Worth a read, more in depth analysis of some of these studies: https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/mathematical-an...
Therefore, we need to consider either possibilities. Given that it is such a low-risk intervention, even a 99% chance that Vitamin D doesn't work would make supplementing worthwhile.
Whether vitamin D has any effect is still very much unknown.
"(CNN) World Health Organization officials Monday said they still recommend people not wear face masks unless they are sick with Covid-19 or caring for someone who is sick.
"There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there's some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly," Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO health emergencies program, said at a media briefing in Geneva, Switzerland, on Monday."
Certain institutions seem to use the epistemic standard "if something hasn't been rigorously proven to be a good idea, then you shouldn't do it". It's the kind of logic that, consistently applied, would say you shouldn't use parachutes in skydiving because there haven't been randomized controlled studies establishing their effectiveness. I think this is what incrudible is arguing against.
How did such logic take hold in the first place? My first guess is that it's something like, that's the type of logic that lets them definitively say "you shouldn't take xyz homeopathic remedy" instead of "well, our expert doctor says he doesn't expect it to help but he can't completely rule it out, and there isn't any good evidence that it does work".
This is a recent paper on masks... https://www.cell.com/med/fulltext/S2666-6340(20)30072-6
ignoring that masks are a perfect environment for debris and bacteria growth, as well as impeding natural expiration of all these gross things
I wash my mask with soap after every use, and let it dwell in the soap for half a minute or so. When the weather is right for it, I leave it in the sun to dry. I have a small collection of masks that I rotate through. How infrequently do you disinfect your mask that you worry about it being a petri dish?
Secondly, those gross things you mention at the end were already inside your mouth and lungs. If they are infectious, you probably already have the infection.
This summer, the state of Kansas did an (inadvertent) infield experiment where some counties implemented mask mandates and other counties did not. After a few week, the non-mask mandate counties infection rates increased rapidly. The mask mandate counties’ infection rate increased on slightly.
https://mediahub.ku.edu/media/Masks/1_49bb9aid?campaign_id=1...
https://mobile.twitter.com/ianmsc/status/1332407421151576064...
Turns out that if you pick slightly different start and end dates, you can get dramatically different results.
Even if you think there’s a justification for it, plotting the counties’ data next to each other shows that they’re torturing the data. That is a perfect example of the horrible, flawed methodology that has been getting published all year.
By the way: there was a randomized controlled trial for masks and covid published just recently. They were able to detect no statistically significant protective effect:
The study you just linked to is an excellent example of using poor methodology to support your position. If a study is not powered to detect the expected change (for the mask wearer, which is expected to be very small) with full compliance, I would certainly not expect to get a statistically significant result with partial compliance. It did not attempt to measure the effect on transmission from the mask wearer to others at all.
The DAMASK study is literally the only RCT ever run for masks and Covid. You may not like it or what it says, but its much higher quality than any of these uncontrolled, correlative, pro-mask “papers” that have been rushed out since March.
> It did not attempt to measure the effect on transmission from the mask wearer to others at all.
Because you can’t. Short of locking a group of people in a room with infected people and seeing who gets it, thats an unfalsifiable hypothesis.
Fortunately, we know that masks are not magically effective in one direction only, and if they don’t work in one direction....
Here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25680698
> You may not like it or what it says, but its much higher quality than any of these uncontrolled, correlative, pro-mask “papers” that have been rushed out since March.
I showed you why it is not.
> Because you can’t.
And here you admit as much — that this study is useless to measure the effect of a mask mandate.
> Short of locking a group of people in a room with infected people and seeing who gets it, thats an unfalsifiable hypothesis.
And here you admit that it is impossible to do a study that proves the effectiveness of masks to the degree that would satisfy you. In the absence of such studies, we have to rely on our priors, which are based on laboratory-proven effectiveness of masks in reducing the distance and the mass of virus particle spread from the wearer combined with what we know about germ theory.
> if they don’t work in one direction....
You somehow ignored that your study does not show that it does not work in either direction. It was not designed to measure effectiveness in one direction, and it was not powered to measure effectiveness in the other direction.
I hope some bored science writer someday makes a book compiling and critiquing some of the ridiculous "studies" that got written during the pandemic.
I appreciated the linked article's subtle shade-throwing:
> As for Vitamin D administration to hospitalized COVID-19 patients reducing ICU admission, the best one can say about the Córdoba study is that nothing can be learned from it.
http://compbio.mit.edu/calcifediol/Response_to_Pachter_criti...