Do try to keep up, JFG. It’s BS in large part because the design included heavy bias in favor of masks. Despite these heavy biases, cloth masks still utterly failed.
Now, there were also severe execution flaws, too. If you want to argue those are strong enough to disregard this study entirely & how badly cloth masks failed here, have at it, I won’t argue, but that just leaves us with the prior research showing cloth masks “suck balls” as Ms twig would say.
Basically you’ve got a few months & million or so dollars wasted so a Yale economics professor could show that when you promote masks as being effective you get more mask wearing and when you offer poor villages rewards for using your preferred intervention you get underreported symptoms.
Maybe when you’re done condensplaining you can actually propose an acceptable study design (as I’ve asked you more than once) that’s applicable to the current COVID dumpster fire.
From the paper: “ We find clear evidence that surgical masks
lead to a relative reduction in symptomatic seroprevalence of 11.2% (aPR = 0.89 [0.78,1.00]; control prevalence = 0.80%; treatment prevalence = 0.71%). For cloth masks, we find an imprecise zero, although the confidence interval includes the point estimate for surgical masks (aPR = 0.95 [0.79,1.11]; control prevalence 0.67%; treatment prevalence 0.62%).”
Also when I look at the graph result, the significance is about 50%. This means the error should be similar to the effect which is 5%, ie we cannot really rule out 11.2% seen for surgical masks.
What am I missing?
More to the point, commenting on simply whether the study rules out zero, and conflating this with whether the study rules out the mask having useful effects, is irresponsible.
What is the confidence interval on the effects of cloth mask use from this study ? I don’t have the energy to figure it out. But you should know it is bad science to simply comment on the p value without the confidence interval.
And i don’t believe i’m being condescending. I’m just disagreeing with you.
This retrospective study suggests the rate of cardiac adverse events following the shots (particularly the 2nd mRNA shot) exceed the covid hospitalization rate for children age 12-17, especially boys age 12-15.
I fear this is a little apples & oranges, because it’s not clear from my (admittedly quick) read of this that the CAEs all resulted in hospitalization. On the other hand, they’re comparing the numbers of only one particular type of AE to covid hospitalizations for any cause, so the two mismatches might cancel out.
At any rate, this means your statement “But we do know…” is not true with any degree of certainty.
You’re apparently still missing the baseline seroprevalence for each of the arms of the trial - i.e the seroprevalence in each of the arms at the start of the trial, to which the endpoint should be compared if we want to know the effect, during the treatment period, of the treatment(s) vs the effect of the control (no treatment).
Without that comparison, the published results are literally meaningless.
Let me know when you find it.
If you do find it, let the authors know, too. They’re also missing it.
I don’t believe it’s common to hospitalize kids (or anyone) for myocarditis. I believe “need hospitalization” is a significantly worse outcome than “diagnosed with myocarditis”. Especially since news articles I’ve read said that vaccine-induced myocarditis was typically mild and self-correcting. Other articles similarly said that covid-induced myocarditis in kids was typically mild and the kids usually got better.
So while that’s relevant, and i think it’s an excellent reason to wait until vaccine studies have been completed rather than trying to get your 6 year old boy vaccinated “off label”, i don’t think that study makes the point you think it makes.
Either the study shows that the big fancy masks don’t work.
Or the study doesn’t show anything because of the biological realities of this test they did. (And whatever assumptions they made are probably better than the way you applied that study about healthcare workers wearing masks to whether masks wear when worn by sick people,)
You cannot have it both ways. Your criticisms still make no sense.
And my comment about misunderstanding or at least misstating the significance of being unable to reject the null hypothesis of masks not working (which is the technical language you and the twitter posters should be using) still stands.
You are not addressing the basic problems in the way you are thinking about all of these studies to focus on small particulars about different studies that may or may not be relevant.
When this study came out, my wife and I ditched our cloth masks and bought some surgical masks. Whenever we need to wear a mask in public setting it’s surgical now (though will wear KN95 if going to airport or crowded room or something like that).
Though I think this study must have had some problems with it. I don’t know how you explain the fact that masks only helped people over 50 years old unless under 50 year old people didn’t wear masks. But the paper never seemed to address mask-wearing prevalence by age.
This study alone would not be enough for me to ditch a good cloth mask for a surgical one. Some of the better cloth masks seem to block air going through the mask comparably to an N95 mask, although they are never going to have a seal for the N95.
Maybe if i have to choose between entering a room full of people with cloth masks, vs a room full of people with surgical masks, then this paper makes me choose the room full of people with surgical masks.
However this study does make me feel better about the surgical masks, which i didn’t think as much of before.
I agree though that the N95 is what you want to use when you want the mask to work regardless of whether other people are wearing masks. That is the only one where we have good evidence it works well, namely that healthcare workers get covid at community rates despite their higher exposure.
i haven’t read the article, but it is saying those flimsy plastic disposable surgical masks are somehow better than cloth masks? if so, i’ll totally ditch the cloth masks for it. the plastic surgical masks are easier to breathe in. didn’t realize they were better.
I’ve been thinking of starting a thread on masks, but I guess I’ll just post the tl;dr here – I’ve recently discovered KF94 masks, the Korean rated masks. They are affordable, light, easy to fit, and play well with glasses. They are probably nearly as good as an N95, especially if you haven’t had your N95 professionally fitted, and I find them a whole lot easier to wear.
Yeah, they are better than cloth masks unless the cloth mask has a serious filter. Like, the VOGmask has a very good filter. But it’s harder to breath through than a surgical mask.
The major issue with surgical masks is that they leak around the edges. The major issue with cloth masks is that they don’t contain an effective filter. I’ve read you can approximate the best of both worlds by wearing a snug cloth mask over a surgical mask.
I thought you did start one? wasn’t there one where you posted the “study” showing mask mandates “worked” in Jena, Germany, but then no one else really posted there?
I don’t think it makes the point you think I think it makes.
I had posted the study when I saw it, but then I wrote a whole paragraph on why it’s more apples-to-oranges than I would like to see, which is disappointing to me – not because it does or doesn’t make a certain point, but because (as I realized as I thought about it more last night) the two metrics of comparison are too different to really make any point. Better studies needed.
That said, I would rate this statement of yours “mostly true” in terms of what this study looked at:
in light of the research that “covid hospitalization” numbers may be vastly overstated for children.
(“Need hospitalization” is likely generally more serious than “diagnosed with myocarditis” but “hospitalized with covid” does not mean “hospitalized due to covid” up to almost half the time.)
