https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Reports
> Scientific Reports is an online peer-reviewed open access scientific mega journal published by Nature Portfolio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_journal
> A mega journal (also mega-journal and megajournal) is a peer-reviewed academic open access journal designed to be much larger than a traditional journal by exercising low selectivity among accepted articles. It was pioneered by PLOS ONE. This "very lucrative publishing model" was soon emulated by other publishers.
Basically it's bunk-for-hire.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Reports#Controversi...
Masks are not a 100% solution, and they obviously have some issues (comfort, heat as well as environmental), but it's not surprising that they help with a disease that spreads using saliva and other "respiratory droplets".
a) that corona spreads through aerosols which we have known since mid 2020 b) Mask don't even work against Influenza which actually is transmitted via droplets.
"Ten professional singers performed a passage of the Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Ode of Joy” in two experimental setups—each with and without surgical masks. First, they sang with previously inhaled vapor of e-cigarettes. The emitted cloud was recorded by three cameras to measure its dispersion dynamics. Secondly, the naturally expelled larger droplets were illuminated by a laser light sheet and recorded by a high-speed camera."
Are you serious?
B:
Have you even read through your own link?
CRCT: "No difference was found between hand hygiene or hand hygiene plus face mask in household contacts of influenza patients"
Case-control study: "No marked reduction in infection"
Cohort-Study: "The use of masks does not seem warranted if other infection control procedures such as handwashing are used"
It was well known before 03/2020 that masks don't do anything. That's why every public health expert and official was adamant that they don't do anything. That's why nobody had any. Didn't you ever wonder why no one had PPE on hand if it's so important?
Here is the 2018 review of this topic by the WHO:
https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/329439/WHO-...
On page 25 you can find a table of RCTs that show exactly how useless masking is vs Influenza.
People who "follow the science" seem to be particularly unclear about positivism and the scientific method. Whoever is making huge claims about masks, lockdowns and vaccines needs to understand that burden of proof is on them. THEY need to present a theory that is consistent with ALL of the quality data that exists, not just some cherry picked retrospective garbage from China.
Masks seem silly until that woman doesn't cover her cough.
The numbers are less impressive then what they seem, and IMO the numbers look like they were computed in a way that resulted in what the authors wanted. For example, weekly counts of cardiac arrest calls are computed using a five-week centered moving-average, and COVID-19 and vaccination doses are computed using a three-week centered moving-average. I'd assume that using three weeks for cardiac arrest calls, the numbers would look less correlated.