So masks do work after all -- a comprehensive scientific review

[jaywalker2]

If they're work correctly and consistently, it appears masks are effective in reducing transmission of respitory diseases, including Covid 19

 

https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/cmr.00124-23

[xylophone]

11 minutes ago, jaywalker2 said:

If they're work correctly and consistently, it appears masks are effective in reducing transmission of respitory diseases, including Covid 19

 

https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/cmr.00124-23

Agree and I read this or a similar research paper a short while ago. 

[Kinnock]

Logical too .... a simple barrier to reduce airborne particle spread.  A much better option than wrecking economies and forcing businesses into bankruptcy with lockdowns.

 

The practice of wearing a mask in public whenever you have a cold or flu was common practice in Asia long before COVID.

[BKKBike09]

 

Single-use 'surgical' masks are of limited benefit and are bad for the environment.

 

"Many consumer masks appear similar and may be labeled “surgical” masks, but if not formally certified, their performance cannot be predicted. While surgical masks reduce respiratory aerosols, culture-positive SARS-CoV-2 has been detected in exhaled air from loose-fitting surgical masks ... The pore size in typical non-woven materials used in surgical masks and respirators is larger than many viruses like SARS-CoV-2 (65–125 nm in diameter)"

 

A number of reviews published since 2022 have documented the environmental impact of these products. One estimated that 15 trillion face masks are used globally every year, resulting in 2 megatons of waste ... Single-use masks and respirators are typically made from synthetic polymers including polypropylene, polyester, polyurethane, polyacrylonitrile, polycarbonate, polyethylene, polystyrene, and polymeric nanofibers and microfibers, which are not biodegradable"

https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/cmr.00124-23

[jaywalker2]

An interesting tidbit is that the Cochrane Review that was used to disparage the use of masks had ties to the notorious Brownstone Institue, the ultra-conservative libertarian "think tank" that has devoted itself to attacking all government measures to mitigate the pandemic (Jay Bhattacharya, Trump's choice to head the NIH is one of its writers):

 

"Readers will recall that Brownstone’s Tom Jefferson was First Author for John Conly’s now discredited anti-masking study at the Cochrane Institute (actual scholarship here), and that Brownstone’s Carl Heneghan was functionally an Unlisted Author, though he didn’t list himself in credits. Neither disclosed their Brownstone affiliation. All this violated Cochrane’s famously strict standards, although when Cochrane Library editors “engaged” with the authors while writing their “Statement,” these matters never came up. Suffice to say I don’t have a great deal of confidence in how Brownstone, or its authors, do business."

 

 

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/12/jay-bhattacharya-trumps-pick-to-head-the-nih-is-a-eugenicist-charlatan.html

 

 

 

[GarciaThom]

The details mention key figures like Tom Jefferson and Carl Heneghan, whose connections to Brownstone reportedly went undisclosed in the publication. This lack of disclosure appears to conflict with Cochrane's rigorous standards for transparency, causing concerns about the integrity of the process. Furthermore, it suggests that the editorial response did not adequately address these potential conflicts, fueling skepticism about the review's credibility.

[Petemcc64]

On 12/2/2024 at 11:26 AM, jaywalker2 said:

If they're work correctly and consistently, it appears masks are effective in reducing transmission of respitory diseases, including Covid 19

 

https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/cmr.00124-23

No, if certain masks are worn correctly and consistently they may be effective in reducing transmission. Even that is a stretch of logic from my analysis of the paper and its sources. 

I was going to do a critique of the paper and its sources, but it would amount to many pages and nobody would read it, therefore it would be a complete waste of my time. 

Mask-wearing is akin to wearing an amulet, you either believe in its efficacy or not. There was never any evidence for their efficacy and this paper sets out with the hypothesis that mask-wearing was effective, using some very poor observational studies as part of the meta-analysis. 

as someone who has been involved in research, Cochrane Reviews are very useful as an overview of the evidence, though such reviews are really as reliable as retrospective population studies, unless the source material is sound. Give me a Cochrane Study with 10 RCTs and I'll take that over 1000 observational studies.

Probably the weakest form of evidence is anecdotal evidence, however when you consider mask mandates did nothing to prevent entire populations being infected, and from my own observational studies in a hospital environment, didn't stop medical staff or patients being infected, then you really need to question whether real-world scenarios fit in with cherry-picked studies.

as an aside, a major confounder is that many people just did not become infected. I personally know of an Anaesthetist who asked his so-called positive daughter to cough into his face a number of times a day over a period of a week. All hospital workers had to do a daily test before starting work, and he was never positive. Had he worn an N95 24/7, not even removing it to eat, one could conclude that the mask prevented infection, but he didn't, and he wasn't infected as far as testing was concerned. The bottom line here is for any study that claims masks have any efficacy, there has to be a control group within the population that is measured, against the other population.

Like I said, it's more of a belief than an actual non-pharmaceutical intervention, and seriously, you have to question the psyche of anyone who habitually wears a mask, post all the scaremongering, because they are scared of getting an infection with a kill rate so low that the numbers are meaningless, especially for young, healthy people.