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Comment by glofish | Hacker News Reader

Alas even today there is no RCT on masks. Why?

Countries and states with strict mask policies did not do better than those without these policies (see US States for an example).

So do mask work?

It is like a religious belief system, you would get the same reaction when questioning if God existed and asked parishioners and atheists. Everything is evidence for those that want to believe.

Studies that claim to "prove" that masks work turn out to be shambolic messes - yet are published in the most selective of journals, see for example:

Effect size is significantly more important than statistical significance.

http://www.argmin.net/2021/09/13/effect-size/

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How would you ethically design an RCT on masks (as a method of reducing COVID-19 transmission obviously)?

How would you "ethically" design a vaccine study?

There is your answer.

You say:

Studies that claim to "prove" that masks work turn out to be shambolic messes

Do you have a list of the 10 or 20 studies on high filtration masks that you found to be better than the others that you evaluated?

"Revisiting Pediatric COVID-19 Cases in Counties With and Without School Mask Requirements"

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4118566

> We failed to establish a relationship between school masking and pediatric cases using the same methods but a larger, more nationally diverse population over a longer interval. Our study demonstrates that observational studies of interventions with small to moderate effect sizes are prone to bias caused by selection and omitted variables.

If you look at the plot - there were more cases when masks were required!

So what? We know that well fitted masks are able to filter virus particles, we don't have to do a randomized controlled study on school children to prove it.

It's weird that people arguing against masking as a policy intervention go after the masks rather than the obvious problem, which is compliance. When someone tells you that you have to have a mask on to be in a building and then pulls their mask under their nose (happened to me last week), the effectiveness of masking isn't being evaluated, it's the effectiveness of masking as a policy intervention that is being evaluated.

What do you mean "so what"?

Read the paper. There were more cases per student when masks were required.

Look at the paper and their plot when they talk about cases overall.

We do not understand what masks do and what people do when masked with these silly measures. Putting on and off a mask cannot be good for you.

The mask proponents "think" simplistically and that it "ought" to work. "Logically it MUST work.

There is no such thing "I know it works", so no need to do it. Anything we "know" is because we ran solid tests and collected clear cut evidences many many times. None of which are true for masks.

So read the way you wrote your first post. This article talks about mask mandates (a policy), you mostly talk about masks.

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