Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Masks?
In the midst of renewed calls for universal masking in the name of Covid-19, can we have a reasoned, data-oriented discussion of how well universal masking prevents Covid deaths? Universal masking harms people and harms society. To justify such harms, I expect strong evidentiary support for the theory that universal masking prevents a significant number of Covid deaths.
Universal masking harms people. Many mask wearers experience anxiety, increased blood pressure, difficulties breathing. Universal masking cuts off much if not most interpersonal communication for many people, and interferes with the ability of children to learn and to develop social skills.
Universal masking harms society (American perspective; may be different in other cultures). Mask wearing fosters suspicion, distrust, and individual isolation. Masking discourages communication and cooperation. I believe that, along with stay-at-home orders, universal masking contributed to the widespread violence we saw in 2020.
I hear assertions that the intent of universal masking is to reduce Covid deaths. I seem to have missed the data (not just the theories and intentions) that universal masking reduces Covid deaths.
I am not looking here for philosophical arguments about liberty. Nor for arguments involving vaccinations. Many of the calls for universal masking do not distinguish on the basis of vaccination. None of the Covid vaccines has been fully tested, so it is entirely rational for individuals to decide that the risks (known and unknown) of receiving a vaccine outweigh the risks (mostly known) of contracting Covid itself. Finally, the discussion should focus on Covid deaths (or serious illness or hospitalization). “Spread of Covid” and “Covid cases” confuses the discussion by including the vast majority of people who get Covid and have no or mild symptoms.
Studies that show Covid deaths in 2020 were not materially different between places with mask requirements and places without mask requirements (or between times before and after mask requirements) are of little to no help. In 2020 the rates of mask-wearing were high regardless of requirements, so the differences in actual mask-wearing were not all that large. Are there studies that use actual mask-wearing rates, as opposed to mandates?
I’m skeptical of extrapolating evidence from mask-wearing by medical personnel in medical facilities to mask-wearing by the general public in general environments. Medical personnel are trained in protocols for wearing and handling masks, and wear them in facilities designed and equipped with systems for limiting the spread of disease. We have seen that the general public does not follow medical mask protocols. The places frequented by the general public do not have the disease-limiting facilities and systems that medical facilities have.
Laboratory experiments showing that mask material captures viruses when virus-laden air is blown at the mask material are also of limited value. There are major differences between the laboratory conditions and how people use masks in general environments, so the correlation between the laboratory experiment and the “real world” is unclear.
“Intuitively obvious” seems to carry a lot of weight in the masking debate. We heard that a lot in the arguments about wearing two or more masks. The proponents said “of course” if one mask was good, two were better. But I never saw them present much evidence for that proposition. Even with respect to single masks, many of the arguments for masking just assume that putting cloth or paper over a person’s face will reduce the spread of the virus, and thus deaths. There must be data somewhere supporting that theory.
As you can tell, I am not convinced that universal masking prevents enough Covid deaths to justify the individual and societal harms universal masking imposes. But, I like to think that I could be persuaded.
Published in Healthcare
I would not frame the argument with studies that show masks are ineffective in and of themselves in perfectly controlling the spread of upper-respiratory diseases.
I would frame it in the context of a collection of measures that could possibly be taken, many of which have been rejected by the public as inconvenient or intolerable. On the list of thirty steps that could be taken, we’ve rejected fifteen already for one reason or another, and we want to push this one into the reject column in public nonmedical settings.
Portland’s wealthiest suburb has announced plans to require students twelve and under to wear masks next year. (And to recommend masks for those over twelve. If masking makes any sense, isn’t that backwards?)
I don’t share your confidence should such a vote be held in Oregon.
That is hugely important news.
The first round of PCR tests were thrown out by the CDC because they were picking up too much noise–upper respiratory diseases of all kinds, including influenza–and not enough signal–the covid-19 virus.
The flu generally disappeared from the globe.
Or did it?
Of course, people do not die from the flu but from the viral or bacterial pneumonia or opportunistic fungi that travels with it. So one could say that people had the flu but it was the SARS-CoV-2 virus that actually killed them.
So this finding would not necessarily affect the death statistics, just the case number statistics.
That’s why I don’t want to take a chance. I’ve seen how our locals vote. That’s why we have such a STUPID City Council. I don’t want these same people making decisions about mask mandates.
It would be interesting to see an actual vote. :-) Cape Cod is full of tourists at the moment from all over the country. They aren’t wearing masks unless it’s required by a business. So I’m wondering if the country has moved on from masks.
Trump and I believed the vaccines were the best way to go to get the world back to normal. Looking at the tourists on Cape Cod right now, I can see we were right. :-) :-)
Very curious how “The Delta Variant” is identified if PCR testing can’t differentiate between Covid-19 and the flu.
Veering somewhat off the original topic, but today (Tuesday July 27) I am hearing a lot of the mask discussion in the context of school openings. The cost / benefit ratio of universal masking and other mechanisms intended to reduce the transmission of the Covid 19 virus seems even worse for school children than for the general public. The benefits to children of trying to keep them from coming into contact with the virus seem minimal. Thus, any more than minimal costs imposed on children are disproportionate to the risks.
