After 15 months, we have overwhelming evidence that masks do little if anything to stymie the spread of the virus. By continuing to ignore this obvious evidence we delay better understanding of how viruses which cause ILI truly behave and spread.
Instead of blindly chanting "we know they work" every time they are mentioned, we should be …
After 15 months, we have overwhelming evidence that masks do little if anything to stymie the spread of the virus. By continuing to ignore this obvious evidence we delay better understanding of how viruses which cause ILI truly behave and spread.
Instead of blindly chanting "we know they work" every time they are mentioned, we should be exploring why they don't work. Is it the way we wear them? The filtration sizes? The virus behavior? Do we know how many virus particles are exhaled per breath? How many virus particles are inhaled per breath? How many virus particles are needed to infect? Does the constant touching and reuse degrade them and that is why they don't work? Is it the fit size, the gaps on the sides and bottom rendering them near useless?
I understand the initial adoption, the reliance on weak studies was all we had to go on. But we have better studies now, we have mountains of real world scenarios, and it's clear we have all been adopting a talisman and nothing more.
There is one RCT to my knowledge - the Danish mask study. It isn't perfect, but the best we have (so far) in the gold standard of scientific study. Meanwhile the CDC ignores this and points to absurdly bad studies like the "Kansas Mask Study" and "Association of State-Issued Mask Mandates and Allowing On-Premises Restaurant Dining with County-Level COVID-19 Case and Death Growth Rates" - studies which no doubt will be used for decades to come in meta-science critique examining data drudging, p-hacking, bias, and possibly outright fraud. These studies are so insanely bad they'd make Diederik Stapel and Andrew Wakefield blush. At least, much like Stapel's fraud, they aren't doing direct damage (like Wakefield) but they are convincing a future generation of scientists that viruses behave in a way which know is incorrect, and that could do a different sort of damage - like if we had clung to Miasma to explain Cholrea a few more decades type of bad.
I always wondered how the scientific community clung to Bloodletting for 200 years after William Harvey published De Motu Cordis, now I am getting the answer.
Possible that masks in the OR reduce the number of surgical site infections but those assertions are not fully known. Primary reason we wear masks is to not get blood and other nasty stuff on our faces (happens way more often than you think).
We wore masks prior to vaccines to protect you dumb asses. That some of you geniuses refused to do the same is the price we pay for coexisting with dumb phuck.
Random side note, Wakefield made no claims of statistical inference, he published a peer-reviewed case study which is a perfectly legit method of communicating early scientific results. Not saying he did the world a favor with that publication but I think it would have been better refuted with a civil discussion. His aggressive "cancellation" turned out to be a harbinger of things to come and, given that vaccine resistance has not much dropped over the years, turned out to be a disastrous backfire that only hardened the opposition. Much better we had been able discuss the result on Bari's page!
Regarding Wakefield IIRC two problems not to do with statistical inference/p-hacking:
1) Conflict of interests not disclose - he was attempting to get patent for his own single dose measles vaccine and he was on retainer for a lawyer planning to sue the vaccine companies.
2) He misrepresented the medical details of the children in his study, claiming all the children showed signs of autism shortly after receiving the MMR vaccine, when some it started before their vaccine, others months/years afterwards.
This is how I recall it at least.
I'm not sure I concur with your point it was an "aggressive cancellation" - it took 12 years to retract the study, but I will consider your point, I haven't given that much thought honestly, so I will turn it over from that position a bit.
To be honest, this theory makes no sense based on accepted practices.
Why do surgeons wear masks in the operating room?
This virus isn’t transmitted via surfaces.
You believe masking doesn’t prevent the spewing of virus particles with coughs and sneezes, forceful yelling, singing, speaking in close proximity to others?
Surgeons wear masks in the OR to minimize and eliminate infection at the open site, which is the goal of asepsis. They are not wearing masks because they might give the patient the flu, which is why they don't wear masks when consulting the patient pre and post op (at least prior to 2020).
Note you used the word "believe". I look for evidence, not belief.
If you want to wear a mask, go for it. Get vaccinated, wear a mask, social distance or stay in your basement - just do whatever you feel you want to do. Stop being a bully.
