this: That we have had a simple tool for over 100 years which could have prevented hundreds of millions of deaths."
Who's claiming that? Just about everything I've read says the same thing. Masks reduce the risk of transmission. They aren't perfect, but they help. And yes, I've read a number of the studies as well.
"It appears very unlikely that making an entire population wear masks for a year can halt influenza like illnesses from spreading."
Even if it could, who would want to. The 10,000 or so flu deaths per year, not worth it.
500,000+ COVID deaths, a bit of inconvenience seems worth it.
Robert Redfield, CDC Director claimed mid July that by saying if we committed to wearing masks "we could drive the pandemic into the ground" in "4-6 weeks".
Half the country now believes there was no flu because we wore masks and many are advocating we always wear them. They have been adopted as a political icon, a visible badge of virtue. Flu deaths average 50,000 in the US, and for the "every single life is worth it" crowd, I expect to see advocates of seasonal mask wearing. Perhaps I am catastrophizing? Could be.
Note that a hypothesis that the new variants aren't blocked by masks but the previous variants were fits this data. Or that the new variants aren't blocked as well.
Not sure if you've looked at Eastern Europe, but all of those countries as of Sept 2020 had about 50 deaths per million. Then during the winter 2020 surge they caught up and mostly passed all Western European countries and US in 4-5 months had 2000 deaths per million. That is to say, they had all the same pattern of deaths, but had it in one half to one third of the time.
The best hypothesis I’ve seen is that the BCG vaccine (for tuberculosis) that these populations get at 6 months of age was protective against the original virus wild type but not against the new mutations. BCG is known to have broader coverage than just TB. This makes the most sense given that it’s highly unlikely that these populations changed their habits that much between the summer and fall of 2020; in fact most of them were wide open, I had friends from several of the countries telling me how awesome their visit there was since it was wide open.
Note that as former Eastern Bloc members, Austria and residents of East Germany also got BCG as youths through late 1970s or so I think. Austria and Germany had a one half to one third of the deaths per million of Switzerland as of June 2020 and now are roughly 80% and 90%.
That's flat wrong. There are studies of high quality that clearly show that masks work.
Not many people know this very well, but masks do not work to block influenza particles upon exhaling. That was the reason we didn't have mask mandates early, people assumed that coronavirus would act the same. In April 2020 the first article came out that showed that masks could block coronavirus particles - and in the same experiment still did not block influenza particles. Very exquisite results. I don't think that the reason for the differences has been well explored.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0843-2
Ah I see. You are citing a study with n=246, which studied people between 2014-2016 in a laboratory setting, wasn't actually studying Covid-19 (as it hadn't appeared yet).
It's interesting that this appears to have been "file drawer" study, that is, a study which after not seeing interesting results the authors set aside to work on something else (a huge issue in science and medicine). Study was essentially concluded in 2016 but the authors didn't see the need to publish until Covid 19 hit. Curious.
Honestly I think you would love Science Fictions. Plugging it again (keep in mind the author would likely disagree with my position here, so it's not like I am recommending something from my echo chamber).
Note that the Nature study concludes with:
"Our findings indicate that surgical masks can efficaciously reduce the emission of influenza virus particles into the environment in respiratory droplets, but not in aerosols"
But not in aerosols.
That's influenza. "We also demonstrated the efficacy of surgical masks to reduce coronavirus detection and viral copies in large respiratory droplets and in aerosols"
BTW, I think one thing to clarify is what "masks work" means. I think that a facemask, properly applied as in this study, reduces aerosolization and thus transmission. I don't think that broad use of facemasks ends community transmission, which is what your 148/150 assessment tests. But once one accepts that there is serious lack of compliance with mandates, you're not even running the study. It's probably impossible to run an RCT in the population due to lack of compliance, and so we have to use preponderance of evidence. You can't give no weight to anything that's not an RCT, we wouldn't have coronary artery bypass surgeries and a thousand other medical interventions if we went that route.
Also, not sure what you attribute transmission from patients to healthcare professionals essentially going to near nothing after a few months, other than PPE.
