> but cloth masks work very well for reducing the likelihood that a covid-positive person will transmit the virus
You cannot possibly honestly make this statement in good faith, considering that there has only ever been one RCT done on SARS-2, and it showed no significant difference for its primary endpoint (self-infection). It didn't measure community spread, presumably because actually measuring that is extremely difficult, which is exactly why no study exists to confirm your statement.
Indeed, all the studies on masking for transmission of respiratory viruses more broadly - for example, Influenza - were quite clear that masks are ineffective in healthcare workers, who have better compliance and skill than random members of the public when it comes to wearing these things. In particular https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4420971/, published April 2015, showed that:
> The rates of all infection outcomes were highest in the cloth mask arm, with the rate of ILI statistically significantly higher in the cloth mask arm (relative risk (RR)=13.00, 95% CI 1.69 to 100.07) compared with the medical mask arm. Cloth masks also had significantly higher rates of ILI compared with the control arm. An analysis by mask use showed ILI (RR=6.64, 95% CI 1.45 to 28.65) and laboratory-confirmed virus (RR=1.72, 95% CI 1.01 to 2.94) were significantly higher in the cloth masks group compared with the medical masks group. Penetration of cloth masks by particles was almost 97% and medical masks 44%.
> This study is the first RCT of cloth masks, and the results caution against the use of cloth masks.
And lo and behold, you specifically called out cloth masks in your comment!
You don't know what you're talking about and you callously disregard the enormous implications of widespread big tech censorship. I hope you reflect on your views and come to see that they are completely backwards.
In fact if we back up for a bit and look at the immunology and population dynamics involved it's not even clear that we should want to slow the spread of SARS-2 or other respiratory viruses in the general population. We literally did a "stop, drop, and roll" of almost the entire global economy, got vaccines out in record time, and what do you know, SARS-2 is still ripping through the population just like it was always destined to.
We're fighting against quicksand.
So even if you don't accept that we shouldn't try to fight the inevitable (which you should accept, but I don't feel like going back and forth about it), recommending mask mandates as an intervention is a foolish strategy. They've never been shown to work in an RCT and they certainly haven't worked in real-world community settings.
> And letting it run its course is going to kill a lot of people
I think you missed the point. It's running its course either way. We had insanely high mask compliance in america, even in red states, we've had on-and-off lockdowns for a year in blue areas, we've had widespread vaccination, and it's still spreading to and from vaccinated people no problem.
Furthermore you seem to not understand that different members of the population are at different risk levels. For example, people in their 20s can acquire the SARS-2 infection, beat it off, and have robust, enduring natural immunity, which will prevent them from subsequent infection and especially from transmitting it. Vaccination alone does not achieve that result. Thus why you're fighting against quicksand.
This argument only makes sense if you think it also makes sense to disregard all non-RCT evidence for transmissibility, such as the number and momentum of droplets expelled. As the joke goes, there are no randomized controlled trials of the effectiveness of parachutes in falls from airplanes.
BTW I noticed you mentioned "number and momentum of droplets", which seems to suggest you're still stuck in the old respiratory droplet transmission model and aren't aware of the overwhelming evidence that SARS-2 is transmitted primarily via aerosols, which even mechanistically masks can't do anything against?
This is of course not true. You also neglect other forms of evidence, like natural experiments:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7877582/
Demanding RCTs or bust is basically poisoning the well. And for all your "happiness" your posts have no shortage of vitriol.
Aerosols are composed of droplets which can be caught in masks, also:
This is backwards. Aerosols are smaller than droplets. You can’t be composed of something bigger than yourself.
Aerosol essentially means it doesn’t fall to the ground like a saliva droplet does.
—
The “natural experiment” you linked is a great example of why RCTs are so important (particularly for anything you’re proposing mandating). Saying “after masking was adopted cases went down” isn’t proof because if you look at the non-mask areas, cases also went down during the period.
—
I’m on mobile so can’t dig up the quote but I’d really recommend reading Medical Nihilism by Stegenga. You seem to have a backwards view of evidentiary standards. That is to say, most findings are false (Ionnidis has a famous paper on this too). That’s why RCTs and the like are so incredibly important.
We know SARS-CoV-2 is abundant in humans, and we know it's related to viruses with abundant animal reservoirs, but do we know that SARS-CoV-2 has abundant animal reservoirs? I wasn't aware that it did, and I wouldn't expect it to have.
And… what kind of a defeatist attitude is that? They said it was completely infeasible to eradicate smallpox, but we did – because the people actually eradicating smallpox knew how to do it.