Flu is primarily deadly for people over the age of 80, and people with pre-existing co-morbid illnesses. Flu also has a 99.95% recovery rate...oh, wait..
You don’t believe the flu is transmitted via airborne particles or you don’t believe masks reduce the particles spewed, the force and distance they travel.
Again, it is not about "belief", it is about examining the evidence we have.
Prior to 2020 the consensus in the medical and scientific community that face masks as a tool to prevent ILI was weak and needed further study. As Michael Crichton noted "science isn't consensus", so we were right to "try it out" and we rushed in a number of studies that didn't actually do a real RCT, but instead mostly did a variation of "species swap" (we measured if sodium chloride particles for examples could pass through a mask on a dummy, or if Bill Nye could blow out birthday cake candles).
So these studies seemed promising, and we looked at Japan and South Korea and they were wearing masks with good results, so we gave it a shot. Redfield, et all made claims a year ago "If 80% people wore masks we could drive this virus into the ground".
And so we did. Far exceeding 80%. And then the virus surged, and didn't seem to give a fuck whether we had one mask, or two. And this held true in blue states, red states, Canada, France, nursing homes, Spain, Italy.
Meanwhile Japan spikes. We claimed masks were the reason India didn't get hit, then made excuses when they did. We never stopped to consider maybe South Korea ranking 183rd in Obesity might have given them more of an edge than masks against a virus were obesity is the #1 comorbidity.
We have 15 months of real world data showing that our hypothesis failed, yet we continue to cling to it because the question has become political and no longer tied to evidence.
Do I "believe" the flu is transmitted via airborne particles? That is what the evidence points to, so of course.
But the behavior of those particles continues to behave in ways we aren't able to explain or accurately predict. If it turns every breath a symptomatic person exhales sends 100,000 virus particulate into the air, and it only takes 10 particles to infect a person, does a filtration of 90% matter? If the virus particles are aerosolized and 1/3 the size of tobacco smoke particles, does it just blow through the mask invisible to the eye just like smoke does when exhaled through a mask? Does the leak on the sides, above, below the mask give enough chance for the virus to escape? Do the virus particles cling to the mask and our constant touching of them, pocketing of them, hanging on the rearview mirror give the virus another chance to infect? I don't know, but these seem like the questions we should be exploring.
There is no shame admitting that we simply don't know how an organism which requires an electron microscope to observe behaves, infects, and seemingly bypasses masks.
The longer we blindly assign characteristics to the behavior of viruses which fly in the face of observable evidence, the more we delay better science.
Ask yourself why masks were not used, prior to 2020, as a general constant PPE in nursing homes. Most of the deaths, prior to 2020, in nursing homes were caused by respiratory infections. If masks would have prevented those deaths, why weren’t they used. Masks would have been one of the cheapest and efficient methods of reducing deaths.
Can you provide evidence in the form of RCT studies backing that claim?
It is possible that claim will wind up being true, but the observable results so far aren't supporting it.
Now if we would be honest about that fact, we might understand why it isn't work.
Suppose it turns out that a symptomatic person masking does reduce transmission, but only if it is a fresh, single use, form fitting mask. If the mask is cloth, or has been used, or in your pocket, the impact is near zero.
And perhaps the reason we aren't seeing the benefit is because we are asking everyone to mask, everywhere, all the time, regardless of actual risk. And that creates "mask fatigue", and we are re-using the same masks over and over, the filtration is getting degraded, we stuff them in pockets and crumple them up and let our guard down.
This sort of knowledge may help us get closer to discovering the truth of what is going on.
Meanwhile Denmark is letting their kids socialize, sit near each other, interact with teachers - all unmasked, and everything is going fine. And it isn't because they have completely eliminated the virus either, they still get ~700 cases a day, but it's not exploding, not overwhelming them. This observable scenario seems to debunk quite a bit of our current assumptions.
Is this the part where we dive into fluid dynamics? I don't think that is necessary.
You are making the error of "species swapping" which is a common mistake in science, like when we test a drug on mice and make the prediction it should work on humans.
Take your example, the fan is blowing pathogens, you feel the breeze less on your face. But you are still breathing. Where is that air you are inhaling coming from? You are pulling it through the mask, which the virus can pass through since it is smaller than the holes in the mask. You are pulling the air through the top, the bottom, the sides of the mask as well. All places the virus can slip through.