Supposedly 14% of Covid “cases” are children (presumably meaning under age 18). But less than 0.26% of Covid deaths are children. And less than 4% of hospitalizations are children. Children have a statistically insignificant probability of having a medically severe consequence to Covid-19. So schools are imposing costly virus transmission mitigation measures on a population for which the virus has a statistically insignificant risk. Yes, 400 of the 600,000 Covid deaths are children, which is 400 more than any of us would like to see. But there are about 75,000,000 children in the United States (22% of the population) who may be subjected to potentially significant restrictions.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/children-are-not-supposed-to-die-cdc-director-gives-passionate-response-about-how-children-make-up-400-of-the-600-000-covid-19-deaths/ar-AAMAx78
Imposing virus transmission mitigation (including masks) burdens (cost) on tens of millions of children who have a statistically insignificant risk from the virus seems like a poor trade off.
This illustrates another difference with the medical facilities systems. Medical facilities inherently have diseased people in them, as well as people whose ability to combat new diseases may be weak. So the risk of disease transmission is relatively high, which justifies the costs of extensive efforts to mitigate disease spread. The costs of extensive efforts to mitigate disease spread are harder to justify in facilities occupied by people who are generally disease-free, and who have normal abilities to combat diseases they may encounter.
Maybe the health care workers, who are seeing first hand the results of the adverse effects that are now so wide spread, are not vaccine hesitant but “real health protective.”
Many health workers are speaking out about how often people who have gotten the jab at their clinic then report in to demonstrate the serious damage being done to them. (And to ask for remedies, of course.) Due to social media platforms allowing for avatars and pseudonyms, these health workers can speak out in public forums.
But in the work place they are told by their clinic administrators to tells the vax-injured that “this condition you are reporting is simply coincidental to your getting the shot.”
Here is the mask report from Texas:
From Breitbart:
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2021/07/27/desantis-biden-admin-wants-kindergartners-muzzled-with-masks-but-they-dont-give-a-damn-about-covid-on-border/
I think Mr. Abbott is making a tactical error here.
Rather than framing his opposition to mandates in personal liberty, I think he should say that he might consider mask mandates if anyone can show him an example of a mandate altering the spread of COVID.
I’m looking for those examples (or at least evidence) to see if we can move the discussion away from just political philosophy.
The pro-mask people have offered little other than “because the ‘experts’ say so,” matched by anti-mask people saying “individual liberty.”
The time series data I see generally shows little to no support for the hypothesis that mass mask wearing has a big impact on Covid outcomes. This is state or national data which captures the actual total outcomes for the population, and has the actual net effect of all the people wearing or not wearing masks. I saved one of those which compares Sweden (basically fully open) and Germany (many mask mandates). This is a legit comparison because they are geographically relatively close:
If you looked at the Germany data in isolation you might conclude that the January 20 mask mandate drove the decline, but when you overlay the maskless Sweden data, you see that the seasonality is the key.
Here’s a review of the evidence for mask effectiveness. From the abstract:
There are no credible studies showing that masks don’t work.
Even if they are not 100% effective mask use is worthwhile because the effect is multiplied across contacts.
There is no good evidence that using masks is harmful.
It’s wrong to think that if viruses are smaller than mask pores that the masks won’t work. Viruses mostly travel on much larger particles like water droplets. Also, a mask can stop a virus even if the mask pores are larger because sieving the air is not the only way masks work.
Besides, if the studies show they work then they work regardless of the mechanism.
Mask use can be effective even if some people don’t use masks properly.
Here’s another review from Nature, more for popular consumption.
In the medical profession the fact that masks work is for all intents beyond dispute. There is a general recognition that masks are far from perfect, though.
I listed ten such studies at the start of this thread. Here are more.
There are studies showing that masks are indeed harmful. Here are three.
Dangerous pathogens found on children’s face masks
Experimental Assessment of Carbon Dioxide Content in Inhaled Air With or Without Face Masks in Healthy Children — A Randomized Clinical Trial
Study finds prolonged mask use may lead to intermittent hypoxia and an increase in hemoglobin mass
If I wear an N95 mask, I’m breathless in less than a half hour.
Don’t you think the NIH already has dummied up a study showing that masks did save countless lives last year?
Two nights ago, listening first to a vid by Dr Lee Merritt, and then one by Dr Charles Martin, one of the two stated their research has revealed both Big Pharma and the “health” agencies now realize many people do not trust the studies coming from Pfizer, Moderna, NIH, CDC, FDA et al.
So according to one of those two, the tactic now is to find doctors willing to accept payments in exchange for slapping their names on studies done by the company and agency members of The Global Medical Mafia, thereby perhaps creating some credibility. (The public is in “indie research mode” these days.)
Someone here was using a study by some doctor from Yale’s school of medicine, which was positive about one of the COVID issues. (Masks or vaxxes, but I can’t remember which one.) I found it of great interest that in reading the study, that doctor had said there were no industry ties for him to reveal. Either that doctor doesn’t know Bill Gates has his foundation submit beaucoup donations to The Yale Med School, or he is a liar.
