But I assume you mean that the meta analysis didn't claim masks were useless, those three underlying papers did? I'm not sure what those three were, though, maybe I missed it. I found all the papers used but there were like a dozen in the non-health-care setting.
> But I assume you mean that the meta analysis didn't claim masks were useless, those three underlying papers did? I'm not sure what those three were, though, maybe I missed it. I found all the papers used but there were like a dozen in the non-health-care setting.
The data they have presented, aggregating ~all of the prior research literature on masks, shows a weak effect, at best. Only by mixing data from different settings (mostly hospitals) and different types of masks (from cloth to respirators) and re-weighting the conclusions do they arrive at this claim of even weak effectiveness.
Do masks work? Based on the literature, the only honest answer is "maybe they have a small effect, but the evidence isn't very good."
Compare this to what you see repeated in the media and by "experts". The truth is...most of these people haven't read the papers, and are just repeating what they've heard.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0843-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24115-7
Seems pretty clear to me.
Link two is a news article and contributes no data.
Link three is a survey of people self-reporting a bunch of different things, where they've thrown out 32% of the data for non-response, selected the ones who did respond (bias!) and used that to make claims about face masks. Moreover, their data shows that as people wear face-masks more often, their chance of getting Covid goes up! This paper has so many confounders and potential sources of bias that it simply cannot be taken seriously.
When I said that the research literature on masks over 2020 hasn't gotten any better, these kinds of papers are exactly what I meant. They're terrible, they're littered with methodological and data analysis flaws, and provide no useful information to the debate. If these "seem clear to you", you don't understand what you're reading and lack the ability to assess research literature.
Sadly, top-tier journals publish a lot of garbage, particularly when that garbage is topical and will get press. You cannot use "Nature paper" as a badge of quality. You still have to read and understand the paper.
Usually, it takes 2 -5 years to get a nature paper ready (at least for the labs I know). Seeing also the pre-prints that were in the article that you dismissed as "news article." and others it seems a strong indication that most virologists and epidemiologists think masks work.
They might be wrong, yet I haven't heard any convincing theory or model on why that should be the case.
Well that's a great way to confirm your biases. The "scientific consensus" was that the earth was the center of the universe, that infection was transmitted by miasma, that plate tectonics were a crackpot theory...I could go on.
Science is the history of well-controlled experiment overturning consensus thinking.
In any case, editorial review is a human process, and like all human processes, has ample sources of error. In this case, a big source of error is that the major scientific journals have spent the better part of 2020 falling all over themselves to publish garbage about Covid that gets press hits.
> Usually, it takes 2 -5 years to get a nature paper ready (at least for the labs I know).
This obviously isn't true in this case. The pandemic hasn't been around for that long!
Also, no, it doesn't take 2-5 years to put together an editorial. Even in normal times.
Yes, and then somebody found a better model (that's also still wrong) yet explained more and we used it. So my question, what's your better model you base your assumptions on? Any scientific paper is wrong, you can find problems with any of them. Just, critique is easy and often doesn't lead anywhere.
my point: The scientific consensus right now is wearing masks help. This is supported by physics (particle simulations), medicine (respiratory disease and their transmission .. and a lot of other fields.
You say there's little data ... come on than make this > well-controlled experiment overturning consensus thinking
you can be famous!
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/10/22/national/scienc...
Check the video, people are trying what would be an experimental setup you would accept? That is also ethically OK.
We have both controlled experiments that have reduced validity in the real world because of the artificial conditions and we have some more messy real world evidence. Seems OK to me.
The people I see on the other side don't offer an alternative model. Also a lot of the criticism comes from people who don't seem to have virology /immunology etc background.
> Usually, it takes 2 -5 years to get a nature paper ready (at least for the labs I know).
Yes, my point was these papers are rushed. It can be bias, it can be also that reviewers have their expertise that tells them the paper fits the evidence.
Change happens over models/explanations. I don't see any new ones from the "Masks don't work" folks. Just criticism (that's easy ... I'm happy to point out all the flaws in any paper you present me. If you want to kill a paper in peer review it's super easy ...)
