1061 replies to this topic

[albedo]

(cancelled as duplicate post)

Edited by albedo, 12 March 2025 - 06:37 PM.

[albedo]

@Daniel Cooper. Agree with that, its a good point (and lesson learnt) and I would also add they should pass the message of the uncertainly in science, of criticism, of not censuring, of balancing, of respect, of no-arrogance etc, etc ... which I also felt badly during the pandemics.

The point of me posting Kulldorff (one of the GBD support if I recollect well) is that he writes "The only way to restore public trust in vaccination – which has taken a big hit since the lies attending the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine – is to put a well-known vaccine skeptic in charge of the vaccine research agenda. The ideal person for this is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been nominated to lead the Department of Health and Human Services".

I really wish so and hopefully msm are only scaring us now with measles and the first child death. I do not know you but if I have to be guided by my intuition, to borrow from your post, between say RKJ and say Paul A. Offit I would definitively tend to side with the latter for my kid.

[Florin]

A lot of CYA going on now, between Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx, and the awful US media. Seen in the Boston Globe recently, "COVID lockdowns produced more harm than good".

 

This is the same awful US media that was PAID billions of dollars to harass and belittle anyone who said anything against the COVID policies a couple of years ago. The lockdowns, masking, and social distancing were not proven nor scientific. Many people pointed this out when the COVID pandemic panic began. Many of them were censored and/or fired. Many even got death threats.

 

Where are the apologies? You won't get any from the US media or the US government. There hasn't even been a true reckoning about the whole COVID pandemic panic. No apologies from Stanford University who is still censuring a professor for his CORRECT positions on the COVID pandemic panic.

 

Where's your apology? How long will you continue to claim that masking wasn't "scientific" when this thread has mentioned plenty of scientific evidence which indicates that masking did work, at least near the beginning of the pandemic? If you can't admit your own mistakes, why would you expect others to admit theirs?

[Daniel Cooper]

Where's your apology? How long will you continue to claim that masking wasn't "scientific" when this thread has mentioned plenty of scientific evidence which indicates that masking did work, at least near the beginning of the pandemic? If you can't admit your own mistakes, why would you expect others to admit theirs?

 

Florin,

 

If we're being fair here - would you not admit that for every study that showed that masking worked that someone could find a similar study that showed it did not?

 

I don't see a clear signal one way or the other. Just a bunch of noise. Which implies to me that there isn't a robust effect one way or the other. 

[Florin]

Florin,

 

If we're being fair here - would you not admit that for every study that showed that masking worked that someone could find a similar study that showed it did not?

 

I don't see a clear signal one way or the other. Just a bunch of noise. Which implies to me that there isn't a robust effect one way or the other. 

 

The biggest RCT for masking during the covid pandemic suggested that it worked. Why didn't that cut through the noise for you? It should have at least indicated that masking has enough scientific evidence to be worth trying.

 

Mind's claim is that masking isn't "scientific." That's clearly false, and he should admit that he's wrong. If he can't, why should he expect others to admit their mistakes?

Edited by Florin, 12 March 2025 - 08:36 PM.

[Dorian Grey]

The biggest RCT for masking during the covid pandemic suggested that it worked. Why didn't that cut through the noise for you? It should have at least indicated that masking has enough scientific evidence to be worth trying.

 

Mind's claim is that masking isn't "scientific." That's clearly false, and he should admit that he's wrong. If he can't, why should he expect others to admit their mistakes?

 

We were all masked to the max here in San Diego, during the Winter of 21/22 with indoor and outdoor mask mandates, when omicron swept through our city like wildfire.  We had good compliance, and two years to learn how to wear them properly.  

 

My wife caught it at work in a surgical suite, where everyone was masked with new, surgical grade masks.  The scrub thought he was coming down with a cold, but they learned he tested positive the next day.  Wife became symptomatic a couple days later and tested positive.  

 

Nothing like personal experience.  She's been a surgical nurse for 40 years.  If she didn't learn how to properly mask up by now...

[Mind]

There is no good evidence that masking (or social distancing, or school closures, or restaurant closures) "worked" as a population-level response to the COVID pandemic panic. No matter the country, no matter the compliance - almost everyone got COVID. Some of the new poorly-conducted pro-mask studies were even retracted which is well documented in the big mask thread.

 

It wouldn't be so bad, except that public "health" authorities sold masking as the be-all-end-all solution to the COVID pandemic panic. In my state they said the pandemic panic would be over in a "matter of weeks" if everyone masked-up. Over 95% compliance and there was not a bit of difference. COVID cases kept going up.

 

Ask any questions, show the studies that masking is not a good pandemic response, and fake fact-checkers like Rueters (paid billions of dollars to deceive the public) would try to shut all the discussion down.