> You cannot possibly honestly make this statement in good faith,
Citation needed. You've selected an apparently arbitrary standard for evidence, concluded that nothing you're aware of meets it, and therefore that nobody can possibly make a certain claim… but I note you're certainly not as stringent in your requirements for claiming the opposite.
Yes, it has abundant animal reservoirs. The fact you're not aware of this suggests that you are lacking some essential background info, which would explain why you are so myopically characterizing my attitude as "defeatist" rather than "obviously true".
Here's just one study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8002747/
> There is intriguing evidence that farmed mink infections (acquired from humans) have led to infection of other farm workers in turn, with a recent outbreak of a mink variant in humans in Denmark
Now on to the "defeatist" point:
> They said it was completely infeasible to eradicate smallpox, but we did – because the people actually eradicating smallpox knew how to do it.
Smallpox had no known animal or reservoirs. Compared to the SARS-2 vaccines, smallpox vaccines at the time of eradication were far more effective.
Again, you clearly lack the most rudimentary understanding of this topic. I'm not saying that as an attack but rather as a statement of fact. I would suggest starting with the Wikipedia page on the topic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_dise...
> The targeting of infectious diseases for eradication is based on narrow criteria, as both biological and technical features determine whether a pathogenic organism is (at least potentially) eradicable. The targeted pathogen must not have a significant non-human (or non-human-dependent) reservoir (or, in the case of animal diseases, the infection reservoir must be an easily identifiable species, as in the case of rinderpest). This requires sufficient understanding of the life cycle and transmission of the pathogen. An efficient and practical intervention (such as a vaccine or antibiotic) must be available to interrupt transmission.
Reading even just the intro paragraphs of that article should make it abundantly clear why SARS-2 cannot and will not be eradicated.
Oh, and BTW, even if we did eradicate it, which we can't, it would still exist in the bioweapon labs of every major country in the world. All it would take is one bad actor intentionally releasing it, or alternatively an accidental lab leak (which has happened with SARS-1, and SARS-2 is even easier to leak). Again, you simply haven't thought this through.
That's “non-zero”; not the same thing as abundant. How do you even know R>1? I'd say “found in wild animals” is the standard for “abundant animal reservoirs”; that's “some animals can catch it from humans” which we already know.
> Smallpox had no known animal or reservoirs.
Smallpox had cases in practically undocumented people. The last few smallpox infections were stamped out by pre-emptive vaccinations of everyone found in the vicinity; that doesn't require the subjects to be human in principle, even if they were in this case.
I maintain we could do it.
> Oh, and BTW, even if we did eradicate it, which we can't, it would still exist in the bioweapon labs of every major country in the world.
Fully-general argument for never bothering to eradicate any disease! Congratulations; I literally cannot rebut this point. All disease eradication is pointless. (By the way, Earth's only got another ~2 billion years of habitability left. Let's just roll over and die now.)
I literally linked you a study that alleged that the virus jumped back from minks to humans. There's far more studies on the animal reservoirs, I just don't feel like doing an exhaustive literature review for the purposes of this subthread. I would strongly encourage you to start researching it since you apparently don't seem to be aware of the fact that zoos around the country are vaccinating their animals against COVID, etc. (Which BTW I disagree with but unless you want to argue that they're just vaccinating them for no reason surely that implies that they're getting infected)
There's literally mountains of evidence for you to go look at
> Smallpox had cases in practically undocumented people. The last few smallpox infections were stamped out by pre-emptive vaccinations of everyone found in the vicinity; that doesn't require the subjects to be human in principle, even if they were in this case.
Okay, good luck vaccinating not just the entire global human population but also virtually every mammal out there. Good luck chasing down the smaller rodents. Better not miss a single spot!
> I maintain we could do it.
Again, we can't. We can't even get close with our current capabilities. I agree there's a hypothetical universe where with teleportation and an infection-blocking vaccine - neither of which we have - as well as some sort of all-seeing eye, we could do it.
I understand that. But unless each infected mink infects (on average) more than one healthy mink, mink populations are not reservoirs. (You don't need much animal-to-human transmission for it to count as a reservoir, so that's an almost irrelevant point and I don't know why you're focusing on it.)
> Good luck chasing down the smaller rodents. Better not miss a single spot!
They didn't eradicate smallpox by vaccinating every human. I'd encourage you to look it up… maybe start at that Wikipedia page you linked me?
Indeed, his own licensing body (which to be clear has not been accepted by any organizations) utilizes a certifying exam _written by_ Rand Paul, and is open book. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this exam, he did pass.