Even Marcie Angell of the New England Journal of Medicine stated 15 years ago that research has been tainted by the overwhelming presence of monies coming from sources indicating a definite conflict of interest as far as researchers being able to have autonomy in the pursuit of science.
Honestly, if you want real data regarding COVID, you have to look outside the United States.
And China, obvs.
Traditionally, before bureaucrats and Rockefeller Institute’s version of medicine took over the information flow relating to health matters, masks being worn by all members of the public for an epidemic made sense only if done in the initial six weeks of the outbreak.
That stands to reason. After six weeks, so many people have interacted with so many other people that the infection has left the barn. Shutting the gate after that makes sense how?
I have worn a mask for a total of 3 hours since Mar 13th 2020. I avoid businesses that require it. I live in a small community where many business owners know me and I guess their thinking is that “She must have that service dog for a reason.” Once or twice I have been asked to mask up by solicitous and polite business owners. I explain my health problem and they then apologize.
The local grocery has lost over $ 300 a month from my household as they went into full mask mode by the last week of June 2020. They refused to make accommodations I suggested, which by the way were accommodations suggested by Fed law for those who need them. I suppose I might have tried suing them, but not shopping there any more has offered them a penalty that costs me nothing while lawsuits are always expensive.
By the last week of June, the one billion bucks in mask products ordered by the Beloved Governor Newsom had been shipped over from China, shipped back due to flaws, and then shipped back here after the problems were mitigated.
It was thought initially stores would require mass by May 15th, but Newsom’s business model wasn’t up and running until June.
(By the way, I had COVID in Mar 2020, and by end of April I could not have still been contagious. No masks were required when I had it. Had the news media ever mentioned that it was possible to have a mild case of it, circa the first 3 weeks in Mar, I would have worn a mask. But all I had heard about COVID was that you knew you had COVID as you were on death’s door overnight.)
Both Taiwanese and Vietnamese officials have mentioned they have government agencies whose personnel take down all information that China releases and then evaluate it, often deciding to do an approach 180 degrees from what Chinese officials suggest should occur.
I’ll just add this:
If you think masks work, please explain these data series.
Aside from a lot of qualifications and caveats in these studies the fundamental problem is that if these small group studies can accurately claim reductions of as much as 70 to 80%, (even when not using high-end N95 masks) how the bloody hell is it possible that there has not even a detectable drop of 5 or 10% anywhere where mask compliance is reported to be in the range of 90+%. If you line up curves of jurisdictions within related seasonality regions where masks were mandated in some but not others, they are indistinguishable. Not a blip.
I am delighted that the medical profession is supremely confident that masks prevent viral transmission. I am really annoyed that the prevailing self-satisfaction that goes with endorsing mask mandates apparently bars any serious, scientific effort to explain why mask mandates have had no impact. That is the issue. Telling us all the reasons why it should have worked is not an answer. I don’t know why that is so hard to grasp. Why didn’t it help?
What is listed at this link are not studies but opinion pieces. I don’t have time to go over the whole laundry list. I’ll focus on the one that seems to be the most credible, the NEJM article, which is double counted in the list. In short, it doesn’t say what the News Lists site claims it says. It doesn’t say that masks are only for symbolism, it mentions this as one possible benefit. It says that they are effective in a health care setting, but raises doubts about effectiveness out in public. Fair enough, but that’s hardly a widely shared opinion among public health experts.
Moreover, the authors of this article followed it up with a letter to the NEJM in which they state, “We strongly support the calls of public health agencies for all people to wear masks when circumstances compel them to be within 6 ft of others for sustained periods.”
They don’t really claim to prove any actual harm.
Here is another data set with geographically near locations with different mask rules. How many of these do you need?
We must continue to do what has not worked so we can protect the children!
Unless we can include kids in the fear scenarios grounding policy, public compliance might end. Sure, breathing through a snot-encrusted pathogen collector/CO2 reservoir may not be healthy. Yeah, kids may have a distorted risk calculus and some other cognitive or emotional issues from being surrounded by fear symbols. But how else can the Experts give us the benefit of The Science except by means of externally visible acts of submission? Do you hate Science? Do you want kids to die?
And through all this crapola there is the unstated utterly bogus presumption that any of what has been done up to this point was actually working. We are supposed to be the natives who think the strange explorer visitors caused the solar eclipse then made it go away and thus defer to their magical powers. Nobody seems to notice that none of this made any difference other than to damage lives, especially kids.
It seems that the CDC reversal on masks was based on a single study from India that was rejected for publication by peer review:
SCIENCE!
India has had a nationwide mask mandate for the last 15 months so doesn’t that suggest that masks did not work very well in controlling the spread?
As usual, our national Paper of Record (The Babylon Bee) has the final word:
Face Masks Found To Be Effective At Making You Look Like A Giant Dummy Who Doesn’t Know How Vaccines Work
Oregon will require K-12 students to wear masks in classrooms this fall