Politics of The Mask
- Thread starter GURPS
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Mask studies reach a new scientific low point
MMWR appears to no longer be in the science business
Enter a new study in MMWR— the CDC’s pet journal; It is getting widely tweeted and cited, and that is unfortunate. The paper is entirely, irredeemably flawed. Its flaws are so evident that it should not have been published nor promoted. When an issue is deeply polarizing, publishing bad science helps no one. It cannot convince skeptics, proponents don’t need convincing, and it deepens mistrust in institutions. Let’s consider the paper.
The paper is a case control, test negative study. Basically, anyone in California btw Feb and Dec 2021 who got a COVID19 test could be enrolled. People were told if they tested + or -. Two days later, someone tried to call COVID-positive people. 13.4% of people who tested positive answered the phone. For each positive person, a negative person matched by age and sex who was called was identified. Only 8.9% of people who tested negative answered the phone.
We could stop right now. Very few people answered the phone. Moreover, there may be a big difference in who answered the phone. A person sick enough to be tested for COVID, who was +, might not be doing so well 2 days later. Which ones answered? How about those who tested negative? Are thee comparable people? Sadly, researchers continued….
Among people who answered the phone, people who said they had not spent time in indoor public settings were discarded. People who had a known COVID19 contact were discarded. The analysis just compares those who tested + vs - if they said they spent time in indoor public settings.
It turns out that people who tested positive were different than those who tested negative.
77% of people who tested positive got tested because of symptoms
17% who tested negative got tested because of symptoms
More people who tested negative, got tested “just cuz”
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What is wrong with this paper?
1. The people who test + and those who test - were seeking testing for totally different reasons. You are comparing sick people to people who wanted to get tested ‘just cuz’ or whose employer was swindled by these testing companies. Some people (more who test -) were getting tested before a medical procedure— these people may be extremely fastidious pre-procedure. I know I absolutely would not want to get sick before an elective surgery, and may even further alter my behavior. (though I am pretty chill)
In case you don’t see how this is a bias, the explanation is that the people getting tested who test neg. are far more affluent/ neurotic/ or precautious and will do anything they are told more than the avg. Joe. They definitely wear masks more. Even if masks did nothing, there would be an association. If you went on twitter for months and told them carrying a Fauci statue in their pocket would protect them from COVID, you could prove Fauci statues work with this design. Put more technically, the root virtue of test negative strategy (comparability) is violated and unmeasured confounding is injected. Paper cannot be salvaged.
2. The response rate is poor. I thought that awful day care study had a low response rate, but this one is lower. When you get a response rate this low you wonder if you are inserting biases you cannot even imagine. Who are the sick COVID people who answer the phone. Are they the least sick ones? The sick ones don’t take calls. Who are the people who answer the phone who test negative? The most anxious ones? The most gullible? ( I never answer unknown callers). Perhaps the ones most likely to carry Fauci statues in their pocket? (aka cloth masks
3. It’s self reported. Mask usage is self reported. A person who was just told they have covid19 might be more likely to assume or believe they must have slipped in terms of mask usage. Self reporting after results are known is a huge bias. A true believer will convince themselves they didn’t wear masks as well as they ought to.
4. The effect size is implausibly large. In the randomized trial in Bangladesh, the arm that reached significance had a 11% relative risk reduction. In this study the same mask had 66% lower odds. That is implausibly large, and should raise red flags.
5. This is protection to the individual. If masks worked this well, they work this well for the wearer. So you don’t need me to mask. Your surgical mask is so massively protective you that mandating I wear a mask is not needed. This runs counter to the rhetoric in this space.
Virginia Dem Says Masks Are Just Political Symbols, ‘Forced Masking’ Violates 1st Amendment
“It has become hard, if not impossible, to find a respected medical researcher who still defends Forced Masking of Children as a public safety measure,” Sen. Chap Petersen wrote Monday. Petersen, a moderate Democrat from Fairfax City, serves in a state senate where Democrats have such a thin majority that, when he votes with Republicans, Republicans can pass legislation.
“The decision to wear a mask in public – when there is so little correlation with public health – makes it de facto a political decision. In other words, by wearing a mask in a public setting, the wearer is able to communicate a political message, e.g. “I Care About Others” or “I voted for Biden” … You are forcing children to make a political statement that they (and their parents) may not believe. That violates the First Amendment,” he wrote.
It was a remarkable example of an elected Democrat politician calling out a nominally nonpartisan schools chief for being more partisan than he is — so partisan, in fact, that the superintendent was willing to implement what Petersen described as “inhumane” policies in service of political virtue signaling.
Tapper Confronts NJ Governor Over School Mask Mandate: Where's the Evidence It Was Necessary?
