John, excellent piece -- thanks. The most important point here is that the incentive/pressure to support The Narrative(TM) is profound. Masking has long been known to be worthless...there are more studies than one can count if one aggregates them all. Some are better than others, but the only couple (excluding a piece of cloth in a clean…
John, excellent piece -- thanks. The most important point here is that the incentive/pressure to support The Narrative(TM) is profound. Masking has long been known to be worthless...there are more studies than one can count if one aggregates them all. Some are better than others, but the only couple (excluding a piece of cloth in a clean room) that seem to show any kind of positive effect are the weakest of all. As Cochrane properly concluded, there is no evidence that masks have value from the studies they analyzed. The scandalous piece was their non-scientific "retraction" of marvelous results and then the repeated echo chamber of wrongthink such as you illustrated here in support of the bad science. Wish you had a bullier pulpit from which to shout this. Most people just emerge confused which is the point of those trying to call decent results into question, but that is bad for science, bad for scientists, bad for physicians and, worst of all, bad for patients. So keep these kinds of pieces coming, please.
"Masking has long been known to be worthless" - Not to beat a dead horse, but Cochrane only finds that proof is lacking. So there might be some small benefit to masking, not worthless. However, in the DANMASK study there was a small effect signalling harm from masking! We can imagine that mask handling might increase the risk of infection, aside from the typical lack of fit along with the impression of being invulnerable while masked.
Departing from Cochrane we can examine population level data as Ian Miller has done in his book and https://ianmsc.substack.com/ also https://twitter.com/ianmSC. If masking did anything such data might show an effect. OTOH, critics point out that few wear masks properly so population studies are meaningless begging the question that if people can't/won't wear masks "properly" then mask requirements don't matter.
No matter what we say or think about masks, our leaders will continue the assertion of effectiveness. Maryanne Demasi reports that Walensky was badly misinformed in her testimony recently https://maryannedemasi.substack.com/p/cdc-director-gives-misleading-testimony. If our leaders refuse to use data, we can only howl.
Has anyone done an analysis of COMPLETE general population data on masking, without cherry-picking places and times? I'd really like to see such an analysis but haven't really seen any good studies on masking in EITHER direction, everything is so narrative-driven one way or the other. Sad.
John, excellent piece -- thanks. The most important point here is that the incentive/pressure to support The Narrative(TM) is profound. Masking has long been known to be worthless...there are more studies than one can count if one aggregates them all. Some are better than others, but the only couple (excluding a piece of cloth in a clean room) that seem to show any kind of positive effect are the weakest of all. As Cochrane properly concluded, there is no evidence that masks have value from the studies they analyzed. The scandalous piece was their non-scientific "retraction" of marvelous results and then the repeated echo chamber of wrongthink such as you illustrated here in support of the bad science. Wish you had a bullier pulpit from which to shout this. Most people just emerge confused which is the point of those trying to call decent results into question, but that is bad for science, bad for scientists, bad for physicians and, worst of all, bad for patients. So keep these kinds of pieces coming, please.
"Masking has long been known to be worthless" - Not to beat a dead horse, but Cochrane only finds that proof is lacking. So there might be some small benefit to masking, not worthless. However, in the DANMASK study there was a small effect signalling harm from masking! We can imagine that mask handling might increase the risk of infection, aside from the typical lack of fit along with the impression of being invulnerable while masked.
Departing from Cochrane we can examine population level data as Ian Miller has done in his book and https://ianmsc.substack.com/ also https://twitter.com/ianmSC. If masking did anything such data might show an effect. OTOH, critics point out that few wear masks properly so population studies are meaningless begging the question that if people can't/won't wear masks "properly" then mask requirements don't matter.
No matter what we say or think about masks, our leaders will continue the assertion of effectiveness. Maryanne Demasi reports that Walensky was badly misinformed in her testimony recently https://maryannedemasi.substack.com/p/cdc-director-gives-misleading-testimony. If our leaders refuse to use data, we can only howl.
Has anyone done an analysis of COMPLETE general population data on masking, without cherry-picking places and times? I'd really like to see such an analysis but haven't really seen any good studies on masking in EITHER direction, everything is so narrative-driven one way or the other. Sad.