For policy decisions shouldn't you use the current scientific consesus,however flawed it is? Is there a better solution? Otherwise you are just relying on your gut feeling. Good luck.
your controlled experiment with Sars-COV-2 particles :)
> Here, we developed an airborne transmission SIMULATOR of infectious SARS-CoV-2-containing droplets/aerosols produced by human respiration and coughs and assessed the transmissibility of the infectious droplets/aerosols and the ability of various types of face masks to block the transmission.
Mannequin heads in a box is perhaps evidence of something, but it has little to do with actual humans who don't live in tiny boxes with masks sealed to their real-world faces.
So where's your experiment showing the contrary? (With real humans and covid particles?) Where is your evidence?
So we have simulations, evidence that it controls community spread, etc. Every expert that I hear speak out says that masks work. Can you find any virologist working in a lab on COVID who claims masks don't work?
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2776536 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33431650/
Doesn't help at all (check Taiwan's and HK's numbers compared with Texas ... much higher population density).
what experiment setup that has not been done would convince you? please descirbe it.
Article 2 has a whole lot of pre-prints with data in the citations ... :) Here's a follow up (also with a lot of paper citations : https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01394-0
Talking with friends who are virologists, they all seem to agree masks help.
What's wrong with the articles the nature commentary are based on And articles like that: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7883189/#__ffn_...
This is yet another news article, written by a journalist (Lynne Peeples, who wrote the other Nature news article you've shared upthread) who is mostly re-hashing her previous article. Did you read it or follow the citations? This is an excellent example of hearsay: if you don't take the time to read the citations in detail, you won't realize what you're missing.
Most of the citations here are same citations in the previous Nature news article. Only citations 4-8 deal with the question of masks' impact on transmission (the remainder are for other questions, like whether vaccinated people can be infected). Of the papers in citations 4-8, two are new. Both are based on mathematical models using self-reported survey data and/or state-level case data. I don't know how good these papers are, but all studies of this form are low-quality medical evidence.
Unfortunately, bad journalists can re-hash the same crappy studies faster than skilled people can debunk their work.
> Talking with friends who are virologists, they all seem to agree masks help.
That's meaningless. You can find a sample of scientists to support pretty much anything.
> What's wrong with... https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
So many things. The paper uses survey responses (= bad data), and tries to correlate it with state-level infection curves (= blurry data), and only does it for a month-by-month difference for every month between April and September 2020, when cases were falling across all of north america. It sets arbitrary thresholds for "high cases" and "high mask wearing". It doesn't control for confounding factors, like other policies the states in question might have enacted.
This is a terrible paper. I cannot believe PLOS One published this. It is embarrassing.
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7883189/#__ffn_...
This is not a paper, it's a review. It presents no data. It summarizes the authors' opinions on other papers.
We don't have so much about COVID 19. On the community level it looks promising for me, the papers are flawed but coming out.
What I am missing ... where is the other side of the coin. All models are wrong but some are useful. The particle simulations are wrong, but pretty useful (and I don't see why COVID should behave differently). What model do you base your assumption that masks don't work? Is there research that supports your claims? All science is bad science :) Some is useful.
> survey responses (= bad data)? So any research based on survey responses is bad? It's a standard method in policy research. What data would you use to show the community effect of mask wearing?
I'm usually listening critically to experts in a field (not to dentists or surgeons), it seems people who claim masks don't work are not virologists and have not worked with the virus (COVID19): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Drosten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Ciesek
Both strong in the pro mask camp. Are there virologists working on COVID 19 (in the lab) that are on your side of the argument?
I live in Tokyo, Japan and visit US/Europe often. The only significant difference I see is the willingness to wear masks. And there's way less space here (packed subways etc.)
https://www.asahi.com/topics/word/%E3%82%B3%E3%83%AD%E3%83%8...
I don't think changing rates of masking can explain that change.
> Anecdotal, how do you explain the non existing flue season (last autumn ) and the low incidences in Japan? We got higher rates during the Olympic.
I haven't seen any data on flu during the olympics, so I can't comment on that. Covid cases, of course, were shooting up long before the first athletes even arrived in Japan (see above).
