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Controlled study from Denmark; masks don’t work
NorthwestFresh
Member Posts: 7,972
in Tug Tavern
No statistically significant benefit to wearing them.
Comments
You would have better protection if the governors were promoting Vitamin D and zinc. But better protection isn't the priority.
Fow Flip Flop Chee
Inconclusive results, missing data, variable adherence, patient-reported findings on home tests, no blinding, and no assessment of whether masks could decrease disease transmission from mask wearers to others.
Conclusion:
The recommendation to wear surgical masks to supplement other public health measures did not reduce the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among wearers by more than 50% in a community with modest infection rates, some degree of social distancing, and uncommon general mask use. The data were compatible with lesser degrees of self-protection.
Takeaway seems to be that wearing a mask in an environment where other people are not wearing masks only gives you a statistically insignificant reduction in transmission risk. I think that more or less gels with the conventional wisdom circulating - wearing a mask doesn't do much to protect yourself, but they are a lot more effective in preventing you from spreading the disease to someone else. Obviously the study didn't explore the latter.
If I had my druthers, I'd rather they conclude masks work and social distancing doesn't matter. Much easier.
We dropped Christmas when the kids grew up and our niece flew the coup. Thanksgiving is a distant memory unless the son comes down which he can't this year but still
But I am tempted to go out and find 20 people off the street for Thanksgiving this year
Twitter is a buzz with a Danish mask study saying "masks don't work", ignoring 40+ other studies showing they help and ignoring that the study is fucking hot garbage (46% of people in mask treatment didn't always wear masks and the vast majority of infections were diagnosed via serum antibody studies when Denmark had an incredibly low prevalence, meaning most of the infections in the study were false positives anyways. In terms of PCR diagnosed cases, there were 0 in the mask group and 5 in the control group... out of 4800 total patients... yea low incidence indeed).
Certainly masks aren't 100% effective nor are they our best option, but they've clearly been shown to help lower R rate and slow outbreaks.
Virologist response:
ugh, fuck this shit. how does it get published?
Doctor reply:
NEJM, JAMA and BMJ rejected it. Annals is usually really good. It definitely gets attention and eye balls on your journal.
It's good to know from an epidemiology stand point that masks probably don't do any good when local cases are low and community spread is minimal, and this is good data supporting that.
OF COURSE, it will be misinterpreted by chuds who are scientifically illiterate, but it's still a relevant data point in this specific regard. (although it's a shitty data point of a low quality study).