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The ‘Gold Standard’ Mask Study We’ve Been Waiting For!
Google the new report of the recent Bangladesh mask study and see how often the phrase “gold standard” appears in subsequent articles. It will be cited in every school board meeting by pro-maskers and every MSM outlet even if (as seems very possible) it never gets published in a real journal. This study is touted as the definitive proof that masks work. It’s the gold standard! So let’s see if that’s true.
Or you could look at Kevin Roche’s scathing review here. I will try to be more charitable. (Not really.)
First, notice that this breakthrough, definitive study appears in “poverty-action.org” rather than a pre-print medical journal which seems rather odd. But let’s push on.
The study covers over 340,000 people in 600 villages! It’s the Gold Standard, dude! The study team (which must have had a lot of people on it) computed mask use by direct observation (over 804,000 observations!) of markets and mosques. They found that mask use went from a baseline of 13.2% to a whopping 42.2% in the “intervention group” during the study period. (Around 90% of the observed subjects were male because it is a Moslem nation in which women don’t get out much.) But you have to be impressed that it was not merely around 42% but 42 POINT TWO percent mask use as determined by relying on timed observations of specific locations in 600 villages at different times and of people handed masks who thus knew the study was underway.
So, while tripling their use, did masks beat COVID? Of course, they did! Let’s find out how! Out of the 340,000 subjects, the team found that 27,000 reported COVID-relevant symptoms. We are here going to assume that this subset is like totally representative without any selection bias. Here is what we have (the “intervention” group is comprised of people in villages where mask use was encouraged and masks provided):
| Intervention | Control | |
| Total | 178,288 | 163,838 |
| Symptoms Reported | 13,273 | 13,893 |
| Pct Symptomatic | 7.44% | 8.48% |
We can already see that masks are working!
About 40% of the reported symptomatics (10,952) consented to a blood test for COVID. We are down to 3% of the whopping 342,125 but we are like totally sure it’s still representative. Out of the 10,952 roughly 80 people tested COVID seropositive. Oddly enough we don’t know what portion of the 10,952 are from which group. Results:
| Intervention | Control | |
| PCT Seropositive | 0.68% | 0.76% |
Somewhere in what purports to be a precise calculation that I am unable to reproduce from the numbers provided, this result is reported as a 9.3% reduction in COVID for the “intervention” group. And it is like totally significant because there were 340,000 subjects!
And we did not even factor in the increase in observed social distancing from 24.1% in control villages to 29.2% in treatment villages. (Gotta admire the precision—I would not have the nerve to use decimal points with this.) Could this increase in distancing have been a factor? Could the whopping 9.3% decrease be due in part to social distance –which we know, like masks, totally works? A confounding variable!
This study is a joke. Citing it ought to be an embarrassment.
Oddly enough, the “interventions” don’t seem to have helped much in the long run:
It would be nice to know the exact dates of testing and observations since the baseline incidence of COVID cases rose and fell in the period but hey, it’s the gold standard!
In cold, hard fact, masks have not provided any reduction in community spread anywhere. Mechanically, surgical masks block larger infective droplets but not viral particles per se. If COVID-19 spread is largely asymptomatic, variable in incubation time, and more dependent on relative lack of resistance and external conditions than transmission viral load size, then conventional NPIs, including masks were never going to work. And they haven’t.
Maybe mask-advocates could rethink how and where masks can be useful and stop the complete and utter BS that mask mandates can be a general suppression strategy.
POSTSCRIPT:
Speaking of bogus mask studies I note that the CDC still has this on their website: Trends in County-Level COVID-19 Incidence in Counties With and Without a Mask Mandate — Kansas, June 1–August 23, 2020
If a mask manufacturer made this claim on their website with actual data in the public domain and thus in their possession that contradicts it, the company could be subject to actions by the FTC for false advertising. Here is the study period graphed below. Like the Bangladesh “study” it takes place prior to a later, larger case surge:
The study found a “significant” decrease in COVID in the mask-mandate counties when cases numbers were smaller so it should be even more noticeable and that advantage amplified when overall infections rose later. Alas, no. Here is what happened after the study period:
Absolutely no difference.