 

Now that more and more people are coming to a realization that they were deceived during the COVID pandemic panic, more of the organizations who led the debacle are doing CYAs. The WHO is now claiming (technically) they did not shut anything down or cause the lockdowns. If the COVID policies worked - the WHO would be patting themselves on the back and be trumpeting the same policies for the next pandemic.

[Florin]

We were all masked to the max here in San Diego, during the Winter of 21/22 with indoor and outdoor mask mandates, when omicron swept through our city like wildfire.  We had good compliance, and two years to learn how to wear them properly.  

 

My wife caught it at work in a surgical suite, where everyone was masked with new, surgical grade masks.  The scrub thought he was coming down with a cold, but they learned he tested positive the next day.  Wife became symptomatic a couple days later and tested positive.  

 

Nothing like personal experience.  She's been a surgical nurse for 40 years.  If she didn't learn how to properly mask up by now...

 

We already discussed this; masking seemed to work early in the pandemic and the largest masking RCT supports this claim, while later in the pandemic, masking seemed to fail probably due the fact that covid became more contagious. It's not black and white, but Mind seems to claim that it is: there's no evidence that masks worked period.

[Florin]

There is no good evidence that masking (or social distancing, or school closures, or restaurant closures) "worked" as a population-level response to the COVID pandemic panic. No matter the country, no matter the compliance - almost everyone got COVID. Some of the new poorly-conducted pro-mask studies were even retracted which is well documented in the big mask thread.

 

It wouldn't be so bad, except that public "health" authorities sold masking as the be-all-end-all solution to the COVID pandemic panic. In my state they said the pandemic panic would be over in a "matter of weeks" if everyone masked-up. Over 95% compliance and there was not a bit of difference. COVID cases kept going up.

 

Ask any questions, show the studies that masking is not a good pandemic response, and fake fact-checkers like Rueters (paid billions of dollars to deceive the public) would try to shut all the discussion down.

 

Now that more and more people are coming to a realization that they were deceived during the COVID pandemic panic, more of the organizations who led the debacle are doing CYAs. The WHO is now claiming (technically) they did not shut anything down or cause the lockdowns. If the COVID policies worked - the WHO would be patting themselves on the back and be trumpeting the same policies for the next pandemic.

 

Go back and reread the last few posts of that thread. You've consistently ignored the RCT that suggested masking worked early in the pandemic. Studies which suggested that masks don't work were conducted later in the pandemic when I'd agree that masks lost their effectiveness. But you just cherry pick the studies that agree with you and ignore the rest.

 

If you don't want the same policies repeated for the next pandemic, I suggest pushing for the stockpiling of respirators. If pandemics get bad enough and if respirators aren't available, everyone will die.

Edited by Florin, Yesterday, 07:55 PM.

[Advocatus Diaboli]

Some criticisms of the Bangladesh RCT mask study

 

Non-Blinded Design:

 

The study was not blinded, meaning participants knew whether they were in the intervention group (receiving masks and promotion) or the control group. This could have led to behavioral changes (e.g., increased caution in the intervention group) that might have influenced the results, independent of mask-wearing itself.

 

Compliance Issues:

 

While mask-wearing increased in the intervention group, compliance was not universal. Some people in the intervention group did not wear masks consistently, and some in the control group may have worn masks on their own. This partial compliance could have diluted the observed effects.

 

Outcome Measurement:

 

The study relied on symptomatic COVID-19 cases confirmed by seroprevalence (antibody testing) as the primary outcome. Critics argue that this approach might have missed asymptomatic infections, which are a significant part of COVID-19 transmission.

 

Generalizability:

 

The study was conducted in rural Bangladesh, where living conditions, population density, and healthcare access differ significantly from urban or high-income settings. Some argue that the findings may not be directly applicable to other contexts.

 

Statistical Interpretation:

 

The reported 11% reduction in symptomatic COVID-19 cases with surgical masks was modest and had a wide confidence interval, leading some to question the strength of the evidence. Critics argue that the effect size might be too small to draw definitive conclusions.

 

Cloth Mask Results:

 

The study found no significant reduction in symptomatic cases with cloth masks, but critics point out that the design may not have been sufficient to detect smaller effects or differences between mask types.

 

 

Re-analysis on the statistical sampling biases of a mask promotion trial in Bangladesh: a statistical replication:

 

"A recent randomized trial evaluated the impact of mask promotion on COVID-19-related outcomes. We find that staff behavior in both unblinded and supposedly blinded steps caused large and statistically significant imbalances in population sizes. These denominator differences constitute the rate differences observed in the trial, complicating inferences of causality." Note that "...complicating inferences of causality." is a polite way to say that the authors of the Bangladesh study are full of it.