To answer your question, nobody knows why flu "disappeared" during the last year. My hypothesis is a combination of two things:
1) it didn't disappear, it just spread less due to to the dramatic reduction in international travel (plus maybe closure of schools).
2) we stopped testing for flu at rates necessary to detect it. Our prior surveillance system for influenza was pretty limited, and most of it switched to Covid in 2020.
In general, I think people fixate on masks far too much, because they're visible. Even in Japan, what qualifies as a mask would make Americans in the "mask compliant" cities laugh out loud. I routinely see people wearing these on Instagram and on television:
https://www.superdelivery.com/product_image/812/8/8128738_10...
NHK made a lot of efforts like the one bellow: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/1247/
Check the video,I would say masks help. It's basic physics ...
it's similar to the seat belt and car discussion. It's debatable how much they help (and they might have increased the number of accidents initially), yet they help. Statistics is hard.
Masks leak. Airflow seeks the path of least resistance. Also basic physics. People are not mannequins in a fume hood with scrap of cloth glued to their slobberhole.
I don't think anyone is disputing the idea that if you could somehow hermetically seal off everyone's face holes, you'd stop the spread of a respiratory virus. But we can't, and we don't, so the question becomes: in the real world (i.e. not a mannequin in a lab), does it make a difference?
All of the real-world evidence on the question is mixed, at best.
the real world evidence is mixed, yes.
People are not mannequins, people die. If a simple action of mine, that might make me look silly, might save some lives (might, I don't know, yet from annexdotes countries that had no problem with wearing masks and other measures faired better) I will do what these countries did (and also wear a mask). It's rational compassion for me.
You might say, I don't care (and science might prove you right or wrong after a long while), yet consider the potential cost if you are proven wrong ... Looking silly versus potentially killing people ... The evidence is not in, and it depends on what you value more ;)
It's your own choice. For me I decided to wear a mask in public, do social distancing and get vaccinated. I think these are reasonable things to ask from people. You don't seem to think that.
Fortunately, "lack of silliness" is not the standard of evidence for a medical intervention.
There are a great many things that we might impose on others that might have some impact. There are, in fact, an infinite number of these things.
Your desire to do these things "just in case" does not justify their imposition on other people. But more importantly: we've had a long time to study this intervention now. Perhaps it's time to gather some actual evidence that it works?
After all, it's not just the question of whether or not I want to do it -- it's the question of whether or not huge number of people are convinced that they're protecting themselves, and somehow behaving differently out of a misguided sense of protection. That matters quite a bit.
> It's rational compassion for me.
No, without evidence, it's just a guess.
wearing a mask is not about protecting you, it's protecting other people. If you don't value other people's lives, don't wear one it won't help you personally.
Ok ... so where is the evidence that they don't work?
Current scientific consensus is on my side of the debate:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0843-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8
If you know better, do the experiments and the analysis, get it peer-reviewed and we can talk again.
If you are ok with the consequences that you might kill people, don't wear a mask. Fine with me. Just don't tell anybody afterwards that you didn't know and that it was just a guess.
i feel this discussion as tedious as the discussion about vaccinations: https://twitter.com/nathanTbernard/status/142511666690879488...
People are no mannequins ... people die.
I provided you with the link to the WHO meta-analysis of all research literature surrounding masks prior to the pandemic. Here it is again:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
This covers 172 publications on masks and disease leading up to the pandemic. It is far more comprehensive than any particular paper or editorial you cherry-pick to support your arguments.
The best you can possibly say is that there is poor evidence supporting a small marginal effect. And that's if you combine all of the data in an illogical way and ignore that cloth masks and respirators are not the same, and that n95 masks in hospitals are not at all the same as bandanas in the subway. If you limit the argument to the question of non-respirator masks outside hospitals, there's no supporting evidence at all.
Spamming the comments with links to the same two papers from 2020 -- neither of which are good (see my other response) -- is not a rebuttal. The only high-quality paper on masks in 2020 was the Danish mask study, which was a well-controlled, high-quality RCT, and failed to find evidence for a protective effect:
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817
Despite exasperating claims to the contrary, it is unlikely to be true that masks are magical one-way valves, with protective effect in one direction but not the other -- particularly if the virus is spread by aerosols, which are not blocked by poorly fitting masks.
