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New Covid wave has begun and masks should be worn again, scientists warn
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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You are not up to date. The science on whether mass masking is effective is far from settled and the biggest reviews of the literature strongly suggest that masks are not effective in preventing or slowing the spread of respiratory viruses. See below.
https://www.cochrane.org/CD006207/ARI_do-physical-measures-such-hand-washing-or-wearing-masks-stop-or-slow-down-spread-respiratory-viruses
The Cochrane Review is highly respected in the medical community. The authors, after a massive study, write the following:
Stop posting this all over the place. Masks clearly work, unless you like randos sneezing and coughing all over you. It catches all the phlegm.
Also, it prevents the smells of anti-maskers from reaching your nose. They can be pretty bad. You wear clothes over literally every other part of your body. Why do you think your face is different?
I'm all for wearing masks when needed but that last point is dumb. Facial expressions are a huge part of human communication.
“Stop posting something that, while scientific and deeply rigorous, goes against my deep seated and unchangeable views. I can’t handle it with my weak, feeble mind!”
It is scientific and rigorous. You've not understood it correctly and Cochrane have been explicit about the fact of that misunderstanding. They are not saying the things you think they are saying.
The editor in chief was covering her ass due to the political nature of the results. All she attempts to say is “we don’t have conclusive evidence that masks are not effective”
No shit. The review said the same thing. The point is that the large scale study showed no effects of masking. That is, they weren’t sure if they helped or not. That means there is no conclusive evidence, still, after 2 years, that masks are an effective population level intervention.
“But I wear my cloth mask just to be safe.” Okay. You do you. But just know there is no conclusive evidence that it works. Might as well stay in your room, locked for life. Just to be safe.
You've been corrected multiple times with excerpts from the authors of the study you're parroting all over this thread. And yet you just keep posting the same shit, not acknowledging the people who are refuting your claims.
I haven’t been corrected. The farthest anyone has gone was post the editorial comment or highlight that the Cochrane review said “we don’t think masks made any difference but we don’t really know because we need more studies”. Don’t you think it’s pretty damning that, after 2 years, they still don’t know whether masks are effective at the population level? So you are just gonna argue “just to be safe!”
No. I don’t live my life by that mantra. Read Haidt’s The coddling of the American mind.
I don't understand people downvoting without correcting. This way this wrong information stands here, seemingly scientifically sound as a study is linked, contradicted only by votes and words.
Thank you @SigloPseudoMundo@lemmy.ml for looking at the study and noting its limits here.
If somebody wants to check for himself I suggest to take a look at https://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/full/10.2217/fvl-2021-0032 A study which looks at many different studies and metastudies.
To summarize:
Conclusion: Masks, excluding simple cloth masks, are likely quite effective. More research is needed.
Your conclusion, in respect to the highly detailed Cochrane review, is extremely wrong. I don’t know how people like you come up with this logic. It’s bizarre. Cloth masks have been proven to be in effective time and time again and you keep promoting them. It’s ridiculous.
It’s not seemingly scientific, the study I linked is the best study we have and it came up with “masks don’t seem to help for reducing the spread of respiratory viruses.” Yet you spew the same bullshit we had at the beginning of the pandemic that wasn’t researched.
Luckily I live in a place where it will be highly unlikely for some ridiculous mandate. Hopefully you live in a place that will mandate this shit for the rest of your life so you can live in the dystopia you want to live in. Leave the rest of us alone.
It seems you have not read my post or the study in detail.
Indeed it seems that cloth masks are not very or even not effective. But, and that's a big but: FFP2/KN95 Masks seem to be quite effective.
The Cochrane study authors themselves note the low confidence they have in their results. The sample size is quite small (e.g. only 8407 people in summary over all studies they evaluated for FFP2 masks) They even got the result that handwashing has no benefits.
In Contrast the studies in the metastudy I linked work with far larger sample sizes.
I won't respond anymore after this comment as you seem agitated and resort to personal attacks which won't lead to a productive discussion. I hope you find a calmer moment to consider the evidence studies have gathered and overthink your position.
Largely what the Cochrane report appears to say is that these studies aren't actually suitable to draw firm conclusions from (which is what all the talk of "evidence" are about. They mean that the studies they read don't have sufficient evidence to support their own claims and that while Cochrane can therefore tell us "study X had conclusion Y" they and we shouldn't assume that's actually correct as "study X" wasn't actually very good.)
My whole point is that the scientific consensus on whether masks make a difference at the population level for respiratory illnesses is inconclusive. So why should governments continue mandating them? “Just to be safe” is not a sound argument, especially when the intervention is so drastic against the human condition.
I love showing my face and seeing other people’s’ faces. It angers me that so many people don’t care about faces. I find these folk to be expressively anti-human and it angers me. Masks limit human expression. They dull human life.
"The high risk of bias in the trials, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low adherence with the interventions during the studies hampers drawing firm conclusions."
"Our confidence in these results is generally low to moderate for the subjective outcomes related to respiratory illness, but moderate for the more precisely defined laboratory-confirmed respiratory virus infection, related to masks and N95/P2 respirators."
You failed to mention that part when you quoted the study. Good thing not everyone is a health care worker huh?
In addition to Macros's comment explaining some of the details around what the specific claims of that report are, here is the statement from Cochrane explicitly saying that people have misunderstood the report in claiming it says masks aren't effective (and taking ownership of the fact that this is at least in part because of issues with how clearly the report communicates it's findings.)
https://www.cochrane.org/news/statement-physical-interventions-interrupt-or-reduce-spread-respiratory-viruses-review
Be kind and wear a mask until it's settled that they don't help. What we know for sure is that it's very hard to measure whether they're effective or not.
FWIW, they definitely do work. The issue is that it's quite hard to produce effective studies to confirm if they work one way or another to point to to say "see, we've proved they work, now put one on!"
I love this bit; "The low to moderate certainty of evidence means our confidence in the effect estimate is limited."
So why, exactly, would you not err on the side of caution?
This makes no sense.
To err always on the side of caution, especially when it comes to denying a very human expression (one’s face) is not a good way to live. If we erred on the side of caution for everything, it would be a meaningless life. Life involves risks. It’s very low risk to not wear a mask.