Masks for Covid: Updating the Evidence | Hacker News Reader

Masks for Covid: Updating the Evidence

fast.ai

40 pointssusiecambria23 comments

> alleging that “Respirators are not necessary to protect children from COVID-19 because of the astoundingly low risk COVID-19 presents to them”, and that in fact wearing masks involves “existing well-documented harms”. There hasn’t been any documented harms to children from wearing masks.

This type of blanket disregard is exactly the thing that pushes people to oppose these sentiments.

There is evidence that covering up children's faces has significant impact psychologically and developmentally.

Making a claim such as this and in the typical weak-willed academic fashion "any documented harm", appealing to some unknown authority that will provide documentation to substantiate what parents are seeing in real time...

It's the type of offhand remark that, when I read it, places the credibility of the author immediately in question because the attitude is pervasive.

Genuinely curious: can you point me to this evidence?

There are studies widely available just regarding health (0). The other reasons are equally valid if not moreso (1,2)

0. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...

1. https://www.med.upenn.edu/CEP/assets/user-content/documents/...

2. https://healthpolicy.usc.edu/article/mandatory-masking-of-sc...

Do you see those big letters in red in the back saying 'RETRACTED' in your first link? And your second one states "There is evidence from survey studies that wearing masks may cause some adverse effects, such as headaches, in school-age children. This evidence is of low to very low quality because of risk of bias in self-selected samples and because of indirectness." The third is an opinion piece.

Boring

You have the problem of assuming that the studies in which you put all of your faith are even asking the right questions. The reality is that they are not interested in asking the right questions, they are interested in the approved questions.

If you want to adhere to the Thought Police guidelines be my guest.

Doctors' opinions. The opinions of professional, working doctors.

Know that many doctors are being threatened with censure over very reasonable adherence to the once normal standards of medicine.

We have to agree to disagree on what constitutes a valid piece of evidence.

What we don't have to agree on is whether children are at risk, because they aren't, categorically.

Any monies toward protecting children would be better directed in any number different ways, the ways that actually prevent children's deaths

A lot of the evidence cited here is of very low quality/interest, such as observational and correlational studies. It does cite the best study we have so far, a large-scale RCT from Bangladesh:

> A report in Nature explained that researchers running a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of community mask use in Bangladesh “began by developing a strategy to promote mask wearing, with measures such as reminders from health workers in public places. This ultimately tripled mask usage, from only 13% in control villages to 42% in villages where it was encouraged”, and “then compared numbers of COVID-19 cases in control villages and the treatment communities”. They found that the number of infections in mask wearing communities decreased, with a reduction of COVID symptoms using surgical masks to 0.87 times the incidence in unmasked communities, and 0.91 times when using cloth masks.

Unfortunately they have misquoted the numbers here. Surgical masks reduced the prevalence of COVID-like symptoms by 11%, and of actual confirmed COVID cases by 9.5%, while cloth masks did about half as well [0]. So tripling the number of people wearing masks up to about 40% of the population has a very mild effect on COVID spread, and this is before Omicron. I don't think this makes a good case for mask mandates in 2022.

[0] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi9069

Stop being a third world country and mandate ffp2/n95 masks if you have a serious outbreak. Stop arguing about cloth or surgical masks that shit was garbage three mutations ago.

Stop mandates. Double/triple/quadruple mask yourself until you feel safe enough.

No, we have to do what is best for society not your ego.

Covid isn’t the only problem in peoples lives. For many it might not even be the top 10 or even 50. It isn’t society’s problem to protect those who are scared.

Mandates are not because of the monster under your bed lol. There is nothing scary about covid anymore we are just mitigating the effect it has on a functioning society. I don't care about you, do whatever you want, but I care about you getting covid when I must cover your on call. The sickness absence rate is sky high and I don’t want to get a heavier workload just because I act responsible and you do not.

>I don’t want to get a heavier workload just because I act responsible and you do not.

lol - it's a highly contagious airborne virus. It can be carried and spread by animals - you going to get mad at all the animals for not wearing masks too?

Pro tip for a happier life - worry about what you can control and not about what others are doing or thinking that might offend you. Not only will you be happier, but so will everyone else around you :)

If you are wearing a mask, you are protected (or so you seem to believe). Why isn't that good enough? No one should be shamed for wearing a mask if they feel it's best for them. Others shouldn't be shamed if they don't feel the need to. That's the core issue.

There’s no evidence that doubling masks with a good N95 or equivalent is helpful, and it may even be harmful. More masks means less air is able to flow through the material, so it’s more likely air will leak in from the sides. Tripling and quadrupling will likely exacerbate this with no benefit. The best thing one can do is wear a good mask that fits well.

They are desperate to retroactively "prove" that this nonsense measure "works", when it is obvious from real world data that they don't. Dehumanizing nonsense.

The Bangladesh study was dreadful. A good explanation of why here: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/bangladesh-mask-study-do-...

Some real world data here: https://rationalground.com/more-mask-charts/

I'm sorry but both your sources are dreadful. The first one is an anonymous blogger who is at war with capitalization, and who constantly makes edgy points that are clearly addressed in the original study. The second is a self-evident exercise in futility.

Funny how you don’t attack the ideas/content of the links , just the posters themselves.

I find that commenting on health policy while hiding your identity definitely compromises your credibility. If you further compound that by self-publishing your material and writing like a literal child, I don't think it's unwarranted to include that as criticism.

Do you like the content itself? Some random drawing of arrows in cherry-picked graphs?

Are you aware of the censorship going on around anyone who deviates from the official narrative?

As the other poster said, you are aren't attacking the argument, just the fact that it is anonymous.

What's your username on here? epups. The irony.

There are 150 more studies to show what bullshit the masks are.

https://brownstone.org/articles/more-than-150-comparative-st...

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