"These data also suggest that wearing face masks protects people (both health-care workers and the general public) against infection by these coronaviruses."
Again, were is evidence that they don't work?
For example if cloth masks would not block around 40% in contorlled experiments: https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mSphere.00637-20
Masks are not the magic one thing. Yet, it's one of the measures that helps. Don't put too much trust in masks, add social distancing and other preventive measures.
Yet, I don't see what the rational behind "they don't work" is. They lower the risk of getting infected and more important to infect others (anything in front of your mouth will do as it stops droplets ... basic physics. how much it does it that's debatable.
If I have a very wet speaking language, and am infected with COVID. You tell me I'm infecting the same amount of people if I wear a mask as if I would not wear one? (given the rest is the same??). Sorry, my understanding of physics does not agree with you. Not even going for virology or other topics.
Do you have a novel particle model we can use that explains your assumptions? You should test it in a lab.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24115-7
(no evidence ... just guesses ... just nature level publication guesses ... probably all wrong)
This is similar as saying ... It had the biggest blizzard last winter in Texas, that's why Global Warming is a hoax.
Where is this paper wrong? Maybe you spotted something that the peer reviewers didn't.
Also you should submit your "scientific" observations of Texas ... because it's real reality (not science ... who needs the scientific method, when we have your observations).
Vs
Telephone call in reporting from the paper you linked.
Which one is more scientifically reliable I wonder?
Basic science if you dont measure something (e.g. how many people wear masks) you don't know anything. Fairly simple isn't it?
lol ... scientists are all wrong, because my gut tells me I'm right. That's not how it works. If you have studies that masks don't work (or are harmful) similar to the 3 linked on top .. There's also the lancet study and another nature study showing that masks reduce infection risks. Then please show me ... Yet don't come with anecdotes ( I know what happened in Texas .. Lol I know what happens in Hong Kong and Taiwan .. People just laugh about the US here :))
> Basic science if you don't measure something (e.g. how many people wear masks) you don't know anything. Fairly simple isn't it?
So phone call in's are measuring...phone call ins, it measures neither covid tests nor mask usage? Seems like it's measuring even less?
> scientists are all wrong, because my gut tells me I'm right
I think the pro-mask people are listening to their gut more than anyone. I've never seen a more fanatical group who don't question their assumptions.
Here's just a few studies that contradict the narrative that masks are effective.
The effectiveness of masks in a community setting is not a settled fact.
Especially the CDC's policy of 'wear a dirty rag on your face until the waiter brings the breadsticks'.
Honestly, if you show me proof about your position, I easily flip. that's the point of science, I'm happy to be proven wrong. That's what I like about HackerNews as well.
Yet, what you showed so far makes me rather worry.
I used nature papers from medicine (these are super hard to publish ... I have friends who tried. You need to be rigorous and on the top of your field in research. don't get me wrong there are issues with peer-review and publishing but they are nothing compared to the sources you currently shared).
Ok let's look at your papers. The first is not a paper, not even peer reviewed. It's a blog that is known to post factually wrong articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Policy_Research There is not even an author on the website. Wikipedia lists founders and authors unkown. The focus is also politics not medicine (seems no medical expert has ever looked at this). The wikipedia article has even lists were they debunk the claims of the article you posted.
Moving on to the bmjopen article. Yes, this is peer reviewed, in an open access journal. Compared to nature, I think I could be able to write an article that is published there ( Impact factor 3 compared to nature with over 14).
Still it's peer-reviewed and not blog propaganda from some unknown author. First of all, the paper does not say anything about the overall effectivness of masks.
They compare cloth masks with medical masks in healthcare workers. That matters. Also of course, here (and in Hong Kong) everybody wears surgical masks (and a lot of people wear cloth mask on top), so 2 masks. Makes sense doesn't it.
Again where is some scientific evidence that masks don't work? There is no evidence. The Texas example you bring up is an anecdote. I can bring an anecdote on how better HK, Taiwan and China dealt with the issue all of the people wearing masks and then where are we? We have no clue who is right. Then take in the advice of the majority of medical healthcare professionals (they advice to wear masks).
