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I have looked at the Kansas study - if the study were against masks, you would see the problems with it more clearly. Even before the study was published by the CDC, Kansas had used it to advocate mask use. And critics noticed the problem (see the article below from the WSJ). Kansas Health cherrypicked periods, did not look at the differences/similarities between county sizes, used percentages to hide issues in the comparison, and failed to note that that cases later increased in all the counties and by more in the masked counties later in the year. This was the earliest critique of the Kansas study but I read quite a few more later:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/kansas-democrats-covid-chart-masks-the-truth-11598483406
However, the CDC decided to endorse the bad analysis months later without addressing any of the issues in the criticism. One can go to https://covidtracking.com/ and put in the counties in the mask study and decide whether masks are working the way the CDC claims they are.
In general, this has been an unfortunate trend with covid19 science. When something fits the popular narrative or "common sense", it is often treated without the skepticism that such things should deserve and published quickly. Then the people who criticize it are called "conspiracy theorists" or things like that. Mask effectiveness has become a religion of sorts, with people who support them having no good explanation why places like Philadelphia, which have been under mask mandates the whole year basically, are now having to lockdown other than to claim people are not complying, which does not match my everyday experience. Baal as a scientist would agree that science is not "common sense", but after that, if it agrees with that he thinks is good to believe, he doesn't show it the skepticism he is trained to show it.
Here is another example in the popular domain, admittedly only a pre-print. This paper argued for masks reducing cases, and then was withdrawn in the past week or so (I appreciate the honesty of the researchers) when they noted that cases had risen in all the areas where mask mandates were in effect and they needed to do a new kind of analysis to see whether their case worked. Just about any study of masks will suffer from this problem in the US given the seasonality of covid19. Yet no one ever accepts this and you hear things like Robert Redfield saying that masks would end the pandemic in the US. Even the flawed Kansas studies never yielded that kind of effect!
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.21.20208728v2
"Decrease in Hospitalizations for COVID-19 after Mask Mandates in 1083 U.S. Counties"
Withdrawal The authors have withdrawn this manuscript because there are increased rates of SARS- CoV-2 cases in the areas that we originally analyzed in this study. New analyses in the context of the third surge in the United States are therefore needed and will be undertaken directly in conjunction with the creators of the publicly-available databases on cases, hospitalizations, testing rates. Etc. We will be performing this in conjunction with machine learning experts at UCSF. Therefore, the authors do not wish this work to be cited as reference for the project. We hope to have an updated analysis using data from the 2nd and now 3rd wave of SARS-CoV-2 in this country soon. If you have any questions, please contact the corresponding author.
In a sense, I am happy we agree on Vitamin D because while none of the studies are great, the evidence for Vitamin D is much stronger than the evidence for masks - both in quality and logic. The issue with Vitamin D in my view is that it isn't clear whether its effect is mostly a marker of metabolic syndrome or it has an independent effect that supplementation can directly address. In any case, there are no RCTs for masks or vitamin D that validate the effects, but the Vitamin D studies are of much higher quality and the size of the proposed effect is much greater and reasonable even for a placebo than the size proposed for masks, which becomes weirder the more one sees rising case rates in places with high levels of compliance and mask mandates. Even the CDC shows in its studies that most people who tested positive for covid19 in its studies wore masks either often or all the time when not at home.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...sks-covid-19-tests-misinterpreted/3643312001/
"Of those 314 patients, 154 tested positive, referred to in the chart as "case patients." Another 160 tested negative, referred to in the chart as "control patients."It's true, as the post claims, that 70.6% of the "case patients" self-reported always wearing masks. But an even higher percentage of the "control patients" who did not contract the virus self-reported always wearing masks, at 74.2%, which suggests that their mask-wearing may have helped stave off the virus."
A difference in effect, but not enough to end a pandemic (some would quibble more, but my point is not to quibble but point out that the evidence is weak). So it is important for us to continue to keep in perspective what the evidence is saying and not just accept what our feelings tell us must be the case.
I live in an area of the States where masks are mandatory. I just went in a Walgreens pharmacy and although everyone had a mask on, 80% had their nose exposed. Kind of like wearing a condom with a hole in it and thinking you’re protected. Perhaps a better measure of the efficacy of masks and proper distancing is to look at other countries that have not politicized the wearing of masks...