Again, I suggest you take the example of cigarette smoke since it can give you an observable look at how air flows around us. You know you would still smell and taste the smoke if it was exhaled through a mask and you were wearing a mask, right? Are you disagreeing on that fact?
If you accept that, then why would a virus which aerosolized, tasteless, odorless, and smaller than tobacco smoke somehow be halted from entering your lungs while tobacco smoke passes through the masks undeterred?
If they had a meaningful impact why did cases explode in places where masks adoption was 95%? Conversely why aren't we seeing cases explode in parts of Florida and Texas where mask use has plummeted? Why did the virus never get very far in Scandinavian countries which have the lowest mask adoption rates in the world, sent their kids back to school in April/May of 2020? How many times did we hear "this throwing gas on the fire" by the experts (insert Super Bowl, packed bars, concerts, baseball games, etc, etc) and the expert opinions fail to materialize?
We can create all sorts of "put a fan on your face" type scenarios all we want. I ask you instead, observe what is right before us.
I don’t know who you are but you are making a fool of yourself all over this comment section responding to well explained claims (that may or may not be true, I am not sure) with the equivalent of “haha you are an idiot”. You’re exhibiting the exact behavior that is being outlined in the beginning of the article. Maybe try less condescencion and more engagement. People will listen to you more.
So putting your hand over your mouth will also stop the spread of COVID, which we know because it feels different and you can definitely feel pathogens entering your mouth.
Could be you are both right. It may be true that masks reduce airborne pathogens.
It may also be true that this still doesn't stop transmission.
For example, if this research were correct[1], and that symptomatic patients release 100,000+ particles per minute, AND, this research is correct[2], that as few as 10 particles are all that is needed to infect for influenza, then you could see how masks reducing 90% of particles wouldn't really matter much.
Would you go to establishments that allow indoor smoking and trust your mask to block the second hand smoke? Of course not, and those particles are 3x larger than Covid-19.
This is an example of turning masks into a religion.
Here you have an opinion piece from June of 2020, pushing the hypothesis that Hong Kong's success was due to masks. They cite a study of some mice in a cage even (it's hilarious that was their evidence, but I digress).
It's a fine hypothesis. So we tried it out. Every country in the world except Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland tried out this theory.
And what happened? It failed. Absolutely miserably failed.
If you follow dogma, then you refuse to question your belief. The mask has to work. So you will create n-number of explanations, excuses, alternatives, none of which can be backed by evidence. All that matters is the starting premise is correct. That is religion.
Now if you follow science, you say "ok, why didn't that hypothesis work?"
Could it be guilty of mistaking correlation with causation?
Certainly if I were to point out Denmark is not wearing masks and they are doing just fine, you would point out "correlation doesn't' equal causation" and you would be right.
But ask yourself, how many failures of replicating the hypothesis does it take before you reject the hypothesis? Are you somehow thinking that people secretly were not wearing masks in Chicago, or Toronto, or Paris, or Berlin? Did they suddenly stop wearing them in Japan and that is why they spiked? Do you have evidence of this?
Why not consider other explanations and encourage the search for truth which is fundamental of science?
Some possible explanations:
1) Asian countries may have experienced similar SARs type viruses in the past, giving them some immunity (there is a working theory that the reason kids seem to shake it off so easily is because they have been spreading colds to each other)
2) Other unknown genetic factors in Asian cultures played a role we don't understand
3) The extremely low obesity in Hong Kong, South Korea, etc meant their populations were never at real risk anyway
4) Many of these countries we lack data on total deaths to double check excess deaths. South Korea is one country we do have some insight into excess deaths, and they have ~20,000 more deaths in 2020 than they should, yet had recorded only 1,000 Covid deaths. Compare that to Sweden which saw ~8500 excess deaths in 2020 and nearly a matching ~8500 covid deaths in 2020. It's a 7.4% increase over the norm compared to a 9% increase. Framed like that hard to see Sweden as the model of a disaster and South Korea as paragon of doing it right.
