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Amazon refuses to sell book on Covid-19 and lockdowns

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Re: Amazon refuses to sell book on Covid-19 and lockdowns

#221

Post by HideousKojima »

DanBC wrote: post #181
Will_Parker wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no scientific evidence they are effective in reducing the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission It's a disease spread by exhaled droplets. How the heck could masks _not_ work? Why has common sense, as an acceptable way to obtain knowledge, died in the general public?

In healthcare there's a bunch of stuff that sounds plausible, and then we do the research, and we find that it doesn't help or it causes harm. Evidence based medicine isn't there to stop crystal healing. It's there to work out whether knee arthroscopy is better than placebo. (For some patients it isn't). Masks have a plausible mechanism of action. But they also have plausible mechanisms of harm: they may reduce socia…

The Lancet's credibility is kind of in the toilet right now thanks to publishing that Hydroxychloroquine study that appears to have had the data pulled from thin air

Re: Amazon refuses to sell book on Covid-19 and lockdowns

#222

Post by HideousKojima »

msandford wrote: post #154
ianai wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best I heard it explained as was a dilemma. Do you tell people that only n95 masks or better work to protect the wearer? If you do then, because enough stockpile of n95 masks wasn’t maintained for this pandemic, critical medical practitioners like ER staff, nurses, doctors, surgeons wouldn’t be able to wear PPE. Or Do you lie and tell people n95 masks don’t work in the hopes essential medical personnel are then a…

Dilemma or not lying erodes trust. Was it worth it? Probably not is what a lot of people are saying.

It also ignores a third option (and one that was actually used anyways), blocking all shipments of n95 masks to retail outlets to send to hospitals instead

Re: Amazon refuses to sell book on Covid-19 and lockdowns

#223

Post by jdc »

DanBC wrote: post #183
dougmany wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am always amused at how effective the There is no scientific evidence line is. That just means it has not been studied. No one has studied masks on this specific strain? It's new for crying out loud.

There is a lot of work on respiratory viruses and masks, and none of the RCTs can find a benefit of wearing masks. > No one has studied masks on this specific strain? It's new for crying out loud. Yes they have. Here's one where they take four patients who have covid-19 and fit them with masks and ask them to cough onto petri dishes. They find covid outside the masks. https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-1342

Looks like the authors retracted this one!

Re: Amazon refuses to sell book on Covid-19 and lockdowns

#224

Post by ska »

darawk wrote: post #98
wwweston wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Remember what the official word was for all too long: masks don't work, but save them for health workers. Who said masks don't work? What I recall people saying is: * most masks provide marginal protection to the wearer * the masks that provide effective protection should be saved for those in situations where they need them (and can be knowledgeably used) * most people probably don't need those masks There's a wor…

The CDC and WHO both at various times recommended against the general public wearing masks. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/4/13/21214114/media-coronavi... This advice was wrong. It is not just sick people that benefit from wearing masks. It is not true that people are flattening that into "masks don't work". Masks don't work was repeated many, many times by these organizations. Here's an example: https://www.cidrap.…

  These organizations were dead wrong, and it had severe consequences for the spread of infection.
There really does not seem to be good evidence for this statement, and I've looked although not exhaustively. Got any good primary sources?

Lot's of things are tried with a novel virus, and only some of them work. The only things so far that seem to be clearly working are distancing regulations and effective contract trace, the latter being very difficult to implement.

Re: Amazon refuses to sell book on Covid-19 and lockdowns

#225

Post by ceejayoz »

DanBC wrote: post #212
jdc wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then let's solve that problem!

We need better evidence that masks provide any benefit and don't cause harm before we try to fix problems.

We really don't at this point:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

> The use of face masks was protective for both health-care workers and people in the community exposed to infection, with both the frequentist and Bayesian analyses lending support to face mask use irrespective of setting. Our unadjusted analyses might, at first impression, suggest use of face masks in the community setting to be less effective than in the health-care setting, but after accounting for differential N95 respirator use between health-care and non-health-care settings, we did not detect any striking differences in effectiveness of face mask use between settings. The credibility of effect-modification across settings was, therefore, low. Wearing face masks was also acceptable and feasible. Policy makers at all levels should, therefore, strive to address equity implications for groups with currently limited access to face masks and eye protection.

The onus is on the "they're dangerous!" folks now.