 

The Bangladesh Mask study: a Bayesian perspective:

 

"A very large trial, whose results were published in Science, carried out in Bangladesh between 2020 and 2021 has been widely acclaimed as providing the most convincing evidence yet that masks work in reducing Covid-19 transmission and infections. However, the media grossly exaggerated the authors' own conclusions, and sceptical researchers have identified weaknesses in various aspects of the trial and statistical analysis which cast doubts on the significance of the results. The sole focus of this report is to determine what can really be learned about the impact of mask wearing on covid infections from the data in the trial. Using a novel Bayesian causal modelling approach, we find that the claimed benefits do not hold up when subject to this rigorous analysis. At best, one can conclude that there is only a 52% probability that the seropositivity rate among people subject to a mask intervention campaign is lower than those who are not, while there is a 95% chance that a mask intervention campaign would result in anything between 19,240 fewer positives and 18,500 more positives in every 100,000. This means there was no discernible effect of the mask intervention on covid infection."

 

Observations by a former Cornell Medical School professor:

 

That Bangladesh Mask Study Shows AT BEST A Population Seroprevalence Reduction Of 0.0026%, And Likely Smaller: Plus Four New Studies Showing Mask Mandates Are Useless

 

Example criticisms from the link:

 

"Right away, we see reporting should be done by village, hierarchically. Summing across villages is dangerous because of the very real possibility of Simpson’s paradox, especially if those villages differ widely in population. In other words, we shouldn’t see the authors summing across all villages, but averaging effects across “randomized” (and not blinded) villages."

 

Red flag #1: They summed across villages, with the real possibility of Simpson’s paradox. 

 

Red flag #2: they collected data only on (some) “symptomatic individuals”, and not all individuals. Since many “symptomatic” did not have Covid (as you will see), “symptoms” were badly defined, even though the definitions were from the WHO. Just what were the symptoms symptoms of? Why report on symptom differences when only a fraction of those with symptoms had Covid? Reducing symptoms is therefore almost meaningless.

 

Red flag #3: They only collected blood on 10,952/342,126 = 3% of the population. This isn’t necessarily a red flag, because that sample size could be sufficient. But if they grabbed all “symptomatic” people, then at worst only 3% of the population developed symptoms, which is small. Meaning Covid did not spread much, because only a fraction of that 3% had Covid at the time of testing. They didn’t test for antibodies, so people infected previously were missed.

 

Red flag #4: They don’t present the raw numbers, only the “adjusted” numbers. Meaning some model was used. This is odd because they do show the raw numbers for the other outcomes, like mask compliance rates (obviously higher in those who were reminded to wear them).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Advocatus Diaboli, Yesterday, 11:27 PM.

[Advocatus Diaboli]

In my post #1060 I failed to give some emphasis in a quote from the study The Bangladesh Mask study: a Bayesian perspective: where it would have been appropriate. So I'm repeating the quote here with 3 additional areas of emphasis (bold type):

 

"A very large trial, whose results were published in Science, carried out in Bangladesh between 2020 and 2021 has been widely acclaimed as providing the most convincing evidence yet that masks work in reducing Covid-19 transmission and infections. However, the media grossly exaggerated the authors' own conclusions, and sceptical researchers have identified weaknesses in various aspects of the trial and statistical analysis which cast doubts on the significance of the results. The sole focus of this report is to determine what can really be learned about the impact of mask wearing on covid infections from the data in the trial. Using a novel Bayesian causal modelling approach, we find that the claimed benefits do not hold up when subject to this rigorous analysis. At best, one can conclude that there is only a 52% probability that the seropositivity rate among people subject to a mask intervention campaign is lower than those who are not, while there is a 95% chance that a mask intervention campaign would result in anything between 19,240 fewer positives and 18,500 more positives in every 100,000. This means there was no discernible effect of the mask intervention on covid infection. Given that the results of the study have been used explicitly to justify continuing or reintroducing aspects of mask mandates in the USA, UK and elsewhere, the study paper in Science needs to be corrected or withdrawn."

 

The last sentence had been inadvertantly left off in my original posting, and is included here in the above.

 

 

Edited by Advocatus Diaboli, Today, 02:44 PM.

[Florin]

 

Some criticisms of the Bangladesh RCT mask study

 

I'm glad you disagree with Mind's false claim that there's nothing to criticize.

 

Some of these criticisms aren't fatal, and while I have no opinion about the ones that are left, I'd like to see responses to some of them by the study authors. You might want to encourage these critics to leave replies about this study at https://www.science....elettersSection or leave some yourself.

 

Also, the criticisms you mentioned were published several months after the study was published, and in that interval of time, it would have been rational (if there was no strong contrary evidence) to believe that it was good enough in helping to make masking decisions.

Edited by Florin, Today, 11:14 PM.