Contrary to our hypothesis, early mandates were not associated with lower minimum case growth. Maximum case growth was the same among states with early, late, and no mandates. This indicates that mask mandates were not predictive of slower COVID-19 spread when community transmission rates were low or high.
We wondered if mask mandates were associated with smaller or slower surges in case growth. Differences between minimum and maximum case growth were similar among early, late, and no mandate states, and surges from minimum to maximum growth occurred at similar rates. These findings suggest that mask mandates are not predictive of smaller or slower shifts from low to high case growth.
I would like to see the actual study. I may try to dig it up later. Personally, I have always doubted the efficiency of a mask because the science is fairly solid they don’t work except for N95 mask.
Study after study has shown they’re garbage.
We wear masks to prevent things like a cough from throwing bacteria into a wound because saliva is nasty. We wear them to hopefully offer a little protection for both parties but not because it’s a proven fact.
This is where non-science people jumped on the band wagon claim they worked when the evidence really doesn’t support that. Also people jumped on they didn’t work, without knowing the science as well.
There have been a number of studies where that scenario happened.
A number of years ago, a study was done with the intent of showing how people benefit from Facebook, but found just the opposite. Instead of improving a person’s mental health it found that Facebook made a significant number of people depressed.
A number of decades ago, Thomas Stanley PhD and William Danko PhD did a study of how people became wealthy by surveying people who lived in “upscale neighborhoods”. However, they found that most people who lived in these neighborhoods were not wealthy, even though they had high incomes, and that most wealthy people lived in more modest neighborhoods and bought average houses, average cars, etc. They published the results of these findings in a very interesting 1996 book titled “The Millionaire Next Door”
The article is very clear it has not been peer reviewed yet, and the authors say there may be mistakes.
I think making the study public prior to peer review is insurance to guarantee that it is actually peer reviewed since it is contrary to Fauci.
Regarding my previous post quoted above, I had a personal experience with that scenario. When I was in college there was a proposal to bus around 40 poor Black children from New York City to the Great Neck Schools. This was during the late sixties. So I decided to use that as an opportunity to do a research paper for one of my psychology courses comparing people who voted for it with those who voted against it. Since Great Neck was a very liberal community I thought that level of education and type of job would correlate highly with how they voted and it did. However, it was the exact opposite of what I thought it would be thinking that people who held professional jobs, such as physicians and attorneys, and were very well educated would be more likely to vote for it. However, it was the exact opposite because the very well educated people who were professionals were more likely to vote against it. Their rationale was that they moved to Great Neck because it had one of the best public school systems in the country and they didn’t want the problems of the New York City Schools to adversely affect them. This very liberal town subsequently voted against this bussing proposal and that was when I first understood the meaning of the term limousine liberal.
I have said before that I used to work in addiction.
I did most of the data analysis.
We started giving clients the opportunity to engage in “art therapy”, which I thought was bogus.
I compiled the data and the clients that went through that had a 10-15% higher success rate than those that didn’t.
I found this paragraph interesting. Not sure what to make of it.
“Mask use—defined as “the percentage of people who always wear masks in public settings”—was associated with slower spread during low-transmission periods. But it was not associated with slower spread during high-transmission periods.”
Though I have been skeptical of mask effectiveness, two colleagues & I were recently exposed to a positive testing individual, and up close (well within 6 ft) for over an hour, due to the nature of our jobs.
He was coughing all day but wore a mask (an amateur cloth one), and none of us developed symptoms. Granted, I had antibodies from previous infection, but I do not believe the other two did.
That was fairly humbling to my previous belief on mask wear. The other two should have been at large risk of exposure.
Knowing Reason.com, I suspect they were studying specifically mask mandates vs. mask effectiveness. There is a distinction.
They do draw that distinction in the article, though I don’t think there’s any indication that Reason conducted or sponsored the study. They’re just reporting it. They may be selective in what they choose to report though.
I’ll always have a soft spot for Reason as a libertarian deep down, but in the whole “it takes one to know one” spirit, they are among the first media sources whose bias stands out at me.
If we leave Fauci and politics out of it, I don’t think you can say that masks didn’t work. I don’t know how tough covid is, but colds and flu numbers were WAY down last year. I was kind of hoping that we might have a societal shift in this country and require anybody showing up to work hacking and wheezing and snotting up tissues right and left to wear a mask. But since it’s been so politicized, we will likely get arguments that it’s their right to spread their shit all over the office.