What Went Wrong with a Highly Publicized COVID Mask Analysis?
What Went Wrong with a Highly Publicized COVID Mask Analysis?
The Cochrane Library, a trusted source of health information, misled the public by prioritizing rigor over reality
I totally do not get why people have to try to prove to themselves that masks do not work. More than likely they do especially if you have a new good well fitting mask changed frequently and you use and change it properly. There is also the question who it helps more, you or the people around you.
A huge problem during the pandemic was mask availability, and people using them properly even if they had a supply to do that which mostly no one did. So result of mask use is a good question but it may say nothing about how well masks used properly work.
I totally do not get why people have to try to prove to themselves that masks do not work.
I see it as a failure of politics. It’s been a while now, but IIRC in the US as well people were told that they shouldn’t wear N95, just like we in Europe were told not to wear FFP2. That they are hard to use and best left to professionals. That having a beard makes them useless. Now there was a decent idea behind it, stocks were low and uncertain, and healthcare professionals needed respirators first. But then production ramped up, and they were everywhere, and suddenly those masks are great and everyone should wear them.
That kind of political messaging has to produce conflict.
Yes. I just wish they had been honest. Yes they are effective but please minimize use of certain classes of masks and leave for those that really need them until stocks catch up.
The whole messaging sucked. You had to know something to read between the lines. Not a problem for me but I am sure was confusing for others. Then you had those that wanted to make it confusing.
Mask debates were one of those things that taught me internet people mostly have poor reading skills. I only wrote that masks alone cannot explain the decay of covid in mask-wearing Asia. >90% of redditors wrongly labeled me as an antimasker and criticized me... The phone notifications were annoying.
It's not just poor reading skills, but the hyper partisan tribalism that developed and a near religious obsession with arbitrary things like masks
I am a pro-masker, but I don't like this article.
This is an article from a historian, i.e. not an expert on medicine. What is argued is that we haven't disproved that mask works.
The problem is that this doesn't mean anything. For example, we haven't disproved UFOs. We haven't disproved aliens are watching us. We haven't disproved ivermectin.
Now, we meet people who insist that UFOs exist, aliens watch us, or ivermectin is the cure for covid, and we are skeptical about them.
If you read the article, the author only writes that masks aren't disproved of their efficiency and that it was wrong to say masks don't work.
So, a good scientist would understand that there's only weak evidence for the efficiency of masks raised in this article. The author probably knows that. In that sense, he hasn't lied.
However, I suspect he also knew that ordinaries would read this article and jump to the conclusion that masks do work.
We have disproved ivermectin. Because it's an antiparasitic, not an antiviral.
The worst part about it is that we HAVE disproved mask mandates. After years of them enacted across entire populations, like state wide mandates, we have more than enough examples to show that long term the effect on spread was absolute zero.
Just look at the CDC study this very article links to in order to see how bad the "proof" is on a population level. They cherry pick a specific period of time in a specific place, and compare places with mask mandates to those without. With the timing lined up just right where the places with mandates had just gotten out of a HUGE surge, while the places without were just getting hit with the traveling wave. Pathetic
The point of mask mandates is short term. They are meant to slow the spread, not stop it.
Good article. Cochrane has its place but also has its issues. I like the phrase mentioned in the article "methodological fetishism" to describe their style.
The bigger issue for me is the anti-science stance so many are pushing/following now, but whenever one study comes out reinforcing what they already wanted to believe they pounce on it. That's not how the scientific consensus works and that "methodological fetishism" fed right into it. We still need experts' help to understand what's significant.
Oh I agree. I'm coming at this from the medicine side though and there's some specific concerns and criticisms for Cochrane reviews and the meta analysis method in general, though on the whole I generally agree with what they're going for. A really simplistic example but I think illustrates the point well would be this:
https://www.bmj.com/content/327/7429/1459
A meta analysis of the effectiveness of parachutes concludes there is no evidence to suggest their effectiveness, due to lack of high quality double blind randomized controlled trials.
I'm a huge proponent of evidence based medicine, but sometimes people are quick to point to a Cochrane review or other systematic review as biblical scientific dogma that cannot be defied, and don't consider the nuances of the situation. Like what went into the meta analysis and why? What data might be missing from the meta review and why? Is only including double blind randomized controlled trials the best research method to answer the specific question being addressed? Was everything included together actually comparable? Was the specific question the review asked the right question to ask? How broad can this finding actually be applied?
Part of the problem in this case though was the Cochrane reviews findings being somewhat misrepresented in the popular media by those not familiar with the format or the nuances. No doctor is gonna read that review and rip off their masks when treating covid, flu, or other airborne or droplet diseases. Masks were used in the hospital long before covid and will continue to do so, for good reason.
“methodological fetishism"
On a lighter note: Hey, no kink shaming, Naomi 😸