The most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illnesses — including Covid-19 — was published late last month. Its conclusions, said Tom Jefferson, the Oxford epidemiologist who is its lead author, were unambiguous.
“There is just no evidence that they” — masks — “make any difference,” he told the journalist Maryanne Demasi. “Full stop.”
Thursday, February 23, 2023
Even the Times agrees …
… Opinion | The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned? - The New York Time.
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Hi Frank,
ReplyDeleteThe "NYT" is not agreeing, but publishing an opinion piece. And Bret Stephens is riffing irrationally off the same Cochrane report that was easily refuted last week all over the web. Stephens' article is garbage.
We know masks work. Full Stop.
All the tens of thousands of researchers are not stupid, nor are they lying, the data and results are clear. Researchers are not leftist commie politicians. They are our sons and daughters whom we proudly sent off to get their PhDs and ScD's at tough universities.
What the Cochrane study is saying is that from the limited studies that it considered, and some were about the flu not Covid, the difference between masking up with N95s versus the use of surgical masks, could not be determined, that more needs to be done to find out whether N95s are superior. Have you noticed that when entering hospitals, how they insist that visitors wear surgical masks, the same ones the staff use when entering contagious or potentially contagious rooms, the same ones the surgeons use when opening up a patient so as to minimize the spread of any contaminants from them to the patient?
The meta study also questioned whether some of the spread of the flu and Covid had to do with taking the masks off. But, this is what we who wear masks know, right? If I mask up every time I am in public, but then go to a family gathering where we take our masks off, even just to eat, I am exposed to people not in my usual "circle". The Cochrane study, then, is questioning whether some of the studies under the meta study of theirs, is reporting too-low efficacies of masks. What if everyone always wore masks when around anybody?–is the point. Where's the 100% study that will yield 100% surety, the upper percentages, of N95 and surgical mask efficacy?
Significantly in the conversation, it supports the use of handwashing in stopping the spread of the flu and Covid too, yet is inconclusive. This makes sense, because a spread in China was explained best by the handlers of mail coming into that country. The Cochrane study leans toward the washing of surfaces.
Here's perspective: Bret Stephens - what's behind his latest column is not good. WTF NY Times?.
NYT sold some newspapers, and hopefully the resulting commentary and discussion goes far to put all this to bed. But, it won't, yet maybe reach more people, who will realize that masking saves lives and suffering.
So called "conservatives", and forsaking good science has nothing to do with truly being conservative, but being politically dishonest, these so called "conservatives" are ever looking for some way to steer this important conversation, which should be about saving lives and reducing suffering, to be about fooling people into voting "conservative", but especially reaffirming the disinformation for the gang already bamboozled.