5) How each country handled their elderly is the most important factor in how many deaths occurred. Perhaps Hong Kong didn't confine their elderly to their room for a year blocking visitation, socialization, meals with other residents and that made a bigger difference.
I'm throwing out some ideas. Bottom line, we don't know.
That is my point. All we do know is that when we tried to reproduce the results of that hypothesis, it failed 175 times out 176 times.
When that hypothesis was ignored, it worked 3.5 times out of 4.
I've been reasonable, but have to go enjoy this fine weather. If you want to test your ideas out to sharpen them, maybe go to https://ianmsc.substack.com/
Well said. If there is a saturation effect, a 90 % reduction of virus particles may only reduce infection by 10 %. Add to that people being less cautious because they feel protected or that it's ok to go out despite having symptoms, and the masks may well do more harm than good.
After 15 months, we have overwhelming evidence that masks do little if anything to stymie the spread of the virus. By continuing to ignore this obvious evidence we delay better understanding of how viruses which cause ILI truly behave and spread.
Instead of blindly chanting "we know they work" every time they are mentioned, we should be exploring why they don't work. Is it the way we wear them? The filtration sizes? The virus behavior? Do we know how many virus particles are exhaled per breath? How many virus particles are inhaled per breath? How many virus particles are needed to infect? Does the constant touching and reuse degrade them and that is why they don't work? Is it the fit size, the gaps on the sides and bottom rendering them near useless?
I understand the initial adoption, the reliance on weak studies was all we had to go on. But we have better studies now, we have mountains of real world scenarios, and it's clear we have all been adopting a talisman and nothing more.
There is one RCT to my knowledge - the Danish mask study. It isn't perfect, but the best we have (so far) in the gold standard of scientific study. Meanwhile the CDC ignores this and points to absurdly bad studies like the "Kansas Mask Study" and "Association of State-Issued Mask Mandates and Allowing On-Premises Restaurant Dining with County-Level COVID-19 Case and Death Growth Rates" - studies which no doubt will be used for decades to come in meta-science critique examining data drudging, p-hacking, bias, and possibly outright fraud. These studies are so insanely bad they'd make Diederik Stapel and Andrew Wakefield blush. At least, much like Stapel's fraud, they aren't doing direct damage (like Wakefield) but they are convincing a future generation of scientists that viruses behave in a way which know is incorrect, and that could do a different sort of damage - like if we had clung to Miasma to explain Cholrea a few more decades type of bad.
I always wondered how the scientific community clung to Bloodletting for 200 years after William Harvey published De Motu Cordis, now I am getting the answer.
Possible that masks in the OR reduce the number of surgical site infections but those assertions are not fully known. Primary reason we wear masks is to not get blood and other nasty stuff on our faces (happens way more often than you think).
We wore masks prior to vaccines to protect you dumb asses. That some of you geniuses refused to do the same is the price we pay for coexisting with dumb phuck.
Random side note, Wakefield made no claims of statistical inference, he published a peer-reviewed case study which is a perfectly legit method of communicating early scientific results. Not saying he did the world a favor with that publication but I think it would have been better refuted with a civil discussion. His aggressive "cancellation" turned out to be a harbinger of things to come and, given that vaccine resistance has not much dropped over the years, turned out to be a disastrous backfire that only hardened the opposition. Much better we had been able discuss the result on Bari's page!
Regarding Wakefield IIRC two problems not to do with statistical inference/p-hacking:
1) Conflict of interests not disclose - he was attempting to get patent for his own single dose measles vaccine and he was on retainer for a lawyer planning to sue the vaccine companies.
2) He misrepresented the medical details of the children in his study, claiming all the children showed signs of autism shortly after receiving the MMR vaccine, when some it started before their vaccine, others months/years afterwards.
This is how I recall it at least.
I'm not sure I concur with your point it was an "aggressive cancellation" - it took 12 years to retract the study, but I will consider your point, I haven't given that much thought honestly, so I will turn it over from that position a bit.
To be honest, this theory makes no sense based on accepted practices.
Why do surgeons wear masks in the operating room?
This virus isn’t transmitted via surfaces.
You believe masking doesn’t prevent the spewing of virus particles with coughs and sneezes, forceful yelling, singing, speaking in close proximity to others?
