Re:YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days
by Valectar on Wednesday August 11, 2021 @08:17PM
(#28149979)
> There is no study showing that masks slow the spread of sars-2 in a community
You say that, and yet "At least ten studies have confirmed the benefit of universal masking in community level analyses"
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...
And the website goes on to list each of them, as well as a number of other studies relating to the effectiveness of masking.
Re:YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days
by __blockcipher__ on Wednesday August 11, 2021 @10:19PM
(#28150903)
Those studies all have fundamental flaws. The basic problem is those are associative studies, which can’t separate the effects of masking from the normal curve of a viral epidemic.
You are right though I should have been much more specific than just “study”.
A question though: if masking is so great, why wouldn’t the health authorities have performed an actual RCT to conclusively prove they work? (We have one RCT for SARS-2 which showed no statistically significant effect on the primary endpoint)
That was me debunking the “before COVID, masks were known to work” claim of the GP. That was not a study of SARS-2 but rather Influenza.
The “masks don’t work for sars-2” was in reference to sars-2 aerosol transmission, which masks mechanistically don’t protect against. There is only one RCT of sars-2 in a community setting, and it failed to demonstrate an improvement in the primary endpoint of self-infection. There is no study showing that masks slow the spread of sars-2 in a community. Yet despite the lack of any studies, various medical authorities like the CDC are issuing statements that they do exactly that, which is a classic case of an institution using its credibility to advance baseless claims