The expert in COVID-19, who made a test detecting it recommends wearing masks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Drosten
The people who are against masks just don't have that standing, they usually are not experts in virology (have never published scientifically), and don't seem to understand the difference between anecdotes and the scientific methods. You might find some that are not in there and I'm careful to listen and check their claims ... because I want to be proven wrong (This is how I learn, this is why I engage in discussion ... I want to see where I am wrong.). Your argumentation is unfortunately completely lagging.
You clearly didn't read the article I posted, go check out that Swiss article again.
It's a bunch of 10 articles from Oxford, Plos One, American journal of Medicine, and other legit sites that refute effectiveness of masks.
Mass effectiveness is not settled fact.
> The expert in COVID-19, who made a test detecting it recommends wearing masks.
The main test is a PCR test. And he didn't invent the test.... A guy named Kary Mullis did. AND won the Nobel. And Kary Millis HATED Fauci.
Also the entire swedish epidemiology team recommends against mask mandates.
You pick and choose your experts and I'll pick and choose mine.
The point is mask effectiveness is not a settled conclusive fact and these fascist authoritarian know it all mindsets are getting really old.
It might benefit you to think that you might be wrong or at least question the narrative from an opposing mindset to see where/if holes in your argument exist.
Science is about questioning not about being a know-it-all.
The expert in COVID-19, who made a test detecting it. Drosten was in the team who MADE the test for COVID-19, yes they use a PCR test. I never claimed he invited it. Kary Mullis did not make the test for COVID-19 ...
That about summarizes your problem. About the articles ... another commenter already pointed out the problems with them:
1. Study : Influenza not COVID 19 (different, no aerosol transmission ) 2. Faceplam: The authors were in the nature article I posted . This was discussed. https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-paper-... 3. The authors say themselves that most people wear not wearing the masks ... "his trial was unable to provide conclusive evidence ... most likely due to poor adherence to protocol." 4. Says what I claim: "The evidence regarding the effectiveness of medical face masks for the prevention of COVID-19 in the community is compatible with a small to moderate protective effect" 5. Strangely they focus on the Danish study (which has problems see top). They did not address any of the nature studies (as well as others from the Lancet posted on this thread), so they might need to reevaluate :) (Also they missrepresent the Danish study ... it's just about infection transmission. 6. is about influenza again (no over-air transmission lol) 7. here's a good article that also discusses these claims: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118 (it's from 2021). The article is full of missing citations and claims that are false. https://masks4all.co/cidrap/ "It claimed, without any references, that “sweeping mask recommendations… will not reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission, as evidenced by the widespread practice of wearing such masks in Hubei province”. No references or data were provided to back up this claim.
Looking at the actual data, however, shows that it supports the opposite conclusion – masks may have been critical in controlling the Hubei outbreak. A report from Guo Yi in HK01 pointed out that up until Jan 22 most people in Wuhan were not wearing a mask."
8. that's the best. All 3 authors from the study paper: ""We understand that some people are citing our perspective article as support for discrediting widespread masking. In truth, the intent of our article was to push for more masking, not less. It is apparent that many people with SARS-CoV-2 infection are asymptomatic or presymptomatic yet highly contagious and that these people account for a substantial fraction of all transmissions. . Universal masking helps to prevent such people from spreading virus-laden secretions, whether they recognize that they are infected or not."
9. about cloth masks... we are wearing medical (surgical )masks 10. Prof. Dr. Ines Kappstein is not working as a professor in virology, epidemiology. She is heading the Hygiene department for a Clinic in Passau (she's not teaching and not researching ...). I know her, I lived in Passau ... lol ... to have her cited here is super funny. She's definitely no expert.
I pick my experts and you pick random people ... good luck. That's ridiculous. lol :)
Prof. Dr. Ines Kappstein versus Christian Drosten. ... lol
I have nothing to say anymore. It's clear that you don't know what expertise in a field means (you pick a the head of a hygiene department in a small German hospital over the expert on SARS and COVID).
Good Luck.
> Yes I'm patronizing because you have a problem with reading.
You're patronizing because you arrogantly think it's impossible that you're wrong.