Here's another RCT, capturing effective reduction of transmission by surgical masks, but not cloth masks. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25903751/
One thing the US probably did fairly stupidly (thanks, Fauci!) was allow "masks" to somehow become "cloth masks are just as good as surgical", which created a false sense of security. All of the "successful" Asian countries very much use surgical masks, use of which was already widespread in the culture and expected for sick people appearing in public. Interestingly, Japan had breakout surges despite its controls and heavy mask use, which I think suggest that the variants' higher transmissibility might be an evolutionary response to widespread mask use.
Substack Commenter 34 is correct that there are good studies showing clearly that masks work. I edited one of them.
It's definitely the case though, that we shouldn't have been walking around wearing cloth masks everywhere. N95's became widely available again by what, late summer last year? Imagine all the lives that could have been saved with a campaign promoting the use of them.
and promoting the use of HCQ...
BTW check out Dr. Pierre Kory's story. He championed the use of steroids against COVID, Ron Johnson brought him into the Senate. The "expert" community pooh poohed him and he got canned from UWisconsin Health. A month later steroids were the standard of care across US medicine because of his entreaties.
Now he's backing Ivermectin which shows amazing results (better then HCQ). https://ivmmeta.com/ Ron Johnson brought him back to the Senate to discuss it and YouTube blocked the videos of the testimony. Best example out there of how we suffer as a society when idiot elitists who think they know everything call the shots.
You can also see other treatment results from the top navigation bar there.
Steroids are what changed the death rates last year around June, the rate of deaths dropped dramatically by using steroids to dampen the body's immune response against the lungs.
The data AT LEAST say we needed to be doing multiple good randomized trials, which did start but got cancelled when it got politicized.
You are absolutely correct. I have made a point of reading the studies purporting to show mask efficacy and have yet to find one even mildly convincing.
The fact that the CDC and Fauci say otherwise just further undermines the minimal credibility they still have.
The notion that these studies reflect good science is absurd.
This comment doesn’t even make sense to me, are you disputing the effective use of masks prior to vaccination?
Plain dishonesty! What Haim is saying is clear to a 4 year old but it doesn't fit your narrative so you instantly assume a confrontational stance and try to put words in his mouth that clearly are not in his post.
Hahahahaha....
Yes he is, as have numerous studies.
Pietro ... meet Unwoke.... Unwoke.... Pietro...
Thanks for proving my point about his post.
Hands up! Don’t shoot!
Simmer down brave patriot... all I did was ask for clarification.
No. Clarification wasn't your aim as these 2 additional posts of yours show.
I am asking for clarification. It is unclear.
Peter Jackson is working on another LOTR movie and is looking for a Grand Troll - you should audition. You are certain to win the role.
Liar liar pants on fire.....
Bari's column is not a playground for children. It's called COMMONS SENSE WITH BARI WEISS.
Barney Fife blows his whistle hard, points at the offensive comment, adjusts his free speech, anti cancel culture badge, points at Galleta and yells frantically, “Citizen arrest! Citizen arrest!”
Hahahahaha. Take yerself a bit more seriously ‘tard
Your best course at this stage is to apologize to Bari. This is her column.
Get a life Mistress Cleo.
Great comment! That study out of Stanford is poo pooed by my leftist acquaintances as it’s been dissed by politifact. Politifact!
It's probably more worthy of being "poo pooed" because it got shat on. It's been retracted by the journal that published it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7680614
"The Editorial Committee concluded that the author’s hypothesis is misleading on the following basis:
1. A broader review of existing scientific evidence clearly shows that approved masks with correct certification, and worn in compliance with guidelines, are an effective prevention of COVID-19 transmission.
2. The manuscript misquotes and selectively cites published papers. References #16, 17, 25 and 26 are all misquoted.
3. Table 1. Physiological and Psychological Effects of Wearing Facemask and Their Potential Health Consequences, generated by the author. All data in the table is unverified, and there are several speculative statements.
4. The author submitted that he is currently affiliated to Stanford University, and VA Palo Alto Health Care System. However, both institutions have confirmed that Dr Vainshelboim ended his connection with them in 2016."
Don’t appeal to authority.
This is Common Sense...