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[–]AcceleratedWallops 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Masks are utterly useless. There is no evidence base for their effectiveness whatsoever

I'm curious what is his basis for this claim. Way back in March, the initial thinking was that masks were not a good idea, since it would lead to people touching and grabbing at their face. Then Austria issued a mask mandate anyway and saw their rates plummet almost immediately. Since then, the effectiveness of masks seems to be well-established, except by conspiracy nuts who think fabric squares somehow take away their rights.

Also his comment about people under age 65 is interesting. Old people don't matter I guess? Surprising to see to the "fuck it, let the old people die" attitude from a medical professional.

[–]tomatosplat 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Omgawsh. How many times can I post this link that another kind saiditor gave me.https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article

And he didnt try to fuck old folks. He said care should be taken to avoid exposing them to it. Kind of like: DONT GO SEE GRANNY AT THE NURSING HOME IF YOU HAVE PNEUMONIA

[–]AcceleratedWallops 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Some comments on that article.

  1. Considering this is Saidit, I'm surprised you are sharing a Chinese study.

  2. This is a literature review, not a direct study. You are likely aware of that, but not everyone is going to actually look at the article.

  3. This is the wildest part to me:

However, results from our meta-analysis on RCTs did not provide evidence to support a protective effect of hand hygiene against transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza. 

I've never heard anyone arguing that we shouldn't be washing our hands. Do all these anti-mask people not wash their hands either? /s

But seriously , this I think really shows the limitations of these kinds of studies. Obviously you can't tell one group they're not allowed to wash their hands for X weeks, as that would be an ethics violation, just as you can't outright infect them with the flu. To achieve statistical signifance, you'd need a larger sample size than is feasible.

Interesting side note is that one could make this statement: this study shows wearing masks is as effective as hand-washing at stopping the flu. 🙃

  1. The findings of the individual studies don't quite match. Here's quotes from the first two cited RCTs:

We observed significant reductions in ILI during weeks 4-6 in the mask and hand hygiene group, compared with the control group, ranging from 35% (confidence interval [CI], 9%-53%) to 51% (CI, 13%-73%), after adjusting for vaccination and other covariates.

Face masks and hand hygiene combined may reduce the rate of ILI and confirmed influenza in community settings. These non-pharmaceutical measures should be recommended in crowded settings at the start of an influenza pandemic.

So I think a fair interpretation is that the results range from "masks don't seem to do much, but wear them anyway because they don't hurt" on the one end, to "masks are effective at stopping the flu" on the other, and this article says that statistically (across only a few studies, mind you--that's another surprise here, how few studies have actually been done) it errs toward the former.

So while interesting, I don't think this is quite the bombshell article you wanted it to be.

[–]HiddenFox 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

He clearly said we need to protect older more vulnerable people. It was in the 4th paragraph in case you missed it.

As for the effectiveness of masks.... He has a dam good point about HOW people wear them. Go to any grocery store and in 5 min you will find people "kinda" wearing them, mouth covered and noise hanging out, "saving you family and neighbors" (-Literal quote from my 6:00pm local news while I was writing this.)

Also, according to https://covid19info.live/austria/ Austria is now (Nov 19th) in the worse shape since this all started. With 77000+ active cases. As far as I'm aware mask are still mandatory there. This country and almost all others are in the same boat. The masks did nothing.

[–]tomatosplat 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

They dont work anyway . Read the text, or one of the times that I posted the link to where the cdc admits they dont work. Keep mosquitos out, or in, with a chain-link fence. Dare ya.

Do any of you people understand how small a virus is? The reason SARS was potentially catastrophic was because if it is on a dust particle, it can survive a hurricane- and land on US shores...
Anybody remember?

Anybody? Did you wear a mask with this airborne pathogen threat? Anybody?

Are you still alive?

Thought so.