61–70 of 105 posts
Doesn’t seem like a very ground study. But living in Asia has taught me masks do work, and they work at school. My 3yo doesn’t get a cold when the 1 kid in the class is sneezing and coughing. The 1 case of covid didn’t spread in the school to Teachers or students. But I get there’s a bunch of adults who can’t wear masks as well as a 3yo so in that case the adults are more likely to catch or spread covid with their in…
Your one anecdote overturns this whole study?
There’s been quite a few of these studies, all with similar results. What’s unfortunate is that the remarkable “penetration” of the idea that cloth and standard surgical masks provided “adequate” (by any measure) protection was so great and peddled by such influential persons that there are now those who, despite plain empirical evidence, still maintain masks provide some material amount of benefit. I wonder at what…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Setting aside for a moment the fact that chronic, day-in-day-out long term use of N95s has never been studied for potential ill effects, why is it so difficult to discern any reduction in community transmission from Germany's N95 mandates?
> Setting aside for a moment the fact that chronic, day-in-day-out long term use of N95s has never been studied for potential ill effects... There are professions that've been doing this for decades without any apparent negative impacts.
I'm surprised nobody has raised concerns about the authors. This group is notorious for producing near-fraudulent preprints in support of their preconceptions and widely publicizing them. Tracy Hoeg was responsible for an atrocious VAERS-based study making false claims about vaccine safety, and Neeraj Sood was intimately involved in the Hoover Institution's successful efforts in March/April 2020 to persuade certain m…
Ad-hominem attacks are worthless on any politically-contentious issue, because of course people are going to be trying to destroy the reputation of scientists who present data that opposes a political narrative.
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It is almost entirely in populations of men who have sex with many male partners in western countries. It is much easier to reduce number of partners and be monogamous for a while (basically removes risk of monkeypox) than lock down everything (needed to remove most risk of covid).
Is it? I can’t find much real data, and, at least in the US, monkeypox surveillance appears to be at least as poor as COVID surveillance early in the pandemic.
They based the decision on data showing that almost all cases involve that demographic.
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I believe that you are entirely correct. One of the big lessons-learned is that the response should have been: "N95s work. They are very important. If you hoard them, healthcare professionals will die. Please donate your extras to your nearest hospital." I saw firsthand, working with findthemasks.com, just how many people came to that conclusion on their own and rapidly aggregated and donated as many N95s as they cou…
I’m fully on board with “N95s work” but I still think this information is near useless from a public health point of view. They need to be fitted properly, which among other things, means being clean shaven. If you thought mask mandates were political trouble, just wait for the shaving mandate.
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I don’t know what the quality of masks is like overseas but one thing you don’t see is cloth masks. If you do see them they are always over the top of an actual mask just for a fancy design. But never cloth only.
What is considered an actual mask here? N95, surgical, or something else?
Pretty much all masks are surgical 3ply now, at the start of covid it was quite hit and miss, alot of 'surgical' were not 3ply.
Doesn’t seem like a very ground study. But living in Asia has taught me masks do work, and they work at school. My 3yo doesn’t get a cold when the 1 kid in the class is sneezing and coughing. The 1 case of covid didn’t spread in the school to Teachers or students. But I get there’s a bunch of adults who can’t wear masks as well as a 3yo so in that case the adults are more likely to catch or spread covid with their in…
In Asia, actual decent factory-made masks seem to have been widely available for years. I would believe that the effects of people in Asia wearing masks sold in Asia is not the same as people in America wearing masks sold in America.