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Comment by emj | Hacker News Reader

> Scientists knew all along that face masks didn't work.

No.

Masks were not mandatory here [1], they were not even recommended in the beginning. Later masks were recommended [2] in public transport during rush hours during a 6 month period in 2021. The reasoning for not recommending masks in the beginning was that there were too little data supporting the effectiveness of masks. So scientist did not "know" for certain.

I am not sure we can discuss this issue yet, there are still too many with non scientific agenda engaged in the debate.

[1] Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_masks_during_the_COVID-19... [2] EDIT: I said mandatory, it was not.

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I gave scientific evidence of both and after studies that agreed each other, but you insist of spinning this in terms of politics...

When actions contradict scientific evidence it's all about politics, no disagreement there.

In your example of Sweden, I'd say it's a prisoner's dilemma politicians are forced to follow suit on what other countries are doing. It happened in my country that the National Health Minister had to resign under pressure of ineptitude, not following international practices, and corruption during pandemic.

But your statement about evidence, it's simply not true.

Go back and read one more time my two scientific pieces of evidence. Here there are again:

Before: https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/65/11/1934/4068747

After: https://archive.is/sWXis

Your first link is a meta analysis which does not say masks don’t work. It says that they do work, but complains about the lack of data and it’s inconsistency (presumably this meta analysis hopes to help resolve that issue).

> This systematic review and meta-analysis supports the use of respiratory protection.

Your second link is to an opinion writer with no scientific background who infamously wrote his first opinion piece in the NYTimes denying the scientific evidence for climate change, but worse, with so many errors it needed a whole bunch of corrections appended to it.

Your “scientific pieces of evidence” are (a) not evidence for what you claim they’re evidence for, and (b) not scientific.

> Your first link is a meta analysis which does not say masks don’t work.

No, I already copied the relevant piece of text. Here is one more time:

>>> Compared to masks, N95 respirators conferred superior protection against CRI (...) and laboratory-confirmed bacterial (...), but not viral infections or ILI ...[influenza-like illness] <<<

> Your second link is to an opinion writer with no scientific background

No. Click on the link on the first sentence and you can read the original scientific study. Here is the link:

https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...

Read the article. It says that face masks, surgical masks, and N95 provide no benefits.

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