replying…
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Ninja’d.
Am I really the only one here who has looked at this rubbish “study?” It’s complete garbage.
But even if you ignore its many design & execution flaws, and take it at face value, the results of this giant “RCT” that tried so very hard to support masks, were that cloth masks are completely useless, and surgical masks provide only a tiny amount of benefit – but only for people over 50.
You and I have nothing to discuss on this topic.
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Well, they’re utterly useless for stopping or slowing transmission of aerosolized respiratory viruses, but I’m sure they have other uses. People say they keep their faces warm in the winter. Personally I prefer a scarf for that, but YMMV. They also seem to be popular for classroom discipline for lazy teachers.
Btw, did you even read the Bangladeshi study you posted, or just the headlines about it?
[Note: edited by VA to remove reference(s) to deleted post]
Sorry to disappointed, but I muted her for 1 week.
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I suggest reading the study itself before blasting Marcie.
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I’m still waiting for Marcie’s suggested conclusive study design.
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I’ve never liked scarves. I have an irrational fear I’ll be strangled by one. Masks are much nicer.
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This one was pretty well-designed, from what I can tell. In a medical setting, so kind of a “home field advantage” for masks in the sense that HCW presumably have better mask hygiene practices than the general public. The null hypothesis was no difference between medical masks & cloth masks for respiratory virus (clinical symptoms or laboratory confirmed). Hospital wards were randomized & assigned to medical masks, cloth masks, or a control arm (standard practice, which included “some masking” [w/medical masks]).
Conclusion: cloth masks performed significantly worse than both the medical mask arm and the control arm.
Nah, much easier to just read headlines & toss around mental health slurs.
One big problem with this study (as you want to use it) is that it is the health care workers wearing masks, not the sick people.
Masks work best when everybody is wearing one. This study may show the selfishness in not wearing a mask, because it implies other peoples’ masks will not protect them from a sick person who is not wearing a mask. Only the person who might be sick can protect other people from themselves by wearing a mask. It implies mask mandates are the correct public policy.
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Did you bother to read the letter submitted by the authors in the spring of 2020?
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I did. Did you?
They caution HCW against trusting in homemade cloth masks as any form of protection but they “might be better than nothing” despite not being evidence-based. They also say masks alone are not enough & HCW should wear eye protection & gloves.
(Emphasis added)
I will admit that the quality of cloth masks varies significantly from single layer ones I can see through to 3 layers tightly woven. In the study you liked, they used 2 layer masks, which is not what’s recommended.
The Bangladesh study used the Cadillac of cloth masks & they still showed no effect, even with all the baked in biases favoring masks.
But I thought you called that study BS?
I just don’t get it. Why the extreme backlash against masks.
I don’t like them. But…
Wearing pants, socks and shoes in 90 degree heat is way more uncomfortable, but that is also something I’ve been required to do.
Why do people flip their shit about masks, but nobody seems to care about dress codes?
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I only skimmed the study, but they had a significant effect on symptomatic covid. I can’t get it to paste in, but it’s figure 2. Cloth masks reduce symptomatic covid by 8.5% with p = 0.048 (and null hypothesis a zero effect i assume.)
Notice too that with the symptomatic seroprevalence, the confidence interval on the mask effects contains the surgical mask point effect. So this is another example where a study does not find a statistically significant effect, but also cannot rule out a practically useful effect. The error bars are large enough that it simply isn’t that useful. Your twitter posters should have pointed that out.
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