Oh, he was also the first member of Senator to test positive for COVID. And after being exposed, and tested, continued to attend Senate events and lunches and use Senate facilities including the gym because in his "expert opinion" it was "extremely unlikely" he had COVID.
So let's perhaps dial back your appeal to authority some.
My Master's degree in Biomedical Science would probably beg to differ with you, but anyway.
I don't claim equal KNOWLEDGE to a physician. Let's be clear on that. And given that this is my first post on this article. What's being stated here is not that Paul is necessarily "factually incorrect", it's that he is, to his own benefit, spinning and "refactoring" studies to imply they showed results that they didn't. And given, according to you, that he has this knowledge, he should be aware of concepts like reducing transmissability, or that a study that talks about the ability of a virus to live ON or IN the material of a mask says very little about said mask's ability to mitigate infection from person A to person B or vice versa.
The fact that you're supportive of stifling a scientific discussion and supportive.of censorship makes me think youre a fascist and wonder about your credentials.
Science is all about questioning. Arrogant assholes that believe they know the absolute truth are often wrong(and fascist).
And the fact remains...usage of masks is not settled science by any stretch of the imagination.
And for you to claim such and support stifling a conversation about it is disengenuous and makes me think you probably have more of a Masturbation degree in the Biological sciences than a Master's degree.
And if anyone should know that it’s a fucking MD.
So take your personal attacks and fuck off with them.
A discussion about an inconclusive subject=willful misrepresentation to you?
Barry Marshall, Semmelweis, and Galileo would like to have a word.
Fascists are not interested in the scientific process of discussion or democracy.
Over half the country thinks a policy of wearing a dirty rag on your face until the waiter brings the breadsticks is stupid and unscientific.
Over half the country has not had the full vaccine. If it was a vote it would have lost.
But fascists aren't interested in democracy or discussion. Fascists are interested in demonizing and suppressing their opponents.
No. This is a disingenuous depiction at best.
Study: "Do masks hold the virus in the cloth/material and can it survive on that cloth/material".
Rand Paul: "Studies (points to the one above) show that masks are unable to prevent the spread of COVID and doesn't stop it".
That's not inconclusivity - we don't know "everything" about COVID. That's describing a very limited study as having extremely different conclusions. And what you do learn or should learn in college-level science is that the scope of such studies is specifically limited. Rand Paul, as a physician, should understand that concept. But, needing it to fit a different agenda, he takes the time to make a professionally produced video that repeatedly describes a study that does not say or attempt to say anything close to what he says it does.
Again, that's not "open discussion of inconclusive subjects", that's misrepresenting other people's work to meet your political needs.
Numerous studies DO show that masks are unable to prevent the spread of COVID and stop it.
Here's a publication stating that cloth Mask usage INCREASED chances of infection.
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577
Here's a collection of studies showing the ineffectiveness of face masks.
https://swprs.org/face-masks-evidence/
This is still an open discussion but the people like you continue to suppress dissent and demonize the opposition because either your ego is so big or your virtue signaling is so strong, that you can't admin you might be wrong.
If Galileo was around right now he would have been deplatformed for trying to tell the world that the Earth revolves around the Sun which was counter to the narrative.
Study: in simple terms, "can COVID live on and in masks"
Rand Paul: "this study shows that these masks don't prevent COVID".
I'm not talking about other studies. I'm not talking about anything else. There are plenty of inconclusive and concerning studies.
But Rand Paul, who as you keep reminding us, is far more educated than all of us fascists, wilfully and repeatedly held up the specific study above as being "undeniable proof" of masks being a problem. They may be a problem. But that study doesn't show it. It doesn't imply it. It does nothing other than talk about the ability or lack thereof of the virus to grow and survive in the material of the mask itself.
And he knows that, as an educated scientist.
And he doesn't care. He also knows that people will see keywords and draw matching conclusions to the factually incorrect statements about the study that he makes, repeatedly.
That's why he got banned.
Your martyrdom is unbecoming. And your assumptions of my beliefs on the matter are entirely broken because you're too focused on foaming at the mouth about fascists demonizing you while comparing yourself and Rand Paul to Galileo.
I work in EMS as a critical care paramedic. Every year I get the flu vaccine because I'm around vulnerable populations a lot. My girlfriend and my step daughter don't get these vaccines, and rather than suppressing and demonizing them, I think that's entirely reasonable, because they're not around those populations as I am.
I also have never said - because I don't believe - that every person needs to be vaccinated for COVID.
For someone who has spent a large chunk of these discussions building up these strawmen, your radar needs a lot more calibration.
He's right.
Whether he's wrong about that one article or not (I'm not spending time looking into some technical little gotcha), there are numerous articles that corroborate his claim.
