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by wunderforce
1862 days ago
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I think there is some evidence that lockdowns at least offered partial mitigation, but my memory is fuzzy on that. They certainly didn't stop transmission but they may have blunted the rate a bit. I also looked into the mask literature when the pandemic first started and agree there is no evidence to support their effectiveness (unless they are N95s). Even the meta-analysis published by the WHO stated there was no evidence for their effectiveness but tentatively recommend their use as the cost of mask usage was low. I will add that most of the studies had healthcare workers wearing masks, and did not test the combination of both parties wearing masks. It is entirely possible that everyone wearing masks + distancing + limited contact duration may be "effective". In this case it's less about being actually protected (N95) and more about lowering the probability of transmission events, which our common leaky/crappy masks may be able to accomplish under the aforementioned conditions. I doubt(/hope) no one believes that if I take a healthy and infected person, give them both surgical masks, and lock them in a small room together for a few hours, that the masks will prevent the healthy person from contracting covid. |
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If you remember, please do post so I can take a look. Because, the evidence I've seen is all completely unambiguous and resolves the question completely in favour of "lockdowns do not work and have no effect". And actually there are now many simple examples of that, of places where restrictions were not applied, or were applied much less strictly, or were lifted, and no differences were observed in outcomes (e.g. Sweden, Florida, Texas, South Dakota, Belarus, Japan etc).
It is entirely possible that everyone wearing masks + distancing + limited contact duration may be "effective".
If that were the case then sudden behavioural changes caused by mask mandates should reliably cause graphs to drop or obviously inflect to a lower growth rate. That should happen everywhere mask mandates come in and are well enforced (which they are, this has been measured). But we don't see that. Of course you can cherry pick a few graphs where there seem to be such inflections, but when you look at lots of them it becomes clear there's no correlation with anything.
I doubt(/hope) no one believes that if I take a healthy and infected person, give them both surgical masks, and lock them in a small room together for a few hours, that the masks will prevent the healthy person from contracting covid.
I see people wearing masks outside all the time, as well as in empty cars. Health 'experts' say nothing about any of this. So, I'm pretty sure lots of people do believe that unfortunately :(