Surgeons wear masks in the OR to minimize and eliminate infection at the open site, which is the goal of asepsis. They are not wearing masks because they might give the patient the flu, which is why they don't wear masks when consulting the patient pre and post op (at least prior to 2020).
Note you used the word "believe". I look for evidence, not belief.
This is moronic....
If you want to wear a mask, go for it. Get vaccinated, wear a mask, social distance or stay in your basement - just do whatever you feel you want to do. Stop being a bully.
Hahahahaha 🤔😳🤣
If the flu was deadly....
Flu is primarily deadly for people over the age of 80, and people with pre-existing co-morbid illnesses. Flu also has a 99.95% recovery rate...oh, wait..
You don’t believe the flu is transmitted via airborne particles or you don’t believe masks reduce the particles spewed, the force and distance they travel.
How do you think this virus is transmitted?
Again, it is not about "belief", it is about examining the evidence we have.
Prior to 2020 the consensus in the medical and scientific community that face masks as a tool to prevent ILI was weak and needed further study. As Michael Crichton noted "science isn't consensus", so we were right to "try it out" and we rushed in a number of studies that didn't actually do a real RCT, but instead mostly did a variation of "species swap" (we measured if sodium chloride particles for examples could pass through a mask on a dummy, or if Bill Nye could blow out birthday cake candles).
So these studies seemed promising, and we looked at Japan and South Korea and they were wearing masks with good results, so we gave it a shot. Redfield, et all made claims a year ago "If 80% people wore masks we could drive this virus into the ground".
And so we did. Far exceeding 80%. And then the virus surged, and didn't seem to give a fuck whether we had one mask, or two. And this held true in blue states, red states, Canada, France, nursing homes, Spain, Italy.
Meanwhile Japan spikes. We claimed masks were the reason India didn't get hit, then made excuses when they did. We never stopped to consider maybe South Korea ranking 183rd in Obesity might have given them more of an edge than masks against a virus were obesity is the #1 comorbidity.
We have 15 months of real world data showing that our hypothesis failed, yet we continue to cling to it because the question has become political and no longer tied to evidence.
Do I "believe" the flu is transmitted via airborne particles? That is what the evidence points to, so of course.
But the behavior of those particles continues to behave in ways we aren't able to explain or accurately predict. If it turns every breath a symptomatic person exhales sends 100,000 virus particulate into the air, and it only takes 10 particles to infect a person, does a filtration of 90% matter? If the virus particles are aerosolized and 1/3 the size of tobacco smoke particles, does it just blow through the mask invisible to the eye just like smoke does when exhaled through a mask? Does the leak on the sides, above, below the mask give enough chance for the virus to escape? Do the virus particles cling to the mask and our constant touching of them, pocketing of them, hanging on the rearview mirror give the virus another chance to infect? I don't know, but these seem like the questions we should be exploring.
There is no shame admitting that we simply don't know how an organism which requires an electron microscope to observe behaves, infects, and seemingly bypasses masks.
The longer we blindly assign characteristics to the behavior of viruses which fly in the face of observable evidence, the more we delay better science.
Masks reduce transmission risks in close quarters amongst the unvaccinated for ALL airborne pathogens.
To deny that is to be Dr. Hollywood Fauci thinking we are all idiots when he doesn’t want us buying masks.
Ask yourself why masks were not used, prior to 2020, as a general constant PPE in nursing homes. Most of the deaths, prior to 2020, in nursing homes were caused by respiratory infections. If masks would have prevented those deaths, why weren’t they used. Masks would have been one of the cheapest and efficient methods of reducing deaths.
It’s not because masks don’t inhibit transmission of airborne pathogens.
You may make the argument this virus wasn’t lethal enough for all the hoopla. But an argument that masks do not reduce airborne pathogens is retarded.
The analogy of "using a chain link fence to keep out mosquitos" comes to mind...
Mosquitos self propel. The virus doesn’t have wings.
Umm- more about the "mesh v particle size"... but nvm.
It’s dumb phuckery, Amy, that’s what kind of phuckery is this....
Can you provide evidence in the form of RCT studies backing that claim?
It is possible that claim will wind up being true, but the observable results so far aren't supporting it.
