Comment by freedude | Hacker News Reader

Comment by freedude | Hacker News Reader

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I think the scientist makes the factual point pretty clear. There is no evidence masks work.

"JEFFERSON: There is just no evidence that they make any difference. Full stop. My job, our job as a review team, was to look at the evidence, we have done that. Not just for masks. We looked at hand washing, sterilisation, goggles, etcetera…

DEMASI: What’s the best evidence for avoiding infection?

JEFFERSON: I think your best shot is sanitation/sterilisation with antiseptic products. We’ve known for about 40 to 50 years that the inside of toilets, handles, seats for example, you recover a very high concentration of replication competent virus, it doesn’t matter what viruses they are. This argues for a contact/fomite mode of transmission.

Also, hand washing shows some benefit, especially in small children. The problem with that is, unless you make the population completely psychotic, they will not comply.

DEMASI: May I just ask a finer point on masks… it’s not that masks don’t work, it’s just that there is no evidence they do work…is that right?

JEFFERSON: There’s no evidence that they do work, that’s right. It’s possible they could work in some settings….we’d know if we’d done trials. All you needed was for Tedros [from WHO] to declare it’s a pandemic and they could have randomised half of the United Kingdom, or half of Italy, to masks and the other half to no masks. But they didn’t. Instead, they ran around like headless chickens."

To me, the strongest evidence that masks work is Japan's relative success during the pandemic. I can't think of any other reason. They have a large, dense, elderly population where people crowd into public transit and workplaces were slow to accept remote work. They should have had it really hard, but they got through relatively well. I can't see that as anything less than a testament to masks, which were already in widespread adoption even before the pandemic.

I can appreciate your opinion and I would point out that the scientist that examined the data stated the fact there is no proof masks are effective. A belief that they are effective would need to be thoroughly tested with a double-blind study to provide proof of such a belief. Until then it is a belief, much like a religious belief.

There are other forms of evidence than double-blind studies, as the article rightly points out.

See also: https://www.bmj.com/content/327/7429/1459

The parent article explicitly calls out this exchange, from this exact interview, and bases it's criticism on these claims. So I do not think this interview addresses them.

Just because I say you are wrong doesn't mean you are wrong and vice versa. This also applies to the interview and the claims from the original article.

Does this imply that surgeons should just stop wearing masks too?

What are surgeons trying to prevent by wearing masks? Bacterial infections, which are a significant risk when surgeries are taking place because the skin is being compromised. Masks stop bacteria because they are significantly larger (10 times to 100 times larger) by comparison. Surgeons also wash their hands and wear gloves for the same reason. I don't think they should stop doing that either, but then I don't think the average person should be required to wear gloves either.

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