If we were cynical, we might say that the Kansas health department people threw this study together to provide some cover for the (Democrat) governor and her unpopular COVID interventions. And if we were that cynical, we might also say that the timing of posting by the CDC indicates that the CDC threw this up there as ammo against the fallout for the expected large Danish mask study which found not much benefit from masks.
The fact that the Kansas study is still up there means that (a) the CDC doesn’t really care if it’s misleading us and (b) they have not found a good alternative piece of evidence for masks as a tool to reduce community spread because there aren’t any.
Can we please have a more scientific conversation about the role and use of masks and stop the nonsense about masking kids?
Published in General
There used to be a time when things were not so clearly politicized and I could (or I thought I could, anyway) trust the FDA and such like. Probably was just my own ignorance, but now it is so clear that “the Emperor has no clothes!”
No only is the emperor nude but he knows it and is mooning elementary schools.
Amen. There is much about our mishandling of the Wuhan coronavirus one can lament, but its impact on children is particularly tragic and gut-wrenching.
Mask zealots have been ignoring the evidence this entire time and beclowning themselves without shame – I hardly expect them to behave any differently, regardless of how often their insanely destructive theories are proven false. As soon as a majority of Americans wake up from this idiocy, we need to enact legislation to permanently remove these “emergency powers” that have shredded our constitutional liberties for the past year and a half. It is an absolute disgrace.
Thankfully, my kids are maskless and completely normal in a private school, and have not worn a mask even once, anywhere. Unfortunately, not many people have the luxury of avoiding this madness for their children.
Outstanding post.
Anytime somebody puts that much time, effort, and money into such a ridiculous endeavor as this study, one must wonder what their true motivation is.
Took the wife (she uses an electric cart to get around) to the Dr yesterday. On the way out we had gotten in the elevator and a lady rode with us. I invited her in, she had asked if we minded – “doesn’t bother us at all”.
She proudly told us she’d been vaxxed, boostered. And when I asked she told us her mask was N95.
What has the world come to!😢
Should have asked if she preferred duckbill, flatfold or cone and remind her that two of those (without saying or claiming to remember which) have been widely counterfeited by Chinese makers of non-compliant masks and are are unsafe.
Doc, the motivation may be pure and the data and their significance may be true. A 9.3% reduction in seropositivity is certainly going to be statistically significant in such a large study. But it is still meaningless. A reduction from 0.76% to 0.68% (ie, 9.3%) is a change from one person in 132 to one person in 147. That’s not a useful public health measure, even without accounting for the error bars. It’s statistically significant without being clinically useful.
There’s this lovely line that the New Mexico government is pushing on electronic highway signs, “Vaccines work // Wear masks indoors”. Do they not see the problem in that? If the vaccines work, you don’t need a mask.
The diminutive tinpot of the Land of Enchantment needs to be taken down a peg (though, in her case, there wouldn’t be much left).
The principal authors appear to be economists not epidemiologists. It almost looks like some group was originally tasked to encourage mask use in these communities and then decided to tack on a half-assed look at effectiveness. Given the selection process you can’t possibly be serious that it was “statistically significant.” They found 80 COVID positives out of 340,000 people. We don’t even know if the “intervention” seropositives were mask users, only that they were in a village where mask use was encouraged and ultimately reached 42%. There is absolutely no reason to take that 9.3% seriously.
You must have missed the notice that NM has always been at war with Eastasia.
I believe these emergency powers came about during the Clinton Admin, when various Executive Orders put aside national sovereignty any time a national emergency was declared.
For instance, during Katrina, no matter how much assistance in terms of food, water and medical supplies were sent by the Fed government to New Orleans, by the George the Younger admin, FEMA was in charge of distribution, and they didn’t do much distribution.
Last year, the moment Trump declared that COVID was indeed a national emergency, FEMA began running the country.
Last month we were at war with Oceania. But all the documents I can find say that it was Eastasia. Guess my memory is wrong and needs to be fixed.
Thanks for the detailed analysis and the time that you put into this, OB.