Now if we would be honest about that fact, we might understand why it isn't work.
Suppose it turns out that a symptomatic person masking does reduce transmission, but only if it is a fresh, single use, form fitting mask. If the mask is cloth, or has been used, or in your pocket, the impact is near zero.
And perhaps the reason we aren't seeing the benefit is because we are asking everyone to mask, everywhere, all the time, regardless of actual risk. And that creates "mask fatigue", and we are re-using the same masks over and over, the filtration is getting degraded, we stuff them in pockets and crumple them up and let our guard down.
This sort of knowledge may help us get closer to discovering the truth of what is going on.
Meanwhile Denmark is letting their kids socialize, sit near each other, interact with teachers - all unmasked, and everything is going fine. And it isn't because they have completely eliminated the virus either, they still get ~700 cases a day, but it's not exploding, not overwhelming them. This observable scenario seems to debunk quite a bit of our current assumptions.
Dude. Stand in front of a fan. Feel the breeze on your face.
Mask the fan. Feel the difference.
Now imagine that air the fan is blowing is carrying pathogens.
This is by far the dumbest argument I have ever heard.
Is this the part where we dive into fluid dynamics? I don't think that is necessary.
You are making the error of "species swapping" which is a common mistake in science, like when we test a drug on mice and make the prediction it should work on humans.
Take your example, the fan is blowing pathogens, you feel the breeze less on your face. But you are still breathing. Where is that air you are inhaling coming from? You are pulling it through the mask, which the virus can pass through since it is smaller than the holes in the mask. You are pulling the air through the top, the bottom, the sides of the mask as well. All places the virus can slip through.
Again, I suggest you take the example of cigarette smoke since it can give you an observable look at how air flows around us. You know you would still smell and taste the smoke if it was exhaled through a mask and you were wearing a mask, right? Are you disagreeing on that fact?
If you accept that, then why would a virus which aerosolized, tasteless, odorless, and smaller than tobacco smoke somehow be halted from entering your lungs while tobacco smoke passes through the masks undeterred?
If they had a meaningful impact why did cases explode in places where masks adoption was 95%? Conversely why aren't we seeing cases explode in parts of Florida and Texas where mask use has plummeted? Why did the virus never get very far in Scandinavian countries which have the lowest mask adoption rates in the world, sent their kids back to school in April/May of 2020? How many times did we hear "this throwing gas on the fire" by the experts (insert Super Bowl, packed bars, concerts, baseball games, etc, etc) and the expert opinions fail to materialize?
We can create all sorts of "put a fan on your face" type scenarios all we want. I ask you instead, observe what is right before us.
We’re in the shallow end.... hahahahaha
Hahahahaha.
OMG...
I don’t know who you are but you are making a fool of yourself all over this comment section responding to well explained claims (that may or may not be true, I am not sure) with the equivalent of “haha you are an idiot”. You’re exhibiting the exact behavior that is being outlined in the beginning of the article. Maybe try less condescencion and more engagement. People will listen to you more.
So putting your hand over your mouth will also stop the spread of COVID, which we know because it feels different and you can definitely feel pathogens entering your mouth.
Hahahaha. Da gene pool....
If the effect were so simple, studies would have detected it already for the flu, but they didn't. There is more going on than you think.
Hahahahahaha
😳🤣
That is your assumption, and is largely unsupported by research.
Dude. That’s insane. Hahahahaha. In - fucking - sane to assert airborne pathogens aren’t reduced by masking.
In - fucking - sane.
I mean, your understanding of this issue is, by your admission, driven by a belief system. What I said about the research is true.
Hahahahaha. 😁😝😳🤣
Could be you are both right. It may be true that masks reduce airborne pathogens.
It may also be true that this still doesn't stop transmission.
For example, if this research were correct[1], and that symptomatic patients release 100,000+ particles per minute, AND, this research is correct[2], that as few as 10 particles are all that is needed to infect for influenza, then you could see how masks reducing 90% of particles wouldn't really matter much.
Would you go to establishments that allow indoor smoking and trust your mask to block the second hand smoke? Of course not, and those particles are 3x larger than Covid-19.
