Re:YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days
by goalieca on Wednesday August 11, 2021 @02:16PM
(#28145629)
Vaccines work really well, so well that we can show benefit even when confounded by hundreds of other variables both known and unknown. Obviously the universal mask mandate has not had such a strong success and it becomes really hard/impossible to measure effectiveness in the face of all these other confounding variables.
Edit: there is a lot of pseudo-science on all these matters motivated by biases.
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/36/eabd3083
I understand we also want RCTs to show that they actually reduce infections in practice. But, I will note a few things here.
It's almost impossible to study via RCT whether their usage protects other people from infection, which is one of the goals of masks. The best we can do is go with our knowledge that it does block aerosols from being exhaled and use common sense to then assume that this means that it also will protect others from getting infected.
Also, it could be the case that while it may not prevent infection, it reduces the severity of the infection due to a much lower viral load being inhaled. This is a difficult question to study.
In all, we need to see larger studies done in locations where there's more cases. That one RCT in Denmark isn't enough.