What Worked Against Covid: Masks, Closures and Vaccines | Hacker News Reader

What Worked Against Covid: Masks, Closures and Vaccines

wsj.com

Yes, masks worked so well that it was impossible to see an effect from the imposition of mask mandates in any case curves (and the virus spread freely in Asian countries with 97+% compliance rates), and closures & mRNA vaccines worked so well that the one country which tried to keep the virus out indefinitely had to relent and let nearly all its citizens contract SARS-CoV-2, and they did fine (meaning: no overwhelmed hospitals, no broad societal chaos) without any mRNA vaccinations whatsoever.

This is addressed in the article. Masks are effective when worn (shocking, I tell ya); mask mandates are ineffective when ignored or when people are already masking at a high rate.

lol I literally mentioned extremely high compliance Asian countries in my comment, seems to have sailed right over your head. They don't work.

Edit: oh I see, so the theory is that case rates would have been even higher without the high compliance rates in Asia. Classic unfalsifiable hypothesis.

The Bangladesh study that even mask advocates like to cite showed a 10% reduction in transmission, hardly worth all the depersonalization and discomfort that masks impose.

Clearly, you missed this:

> High levels of community masking, including both source patients and exposed people, have been associated with reductions in infections ranging from 10% to 80%, with more protection when there is consistent mask-wearing in high-risk areas such as households.

Not to mention the link in that paragraph, which references 18 studies supporting the effectiveness of masks: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

The CDC is not a credible source on any topics relating to SARS-CoV-2 but in particular masks. They've been churning out junk science on the subject ever since the initial outbreak.

"Consistent mask wearing in high-risk areas such as households" just lol, yeah let me wear a mask over my face 24/7 forever so I can maybe catch SARS-CoV-2 six months later than I otherwise would have.

The CDC conducted none of the 18 linked studies.

According to the Cochrane review, we don't have evidence that masks worked. This assertion makes the report less trustable.

Vaccines have high level of evidence. Closures probably don't have any evidence at all.

I think I know which paper you're referring to in the Cochrane review, and it explicitly does not say that:

> Many commentators have claimed that a recently-updated Cochrane Review shows that 'masks don't work', which is an inaccurate and misleading interpretation.

> It would be accurate to say that the review examined whether interventions to promote mask wearing help to slow the spread of respiratory viruses, and that the results were inconclusive. Given the limitations in the primary evidence, the review is not able to address the question of whether mask-wearing itself reduces people's risk of contracting or spreading respiratory viruses.

https://www.cochrane.org/news/statement-physical-interventio...

I am sorry but I didn't say that Cochrane review shows that “masks don't work”. I said that we “have no evidence that they work”. Most people don't even realize the difference therefore Cochrane published the explanation.

As far as recommendations go in medicine go – thing can be recommended only if they have evidence. The review found that we don't have such evidence.

Early in the Covid pandemic research found that infected patients with optimal vitamin D levels were less affected by the virus. https://scitechdaily.com/study-finds-vitamin-d3-important-fo...

Not really - you might want to read the actual published paper that article talks about.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2022.7904...

The results are hedged with might and could and they suggest further study would be a good thing, and it notes that their observations might be related to another thing that might be interesting in COVID patients.

There's no concrete tie in to COVID there and is really just commentary on 12 weeks of study that might lead somewhere that could be COVID related.

Anything said about the effectiveness and safety of the vaccines would be couched in all this exact same uncertainty if there was any epistemic honesty involved here.

Not at all - I read a lot of papers in science and the one that you chose to indirectly link via a pop sci article simply doesn't support the claim made.

It literally doesn't even directly look at COVID, that connection is vague, indirect and couched in terms of "deserves a look".

Papers that address vaccine safety will look at large populations (and provide numbers and time frames) and provide hard numbers on various classes of outcomes.

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