[1] https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200603/COVID-19-patients-exhale-millions-of-viral-particles-per-hour.aspx
[2] https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/04/16/what-are-covid-19s-infectivity-and-viral-load-14723
They aren’t being propelled pigpen, your pathogens are seeping out around your mask instead of being expelled at others.
That combined with 6 feet and also masking has worked.
Exhibit A: Hong Kong
I’m not for sure why your resident genius doctor didn’t advise you of Hong Kong: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2020/06/28/coronavirus-hong-kong-face-masks-work-column/3262969001/
I hope you continue to practice social distancing for the rest of your life. That would reduce the probability of you passing on your genes to 0%.
This is an example of turning masks into a religion.
Here you have an opinion piece from June of 2020, pushing the hypothesis that Hong Kong's success was due to masks. They cite a study of some mice in a cage even (it's hilarious that was their evidence, but I digress).
It's a fine hypothesis. So we tried it out. Every country in the world except Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland tried out this theory.
And what happened? It failed. Absolutely miserably failed.
If you follow dogma, then you refuse to question your belief. The mask has to work. So you will create n-number of explanations, excuses, alternatives, none of which can be backed by evidence. All that matters is the starting premise is correct. That is religion.
Now if you follow science, you say "ok, why didn't that hypothesis work?"
Could it be guilty of mistaking correlation with causation?
Certainly if I were to point out Denmark is not wearing masks and they are doing just fine, you would point out "correlation doesn't' equal causation" and you would be right.
But ask yourself, how many failures of replicating the hypothesis does it take before you reject the hypothesis? Are you somehow thinking that people secretly were not wearing masks in Chicago, or Toronto, or Paris, or Berlin? Did they suddenly stop wearing them in Japan and that is why they spiked? Do you have evidence of this?
Why not consider other explanations and encourage the search for truth which is fundamental of science?
Some possible explanations:
1) Asian countries may have experienced similar SARs type viruses in the past, giving them some immunity (there is a working theory that the reason kids seem to shake it off so easily is because they have been spreading colds to each other)
2) Other unknown genetic factors in Asian cultures played a role we don't understand
3) The extremely low obesity in Hong Kong, South Korea, etc meant their populations were never at real risk anyway
4) Many of these countries we lack data on total deaths to double check excess deaths. South Korea is one country we do have some insight into excess deaths, and they have ~20,000 more deaths in 2020 than they should, yet had recorded only 1,000 Covid deaths. Compare that to Sweden which saw ~8500 excess deaths in 2020 and nearly a matching ~8500 covid deaths in 2020. It's a 7.4% increase over the norm compared to a 9% increase. Framed like that hard to see Sweden as the model of a disaster and South Korea as paragon of doing it right.
5) How each country handled their elderly is the most important factor in how many deaths occurred. Perhaps Hong Kong didn't confine their elderly to their room for a year blocking visitation, socialization, meals with other residents and that made a bigger difference.
I'm throwing out some ideas. Bottom line, we don't know.
That is my point. All we do know is that when we tried to reproduce the results of that hypothesis, it failed 175 times out 176 times.
When that hypothesis was ignored, it worked 3.5 times out of 4.
I've been reasonable, but have to go enjoy this fine weather. If you want to test your ideas out to sharpen them, maybe go to https://ianmsc.substack.com/
He'd probably love to debate further.
Btw... I am the kind of ex smoker that loves the smell of second hand smoke.
Not an equivalent to a pathogen dispersal but yes, I love second hand smoke, especially at outdoor restaurants.
Sometimes, I dream of the good ole days when I could walk into the smoking lounge at Atlanta’s international airport and just breathe deep.
Haha
I called you pigpen because you are supposed to imagine yourself masked, carrying your seeping coronavirus pathogens within your own personal space.
Maybe you geniuses can team up with Dr. Jill, get a nice big grant from addled Joe and spend the rest of your lives exploring this deep mystery.
😳😂
Well said. If there is a saturation effect, a 90 % reduction of virus particles may only reduce infection by 10 %. Add to that people being less cautious because they feel protected or that it's ok to go out despite having symptoms, and the masks may well do more harm than good.
Hahahahahaha. OMG. 👌👍🤣😂🤣