You state that the 5X figure ”means nothing” but don’t follow up with anything relating the the CDC papers to back your opinion.

We can argue all you like about correlations, but when you say “means nothing” you need a bit more data than handwaving at a single measurement.

Everyone understands correlations exist, but you can’t just dismiss their headline “5X” figure without something more substantive.

And please don’t jump to your inference that I was trying to say masks don’t work. HN guidelines: “Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.”. Edit: And to be clear, one minor point I was making was to agree with you that confounding variables exist.

I don’t care about correlations. I do care that you seemed to make a glib dismissal of the original article, and then you are failing to defend your dismissal and simply introducing a range of irrelevancies. Edit: perhaps justify why your opinion means anything compared with the data presented in original paper: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e1.htm