Re: Amazon refuses to sell book on Covid-19 and lockdowns

#226

Post by DanBC »

aspenmayer wrote: post #213
DanBC wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. There's no evidence that masks do anything at all to prevent public spread. People point to countries that had successful anti-covid work and use of masks, but they're missing all the other work those countries did around social distancing and track and trace.

Lack of evidence is not evidence of absence.

But we have evidence about respiratory viruses and masks, and it all says they don't work.

We even have the beginnings of evidence coming through for SARS-CoV-2. They got people who have covid to wear a mask and cough on a petri dish. Covid escaped the masks.

Re: Amazon refuses to sell book on Covid-19 and lockdowns

#227

Post by StuntPope »

JPKab wrote: post #132
wwweston wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Remember what the official word was for all too long: masks don't work, but save them for health workers. Who said masks don't work? What I recall people saying is: * most masks provide marginal protection to the wearer * the masks that provide effective protection should be saved for those in situations where they need them (and can be knowledgeably used) * most people probably don't need those masks There's a wor…

Something that I think is important about the concept of free speech is that journalists and authors shouldn't be attempting to worry about the first and second order effects of their writings. They can't possibly correctly predict them, because people can't predict the future. Just take all of your thoughts on digital books on Kindle, switch them to a collection of physical publishers who have a monopoly on printing…

Well said. Let's not forget Ignaz Semmelweiss, who make the outlandish claim that surgical and childbirth mortalities would decrease if surgeons washed their hands between procedures.

The reason why was because he declared there existed something called "bacteria", invisible to the eye, which was infecting patients and killing them.

He was ridiculed (#fakenews!), stripped of his professional degrees, LOCKED IN AN INSANE ASYLUM and eventually, beaten to death by guards.

Well, turned out, ole Semmelweiss was onto something. Who knew?

Re: Amazon refuses to sell book on Covid-19 and lockdowns

#229

Post by ceejayoz »

DanBC wrote: post #202
jdc wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please elaborate on these cases in which masks have supposedly a net negative effect on the wearer.

It's in the above tweet. Your mask is by definition contaminated (that's why you wear it, to catch the contamination), and many people fiddle with their masks. They then rub their eyes, or they touch their mouth.

People touch their faces all the time, whether they're wearing masks or not. This theoretical harm exists equally in both cases; in fact, touching the mask may remind you you're not supposed to be touching your face, and trigger a hand washing or hand sanitizer use.

Re: Amazon refuses to sell book on Covid-19 and lockdowns

#230

Post by DanBC »

ceejayoz wrote: post #225
DanBC wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need better evidence that masks provide any benefit and don't cause harm before we try to fix problems.

We really don't at this point: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... > The use of face masks was protective for both health-care workers and people in the community exposed to infection, with both the frequentist and Bayesian analyses lending support to face mask use irrespective of setting. Our unadjusted analyses might, at first impression, suggest use of face masks in the community settin…

You know you've linked me to a pop-sci piece about a study that I've already linked several times in this thread?

> However, the authors note that the findings on face masks and eye protection are based on limited evidence.

So limited that this finding was "low confidence". And that's for optimal use of N95 masks, not for fluid resistant surgical masks or cloth masks.

Here's what the actual study said:

> From a policy and public health perspective, current policies of at least 1 m physical distancing seem to be strongly associated with a large protective effect, and distances of 2 m could be more effective. These data could also facilitate harmonisation of the definition of exposed (eg, within 2 m), which has implications for contact tracing. The quantitative estimates provided here should inform disease-modelling studies, which are important for planning pandemic response efforts. Policy makers around the world should strive to promptly and adequately address equity implications for groups with currently limited access to face masks and eye protection. For health-care workers and administrators, our findings suggest that N95 respirators might be more strongly associated with protection from viral transmission than surgical masks. Both N95 and surgical masks have a stronger association with protection compared with single-layer masks. Eye protection might also add substantial protection. For the general public, evidence shows that physical distancing of more than 1 m is highly effective and that face masks are associated with protection, even in non-health-care settings, with either disposable surgical masks or reusable 12–16-layer cotton ones, although much of this evidence was on mask use within households and among contacts of cases. Eye protection is typically under considered and can be effective in community settings. However, no intervention, even when properly used, was associated with complete protection from infection. Other basic measures (eg, hand hygiene) are still needed in addition to physical distancing and use of face masks and eye protection.

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