Fascists deny alternative ideas by any means necessary including technicalitys even if the spirit of the idea is correct.
It's what fascists do.
> It’s what fascists do.
Nick, you’d be wise to listen to your own advice.
It is a fact that masks reduce the spread of disease.
They are not a silver bullet, but a tool for mitigation. The idea is to layer multiple risk-mitigating techniques.
Masks on their own are not enough, but masks plus distancing plus hand washing plus travel restrictions plus vaccines plus whatever else is somewhat effective combines to be something much more effective.
In one comment, you say to “stop spreading misinformation” and in another you say “numerous studies show that masks don’t prevent covid” and follow up with the comments about fascists.
You’re literally doing what you say fascists do.
The scariest part to me is that there's not even a hint of curiosity in their minds about what they're putting in their bodies and the changes in society happening. If there was they would be a little more open to questioning the narrative because if they even did a little digging they would see things arent black and white as presented.
Bill Maher is liberal and HES questioning this stuff.
This kind of authoritarian mentality has always led to negatives places for humankind.
Less than 50% of people have taken the full vaccine in America.
If it was a vote it would have lost.
There's a lot of people who agree with us.
The majority of people in the better states are fully vaccinated.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
> There's a lot of people who agree with us.
Yeah, and they're mostly poorly-educated people in lesser states. (The sort of people you'd find at r/NoNewNormal. Right, Nick?)
https://www.prri.org/research/religious-vaccines-covid-vacci...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
Not that you ignorantly called some states 'good states'.
Not that you cyberstalked me.
But that you're so arrogant that you can't even fathom over half the country...150 million people... disagreeing with you, so you demonize them as poorly-educated and dismiss them.
Democracy doesn't work for your wrongheaded views so your solution is to demonize,attack, and suppress the opposition.
Fascists are fascinating pieces of work!
Sigh. THIS seems to be a deliberate misreading too.
Stopping the pandemic doesn't require eradicating the disease. Malaria remains endemic and largely unvaccinated, but controlled.
And cloth masks are a vitally important tool in making that happen. Claiming otherwise by arguing against a strawman is... yeah, disinformation.
OH MY GOD. After a year and a half, why won't you people just wear your masks?! Why!?
I'm literally responding to a comment from somebody who is advocating for eradication. That's why I pointed out that eradication is not feasible. I am well aware of the whole mitigation vs containment vs eradication distinction, and I maintain, personally, that focused protection is and was always the correct strategy to follow.
No, you're not. Go read the comment again.
Again, they literally said eradication (extinction) was possible. I said it wasn’t. I didn’t misread at all.
Would you go into surgery with a physician who wears the same mask on a daily basis?
More so than not wearing a mask at all, yes. Are you arguing for more effective mask distribution and more stringent mask enforcement? I think I'd agree that is warranted at the moment. But you're not, you're just whatabouting.
Texas lifted all restrictions including masks and has lower infection rates per capita than most places with mask mandates and Covid restrictions.
So the statement you make with arrogance may actually be wrong misinformation.
Are you living in a cave? How can you not have seen all this. UCSF has this amazing review, and it's right at the top of the google results page: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/06/417906/still-confused-abou...
You are claiming not to have seen this not because you have looked for this evidence and failed to find it, but because you have been CONVINCED BY YOUR MEDIA that this evidence doesn't exist.
You also cite lies. Texas is one of the worst areas in the country for both total infection count and current infection rate: https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=states...
> So the statement you make with arrogance may actually be wrong misinformation.
Ditto.
It's... a medical school. An elite one, no less, doing public outreach. Effectively that link is a review paper written for non-experts, it's certainly not "opinion journalism". I mean, it links to studies throughout the piece. It absolutely represents (and I don't understand why you think this is controversial) virtually uniformly held scientific consensus on this topic.
I mean, I don't know what to say. If you don't trust doctors about medical issues, preferring to read pieces from (literal) Swiss conspiracy theory sites and citing isolated single Vietnamese studies, then I guess I can't help you.
But yes: SWPRS and sites like that are LYING TO YOU. Very effectively, since now you trust them more than you do one of the best med schools in the country.
vs
An opinion piece.
The absolute state of Covid fanatics.
I went and clicked on the first two links in that collection, both claimed to show "little to no evidence for the effectiveness of face masks in the general population":
Both were studies of mask POLICY (i.e. does TELLING people to wear a mask work?) and not mask USE (do the masks actually work?). The first was just a historical review of previous pandemics with no ability to look at case studies.