"Most states don't have mask mandates for schools," Tapper noted. "Have you seen evidence that these mask mandates have been necessary? That the spread and mortality rates in states where they didn't have mask mandates were far worse than in places where they did, like New Jersey?"
Murphy claimed that the mask mandate was a "very smart public health step" and cited the number of cases among students since the start of the school year.
"I think we've had just over 2,600 cases of students with Covid positive since the beginning of the school year that's out of 1.4 million kids," he said, "so it's a pretty stark piece of evidence that this has absolutely worked."
WHY DO VACCINATED NEED TO BE MASKED
Students and staff will also still be required to masks in schools but data will be monitored and policies will be adjusted accordingly, a spokesperson from the governor's office said, according to NBC News.
Local governments will still be allowed to maintain indoor mask mandates.
"The current hospital census is still over capacity, but the dramatic surge in cases and hospitalizations due to the highly infectious Omicron variant over the last two months has declined significantly," the California Department of Public Health wrote Monday in its new guidance.
"Californians are also increasingly knowledgeable about how to protect themselves and their loved ones with effective masks when there may be risk of COVID-19 exposure," the guidance continued. "Accordingly, it is now appropriate for the universal indoor masking requirement to expire on February 15, 2022 as scheduled."
townhall.com
Students and staff will also still be required to masks in schools but data will be monitored and policies will be adjusted accordingly, a spokesperson from the governor's office said, according to NBC News.
Local governments will still be allowed to maintain indoor mask mandates.
"The current hospital census is still over capacity, but the dramatic surge in cases and hospitalizations due to the highly infectious Omicron variant over the last two months has declined significantly," the California Department of Public Health wrote Monday in its new guidance.
"Californians are also increasingly knowledgeable about how to protect themselves and their loved ones with effective masks when there may be risk of COVID-19 exposure," the guidance continued. "Accordingly, it is now appropriate for the universal indoor masking requirement to expire on February 15, 2022 as scheduled."
California Will Not Extend State Mask Mandate
Our church will be wearing masks indoors as long as the CDC's Community Transmission rating for SMC is Substantial or High.
If you look at the National map, practically the entire country is still rated High. A few counties have dropped to Moderate or Low.
If you look at the National map, practically the entire country is still rated High. A few counties have dropped to Moderate or Low.
Were masks a waste of time?
This policy divergence created an opportunity to examine the impact of mask mandates. Those areas that rescinded their mandates could function as control groups for evaluating the effect of the policy on cases and mortality. But neither public health experts nor any of the major media outlets took up this opportunity. The reason, most of them would likely have said if pressed on the subject, was there was nothing to learn: “the science” was settled.
For their part, critics of masking and other Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) typically relied on principled assertions of freedom. This gave them little reason to examine the evidentiary basis of these policies, since they would have rejected them on moral grounds even if they worked. Only a few sceptical observers drilled into the data that could be found on sites such as the New York Times — even if the paper’s own reporters made little of it. The most prolific of these was Ian Miller, who over the past two years has published copious data-driven commentary on the track record of various Covid public health interventions.
Miller arrives time and again at the same conclusion: that the ad hoc pandemic mitigation policies rolled out since 2020 have systematically failed to achieve goals. Miller has now compiled one subset of his graphs and commentaries into a book titled Unmasked: The Global Failure of Covid Mask Mandates which focuses solely on the most ubiquitous pandemic containment strategy deployed by governments worldwide: masks.
The endorsement of masking by medical bodies and public health authorities worldwide, Miller shows, entailed the abandonment of a longstanding view that masks were a useless and even harmful intervention. Over the previous decades, numerous randomised controlled trials had assessed the efficacy of masks in controlling the spread of respiratory viruses like influenza, and pandemic simulations had evaluated their potential.
God Bless The Hero Schoolkids Who Refuse To Let Mask Police Abuse Them
Take a look at this girl, who was allegedly forced “to sit in a cold vestibule for hours without access to food or water” for not masking.
The real heroes are the little girls who are forced to sit cold and alone and yet don’t give in to the teachers and staff who banished them there. Or these high schoolers in Chicago, who “were reportedly told to mask up or get out” — and did.
Or these students, who used their lunch break to push back against their school board’s senseless mandates.
Larry is jumping on the bandwagon.
apnews.com
Maryland governor calls to end school mask requirement
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan called on the State Board of Education on Thursday to stop requiring face coverings in schools.
God, I hope so!Larry is jumping on the bandwagon.
Maryland governor calls to end school mask requirement
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan called on the State Board of Education on Thursday to stop requiring face coverings in schools.
Mask Mandates Didn’t Make Much of a Difference Anyway
But there’s no avoiding it: The benefits of universal masking have been difficult to quantify. One controlled study in Bangladesh showed a small but statistically significant benefit — among people who consistently used masks, 7.6% got symptomatic infections compared to 8.6% in the control group. Other studies have been inconclusive.
