[roywiggins]

Look, I'm not qualified to evaluate a study like this, but between Science and "el gato malo" published on Substack, I think I'm going to have to go with Science on this one, pending some recognized expert in the field with a human name saying otherwise.

[mikeyouse]

The author of the study that the bad cat is trying to discredit wrote a long, persuasive rebuttal to the simplistic critiques he's been reading on Tyler Cowen's blog;

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/11/ja...

They saw a significant reduction in covid presence in communities with more masking -- even though total masking was still only 40% in those communities -- which is very much in line with all the other literature.

I literally can't believe people still pretend like masks (especially surgical/KN95s) don't protect people when it's completely self-evident since we've used them forever to protect people in medical settings.

[defaultprimate]

It doesn't address the primary criticisms of the bad cat, and you should really read the comments on the article you linked, as well as they meta-analyses I provided on mask effectiveness when it comes to respiratory illnesses in healthcare and community settings.

They don't work, at all, across decades of research and dozens of studies. They're not going to magically start working for COVID when they haven't worked for the flu or any other respiratory virus in the past.

>forever to protect people in medical settings.

Surgical masks in medical settings are designed to protect from bacterial infections, not viral ones.

[mikeyouse]

> and you should really read the comments on the article you linked, as well as they meta-analyses I provided on mask effectiveness when it comes to respiratory illnesses in healthcare and community settings.

Unfortunately, Tyler Cowen's blog has worse Covid commentary than even HN does, which is pretty impressive given the amount of HCQ/Ivermectin/bioweapon conspiracy theorizing here.

> Surgical masks in medical settings are designed to protect from bacterial infections, not viral ones.

This is patently untrue.. you're not one of those "virus particles can fit through masks" people are you? As just one example of how obvious it is that masks protect against viruses in HCW from the last SARS outbreak;

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7112437/

[defaultprimate]

I literally linked several meta-analyses that show it's patently true.

[mikeyouse]

You should perhaps read the studies you've linked a bit closer? When mentioned (as several of them are explicitly about masks in non-healthcare settings) - they all advocate for universal masking in healthcare settings specifically to limit the spread of Covid...

> Although more research on universal masking in heath settings is needed, it is the expert opinion of the majority (79%) of WHO COVID-19 IPC GDG members that universal masking is advisable in geographic settings where there is known or suspected community or cluster transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

> 1. In areas of known or suspected community or cluster SARS-CoV-2 transmission, universal masking should be advised in all health facilities (see Table 1).

> All health workers, including community health workers and caregivers, should wear a medical mask at all times, for any activity (care of COVID-19 or nonCOVID-19 patients) and in any common area (e.g., cafeteria, staff rooms).

> Other staff, visitors, outpatients and service providers should also wear a mask (medical or non-medical) at all times

[defaultprimate]

Opinions not supported by empirical evidence are not opinions worth listening to.

"Experts" supported eugenics, antibacterial soap, breakfast cereal, the food pyramid, lobotomies, and all kinds of other things on the basis of popular "consensus"

[ineedasername]

you should really read the comments on the article you linked

Even if I disagree with TC on something, I still think he's pretty much intellectually honest, i.e., is not beholden to one political agenda or another simply because it matches his world view or completely unaware of competing data. And he often does a good job in striking a balance on ideology & practicality (State Capacity Libertarianism comes to mind)

However the comments section on MR are often a hot mess of cherry picking or misinformation parroted back by people trying emulate TC's style without anything approaching his intellectual rigor.

[defaultprimate]

Skepticism and methodological criticism are definitionally "science". Not cult like faith. Ad hominems and appeals to authority are not valid arguments.

[roywiggins]

Paying more attention to information in a peer-reviewed journal than information in a pseudonymous substack is not "cult-like faith." Of course the study could be wrong.

[defaultprimate]

The study is not and has not passed peer review.

[roywiggins]

Hasn't it? Looks published to me. It has a doi and everything.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi9069

[defaultprimate]

My mistake, the link in the article you first posted still shows it as a working paper and I couldn't find it with the original title when searching.

Interestingly the DOI does not show up

https://dx.doi.org/

Here's some further criticisms:

https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1073440/latest.pdf

https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.01296

https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...