1> Influenza not COVID 19 (different, no aerosol transmission )
Are you saying Influenza doesn't have aerosol transmission?
2>Faceplam: The authors were in the nature article I posted
I don't know what you mean by this. I didn't see the authors in the first article you posted.
> This was discussed. https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-paper-
Good counterpoint. And interesting. However, community compliance is a huge part of mask effectivness, no?
> 3. The authors say themselves that most people wear not wearing the masks ... "his trial was unable to provide conclusive evidence ... most likely due to poor adherence to protocol.
Community compliance is a huge part of mask effectivness at the community level, no?
>Says what I claim: "The evidence regarding the effectiveness of medical face masks for the prevention of COVID-19 in the community is compatible with a small to moderate protective effect"
Quit cherry picking, the next sentence after the one you posted:
"""Most, but not all, studies show a favourable effect for medical face masks for protecting against COVID-19. However, this effect was not statistically significant in several studies, and the quality of the evidence was assessed as low in several studies, so the results should be interpreted with caution."""
> Kary Mullis did not make the test for COVID-19 ... PCR tests are all the same test just with a different amplified region of DNA. Drosten may have posted the region of DNA but Kary Mullis invented the test.
Are you familiar with how PCR tests work?
Mask effectiveness is not conclusive.
I really hope you get some help with your ego and obsessive tendencies and amphetamine abuse. Good Luck to you as well.
2. You post a partisan website that posts links to studies with claims that are wrong. Where even the authors of papers linked there say that these conclusions are wrong.
2. You use anecdotes over studies.
3. You post links to studies from 2020 (and didn't even read the papers I posted earlier from 2021). You continue to troll people with the same old papers that have been rebunked (other users before me pointed out weaknesses that you just ignore ... and then you call them facist ... lol, very scientific.
4. Who are your experts who say "no need to wear masks"? Can you find even a virologist and epidemiologist actively working on COVID 19 (not writing policy papers but doing actual lab work on the virus) who claims that in a statement, what you are claiming?
Two of my experts in the pro mask camp are Sandra Ciesek and Christian Dorsten: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Ciesek
5. I was hoping for the aerosol influenza question: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/13/1/06-1202_article It's not conclusive :P You are easy to get ... You jump on any vaguely false information (ignoring the rest). Same with the PCR test .. It's super funny. Honestly, I was not so much in the pro-mask camp, as I didn't know that much about it. Now I'm sure they work (after reading all the papers you linked and doing some further research), thanks for clarifying!
Thanks a lot. I pray for you. Personally, I don't need help. I have a great job, you know doing science stuff ... on a second consideration probably you won't understand (it's about hypothesis testing, reproducible experiments and statistics ...)
You literally said the flu wasn't an airborne disease in a previous comment!
And almost everything else you claim is either an outright falsehood or a disingenuous misrepresentation.
Yet you fervently, fascistly, and insanely fight for your narrative in a gish gallop style of conversation that resembles an amphetamine fueled rage.
And you can't believe anything you say is even remotely incorrect! Even if presented otherwise!
It's hopeless to talk to you but fascinating to see how your mind works and the minds of the other Covid zealots!
You are a rich specimen of a human being!
Best of luck!
Could you find a virologist researcher actively working on COVID (in the lab) with a standing in the sciences who agrees and states your opinion (not publishing papers that you misunderstand or propaganda websites)? Are you sticking with Prof. Dr. Ines Kappstein? Can you read German or why did you cite her article?
My opinion is aligned with two of the world top experts on epidemiology and virology, as I said before I know too little and am often wrong. Therefore, I tend to go with the scientific consensus.
My only point, believe what you want to believe ... Yet, it's not the scientific consensus. (That does not mean that you are wrong, it just means that I don't follow your advice, as there are people working 20 years and more on the topic who disagree with you and have the better arguments. )
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7883189/#__ffn_...
That seems a decent summary of all studies ...
So don't understand why actual reality contradicts this paper.
If you tell me that millions of Texans followed social distancing rules on their own without a citation, it will be humorous.
Check the graph about mask mandates ... Hoping the best for Texas, yet this looks bad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAvO_QdO9eM
Seems basic to me ... If the droplets from me don't reach to the first person in the cinema I cannot infect them.