The second looked only at Denmark, an environment where masks aren't common, and didn't even track whether or not the participants actually wore them. All they checked was if they were "recommended" or not. And the kicker? They ACTUALLY DID find a statistically significant benefit to mask recommendation, just not a large one. The inclusion in your magic "collection" is basically a lie.
Now I read two links carefully. Your turn: go back to that UCSF site and read some of the links there.
You mean epidemiological studies on communities?
Ok....
Masks may or may not work as a stop for particles but do they stop spread on a community level?
"Mask policy" - what a government organization (DOH, city council, what have you) states as its recommended behavior, action, enforcement practices.
And has _absolutely nothing to do with_ epidemiological studies on communities. Nothing. Whatsoever.
Policy: 'you should do X'
Epidemiological study: a controlled investigation into what happens when people do X, when they don't, including how many do, how many don't, and all the circumstances surrounding it.
The first three articles:
1. Meta analysis of mask usage
2. "''A Danish randomized controlled trial with 6000 participants, published in the Annals of Internal...."''
3. """large randomized controlled trial with close to 8000 participants"""
You clearly didn't click on the first two articles like you said you did.
You're a liar and a fascist.
I'm done here.
I'll thank you to keep your sloppy, inaccurate, careless personal attacks to yourself.
misinformation. Parent poster did not state covid will be extinct, they said, until it is extinct. If that is in fact never, Rand's words not being amplified around the globe for 24/7 access is still advisable.
What doesn't help is censoring people pointing out this nuance. What we need is N95/ffp2 mask mandates for indoors. That would really help mitigate sars-cov-2 spread.
Now, unfit masks do do something. They block the spittle for sure and less than half the aerosols. But if you look at how influenza stopped spreading almost completely the last year and a half you have to conclude that either unfit masks with gaps do help significantly versus respiratory viruses, or, sampling for influenza cases has been borked due to the overloading need to test for sars-cov-2. It's probably the former.
I think it's three effects:
(1) Acute infection with respiratory virus X is protective against respiratory virus Y. This is because of the cellular interferon response (see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/778995/); basically the non-specific component of the immune system gets "revved up" and thus subsequent pathogens don't stand a chance. This might be further accentuated by the fact that SARS-2 specifically can acutely downregulate interferon response (see https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.16.252973v1), presumably to suppress the immune response against it, which would/could lead to a rebound upregulation in interferon after the initial phase of SARS-2-mediated interferon suppression
(2) Some people who actually had Influenza would have tested for COVID first, and been PCR positive because the PCR tests in the real world can stay positive for a couple months after resolution of the infection (due to the absurdly high cycle threshold that is often used). This is what you said, I'm just elaborating a bit more on how it actually happens
(3) Influenza spreads less easily than SARS-2, so it's possible the NPIs had some effect. This is my least favorite theory because the NPIs were so poor against SARS-2 and measures like school closures haven't been shown to reduce Influenza. My guess is stuff like people avoiding family members during 2020 holidays etc did decrease the connections between social nodes a bit, so there was some effect but not a huge one from the altered behavior
If an issue is hotly debated among the public you have to allow open debate on it. I don’t care how right you believe you are or how important you believe it is for people to agree with you, this type of thinking paves a road to hell.
If you give private companies the ability to silence others I promise you at some point they’ll eventually silence you and that’s really all that matters to this discussion. Who cares about Rand Paul’s opinion, what I care about is why some people feel a private company who runs an essential 21st communications platform should have the power to abuse that power and silence others who disagree with them.
I am vaccinated and still wear a mask but censoring an elected official over this is just disgusting.
I don't know how anyone who cares about our democracy can be for this.
Rand would have been served to say mask POLICIES do not work, because humans are not perfect, do not wear them correctly, need to remove them to perform normal activities, do not sanitize them or change them properly, and about 1000 other things that make mask POLICIES ineffective
and the data absolutly bears this out, as very little has been proven that masking POLICIES have done anything to actually limit spread since most spread is being done by close contact in indoor spaces where people are more likely to remove the mask...
The number of times I have seen people walk OUTDOORS alone with a mask on then enter a indoor space with other people only to remove the mask is pretty high...
Masking policies do not work
Vaccines work...
Masks DO WORK. Yes, N95s work better than cloth masks, usually, but cloth masks work very well for reducing the likelihood that a covid-positive person will transmit the virus. This isn't controversial. Rand Paul needs to stop spreading lies on purpose, and if he won't, I fully support YouTube telling him that he can use someone else's platform to do so.
This is NOT an example of "tech companies dictating truth". And it's not scary, either. What's scary is the results of letting charlatans like "Rand" Paul speak on this in public.