I don’t take it seriously. “Statistical significance” does not mean “significant” in the sense of “meaningful or important”. It means “less than 5% likely to have arisen by chance”. Since I don’t have their data and can’t do the analysis myself, I have no reason to distrust their statistics. But the statistical significance (or lack thereof) of this study is meaningless, for the exact reasons that you posit. It’s a dreadful study, one to which I would be embarrassed to have my name affixed.
I’ll second that.
Early on it became evident that logic was not involved in New Mexico’s covid dictates. Most conspicuously, travel restrictions and many other rules didn’t apply to government employees or contractors.
When we visited our grandchildren last week in New Mexico we were dismayed by the number of people still wearing masks at outdoor parks. And our 4 year old grandson and his teammates have to wear them at soccer practice (outdoors, by order of the sponsoring organization). Our son-in-law (the team’s coach) complained about how hard it was to communicate with the kids through the masks. Now that our granddaughter turned 2 years old a few weeks ago, she has to wear a mask when indoors at preschool. Fortunately the preschool tries to have most of the children’s activities outdoors.
Those numbers struck me too as a mighty small supposed benefit compared to the large effort that went in. And from my corporate budget work, I know that small numbers (like numbers that are less than 1%) can be heavily influenced by odd one-off events. [I’m one of those people who considers universal masking a high-cost activity, so there needs to be a very large benefit before it is undertaken.]
India has a seropositive rate of 67% that is 2 magnitudes higher. The Bangladesh study is garbage.
Any study has to involve animals, since people will not comply.
I laughed and then was appalled. Someone arrest that dude! But it’s apt in other ways, because it is precisely the parents of schoolchildren who are making the biggest push in opposition.
Yes, a wise man wrote that “it is a dreadful study, one to which I would be embarrassed to have my name affixed.” That does not change the fact that most laymen don’t understand the meaning of the term “statistical significance”, which is the point I was trying, apparently unsuccessfully, to make. A study can show p < 0.05 or <0.001 and still be, as you note, garbage.
I didn’t understand those either. Also, if you traveled outside the state for medical reasons you were exempt from quarantining when you returned. I wondered how the virus knew enough to avoid infecting you if you met the governor’s criteria.
Last month the governor recommended people wear masks indoors. I was appalled at the number I saw in stores, people willingly putting them back on. Evidently not enough were for her so later in the month she made it a health order. I don’t comply and the one place I’ve gotten pushback is at the library.
We are turning Australian. A formerly tough, self-reliant people.
From the Atlantic, not a right wing source: “The Downsides of Masking Young Students Are Real.”
Here is something I never understood.
When the virus is in virtually every county of every district of every country in the world, what is the problem with travel? You can catch the virus just as easily from your neighbor as you can from visiting somebody on the other side of the world. I can understand if you live in a place that has no virus particles and no cases at all, and want to keep foreigners from coming in to infect you or keep your people from traveling out to get infected, but I don’t think such a place exists. It might make sense at the very beginning of a pandemic, but once the world becomes saturated with virus, what difference does it make where you go?
Am I missing something?
I heard about this study on Twitter, where the maskadvocates touted it as the definitive answer. Then I read the skeptics who picked it apart. Then I read the tweets where people retreated to the positions they had before the study came out. Then I read the tweets full of charts about the rise in cases that proved the mandates did nothing. Then I read this post. Now I’m where I was before: doubtful about their efficacy, indifferent to other people’s choices, opposed to eternal masking until “it’s safe,” but now I’m also preemptively tired of people who will cite this study.
You should meet my cats.
Exactly. Trump’s travel ban on China was about 7-8 months too late. Biden’s travel restrictions on India was especially brain-dead—the USA has more cases per million than India. But the dumbest of all was DC Mayor Bowser’s order that travel to listed states (mostly with GOP governors) required a 10-day quarantine upon return (unless the trip was to aid Democratic candidates or other “official” DC govt business). Even more than most major cities, DC has a daily influx of visitors and commuters comparable to its resident population. The notion that a visit to NC or FL creates enhanced risk is idiotic.