It would be nice if that was true. In a small study here in Sweden they tested for covid particles in the AC system, and found particles in every single place they tested. This in a major hospital where everyone are wearing masks, and where the AC is located in the ceiling. The finding was not what the researcher was expecting, especially not in the AC system located on the roof.
How much interference a mask has is determined by the leak rating, but for most surgical masks there are no protection for the finer droplets in coughs and sneezes.
In a similar style, people though initially that bath houses and saunas would be safe against covid because the large droplets in the humid air would drop quickly to the ground. Later it was generally agreed here that the conclusion was incorrect and all public bath houses and saunas closed. Like with masks, humid air might be better than nothing but you really do not want to be near a person who are sick unless you got yourself an air filter and face shield.
A vaccination also just reduces the likelihood you get covid. People can still get it and still spread it, even if they are vaccinated. It just reduces the likelihood and masks might do that as well ...
Vaccinations also have requirements with generally 90%+ protection, while masks has anything from 0 to 90% effectiveness in filtering breath emissions. As a effective measure against covid, vaccinations are a much more effective and powerful tool.
After two years and in my experience, you can't have large gatherings and expect a low risks. Neither vaccines nor mask nor the combination of both can produce enough of an defense. 2m distancing, washing hands, and keeping human gatherings inside to an absolute minimum is the only way, and then follow up with mass vaccinations. I don't think given current scientific knowledge that one can cheat that process.
Those are called "hypotheses", and they're great. The next step is to find evidence that proves the hypothesis...and that's where we're stuck here.
My point: it does not hurt me to wear a mask and it might help people, so I will do it. It seems also that scientists who know more about this than me, support this idea. They might be wrong, yet even if they are the negative consequences are so low (I wore a mask for a couple of days ... ) that for me it's worth it.
When I hear Rand Paul, I hear the smuggness of "I know masks don't work" and sorry but we don't know that ... Saying this right now, is showing me that he does not understand science (we don't know, they might help) and that he does not have any compassion.
Fauci seems to have the better track record (seeing how he dealt with AIDS).
Not leaving your house also might help people.
If it 'might help people' why not either of those options?
You might want to read the guidelines or stay on 8chan? ... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This is a very slippery slope argument. I'm not sure you fully thought it through.
1. there is sufficient evidence that masks (as one measure) can reduce infection (especially together with other measures: vaccinations, social distancing etc.)
2. I decide for myself that I will do what keeps other people save. I didn't tell you what I think about politics or what
Did I tell you to wear a mask? No. I just told you what the scientific consensus on mask wearing is. you are free to do whatever. Eat a burger and directly go swimming ... I don't care. Just don't tell me "Swimming after a full meal is the best you can do." "Driving without a seatbelt is super secure." If you do that I will just tell you that you are wrong. That's all I did.
Where's your slippery slope?
You tell me that I am wrong and I should change my opinion, seamingly based on your political believes (see the political blog you posted before). You could not bring one decent study that underlies what you believe in.
Again, I'm super happy to say: i'm wrong. you are right. I don't want to wear a mask all day out of the house. Yet, what you are offering are no scientific arguments (anectodes and QAnon Stuff (the blog you posted had QAnon conspiracies on it). Again, you can believe what you want, yet don't expect me to change my opinion based on conspiracy theories.
The problem is at the community level.
The current world mask usage is: "Wear a filth rag on your face until the waiter brings the breadsticks".
This could actually be doing more harm than good.
They're fascists and want to crush their opposition through controlling the narrative instead of actual science.
Of the papers cited in the WHO meta-analysis of face masks and infection [1], all of the (three!) papers from a non-health-care setting had a confidence interval overlapping 1.0 (i.e. "no benefit"). Of those in a health-care setting, about half had confidence intervals overlapping 1.0 (i.e. "no benefit"):
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
The literature in this area was exceptionally ambiguous prior to 2020, and hasn't improved over the course of the pandemic. You've just made a provably incorrect claim. If you did it on YouTube, I guess you'd be banned!
(just kidding; we all know that you can't possibly misinform people when you're agreeing with the party line!)
[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...