It is intuitive that a barrier ought to prevent germs from being emitted into the air. But if that’s true, why isn’t there more evidence for the benefits of masking two years into the pandemic? Experts associated with The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota have laid out a more complex analysis: Given the current understanding that the virus is transmitted in fine aerosol particles, it’s likely an infectious dose could easily get through and around loose-fitting cloth or surgical masks.
Many experts say only N95 respirators or similar devices are truly effective at stopping this virus — and some, such as the CIDRAP head Michael Osterholm, have been going public urging people to put less faith in cloth masks and adopt respirators such as N95s. He does not advocate universal N95 use in schools, however, where children are unlikely to be able to wear them consistently or correctly.
Hijinx
Well-Known Member
IMO he isn't jumping on the band wagon because he wants to.Larry is jumping on the bandwagon.
Maryland governor calls to end school mask requirement
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan called on the State Board of Education on Thursday to stop requiring face coverings in schools.
He is seeing the handwriting on the wall that this idiot Trudeau cannot see.
The public has stopped mumbling and started screaming--------------and in large numbers.
We have had enough of the BS.
Mask Mandates Didn’t Make Much of a Difference Anyway
Mask mandates are predicated on the effectiveness of “universal masking” in which everyone wears a mask to keep case numbers lower. One of the leaders in proposing universal masking, Monica Gandhi of UCSF, has unfairly been accused of being an anti-masker for talking about the limitations of her own strategy and the much greater importance of vaccination campaigns.
But there’s no avoiding it: The benefits of universal masking have been difficult to quantify. One controlled study in Bangladesh showed a small but statistically significant benefit — among people who consistently used masks, 7.6% got symptomatic infections compared to 8.6% in the control group. Other studies have been inconclusive.
It is intuitive that a barrier ought to prevent germs from being emitted into the air. But if that’s true, why isn’t there more evidence for the benefits of masking two years into the pandemic? Experts associated with The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota have laid out a more complex analysis: Given the current understanding that the virus is transmitted in fine aerosol particles, it’s likely an infectious dose could easily get through and around loose-fitting cloth or surgical masks.
Many experts say only N95 respirators or similar devices are truly effective at stopping this virus — and some, such as the CIDRAP head Michael Osterholm, have been going public urging people to put less faith in cloth masks and adopt respirators such as N95s. He does not advocate universal N95 use in schools, however, where children are unlikely to be able to wear them consistently or correctly.
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All those factors may explain why the states with mask mandates haven’t fared significantly better than the 35 states that didn’t impose them during the omicron wave. Rhode Island, where I live, has had a mask mandate since mid-December; nonetheless, we saw our January surge rise far higher than any other state. There’s little evidence that mask mandates are the primary reason the pandemic waves eventually fall — though much of the outrage over lifting mandates is based on that assumption. Many experts acknowledge that the rise and fall of waves is a bit of a mystery, as epidemiologist Sam Scarpino explained to me on my podcast.
Then there is NO REASON to have Mask Mandates
Major U.S. Banks Drop Mask Mandates, New York Stock Exchanges Follows Suit
“The NYSE, which is owned by Intercontinental Exchange Inc, is now making masks optional on the trading floor and other public areas for fully vaccinated personnel and visitors, a person with knowledge of the matter told Reuters, adding that the existing COVID-19 polices would still remain in place,” Reuters reported. “The exchange joins investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and Morgan Stanley, which also said on Friday that they were dropping the requirement for staff to wear masks in the office.”
The move comes as some Democrat governors have finally joined many Republican governors in ending mask mandates, which comes ahead of the 2022 midterms where Democrats are widely expected to suffer severe losses across the board.
Walmart announced in a memo late this week that it was dropping its mask mandate for employees at work.
“Effective immediately, fully vaccinated associates will not be required to wear masks while working in any Walmart or Sam’s Club facility, unless required by a state or local mandate or ordinance,” the memo said.
Sneakers
Just sneakin' around....
Walmart dropping masking for vaccinated employees except in certain area, like the pharmacy, and not dropping in states like NY, California and Virginia.
On one hand, it's good, a big step towards normalcy, but on the other hand, the non-vaccinated will still be wearing masks, and easily identifiable and ostracized by both staff and patrons.
On one hand, it's good, a big step towards normalcy, but on the other hand, the non-vaccinated will still be wearing masks, and easily identifiable and ostracized by both staff and patrons.
Grumpy
Well-Known Member
??? not vaxxed and not wearing a mask.
Sneakers
Just sneakin' around....
Oh, no one would do that....... that would be deceitful.
Can't we just use the old Clinton (?) stand-by of "don't ask, don't tell"?