Much of the evidence cited in favour of facemasks comes from lab studies where researchers measure the amount of particles in the air after telling subjects to cough. A typical finding is that fewer particles are detected when subjects are told to cough whilst wearing a facemask.
So masks do work then? Not quite. Just because masks stop some particles doesn’t mean community masking has any meaningful impact on the spread of the virus. As the blogger eugyppius notes:
You need to inhale 5000 virus particles to have a good chance at infection. An infected cough releases 1 million virus particles. An effective and tightly fitted mask may stop enough droplets to keep all but 100k of those particles out of the air. Those numbers are hypothetical but you get the idea.
In other words, even if masks stop the vast majority of particles, they still let through many times more than would be sufficient for someone nearby to become infected.
So lab studies provide only very weak evidence to support community masking. What we really want are randomised controlled trials. A number of these had already been done for influenza, and they suggests that masks don’t do anything. Which is why health authorities initially advised against mask-wearing (before ‘The Science’ changed, and the urge to ‘do something’ kicked in).
Researchers did carry out a large RCT in Bangladesh, which was widely cited as evidence in favour of masking. Unfortunately, it wasn’t an RCT of masking per se – since the researchers didn’t hold everything else constant. So it shouldn’t cause us to update our beliefs much. After all, the lion’s share of RCT evidence still suggest that masks don’t work against respiratory viruses.
The problem with RCTs is that they’re expensive. This is particularly true in the case of masking because the hypothesised effect works at the community level, not the individual level. While masks may not protect the wearer, it is claimed that overall transmission will be lower if we all wear one.
The next best thing is a natural experiment. Which is exactly Neeraj Sood and colleagues analysed in their new study. (It’s a preprint, note, so hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed.)
The natural experiment took place in Fargo, North Dakota (the setting for the famous Coen brothers film), where two adjacent school districts adopted different policies on masking. At the start of the 2021–22 school year, Fargo Public Schools had a mask mandate in place, while neighbouring West Fargo Public Schools did not. The former then moved to a ‘mask optional’ policy on January 17th.
Importantly, the two school districts were similar in all other respects: total number of students, average class size, racial demographics, staff vaccination rate, social distancing policy etc.
So what was the outcome of this natural experiment? There was no difference in the rate of students testing positive – neither in the period for which policies on masking differed, nor in the period for which they were the same.
“Our findings,” the researchers say, “contribute to a growing body of literature which suggests school-based mask mandates have limited to no impact on the case rates of COVID-19 among K-12 students.” I’d say they contribute to a growing body of literature which suggests masks don’t work in general.
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Yesterday in my back garden it was 100°F in the shade. I attribute that event to the Sun shining. I am now a fully fledged climate scientist. Cannot wait for the money to come flowing in.
It’s almost like they want to stoke a revolution.
‘It’s almost like they want to stoke a revolution’
You mean the Chinese Communist Party and Russian Federation, who are encouraging and exploiting the Climate Change scam (plus coronavirus lockdowns etc) to try and undermine Western economies and democratic traditions?
We need more, not less democracy / freedom / liberalism etc to get us out of the current mess.
Revolution simply means a violent power grab by a self-selected faction followed by single party tyranny.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire
(no fake Climate Change catastrophising analogies intended!)
Eppur si muove
I don’t get that Joe.
The problem with the world is that there are too many mad people about.
This has come about through the widespread ingestion of harmful chemicals.
Here is the latest example of this lunacy
‘Would there still have been climate change under socialism?’
https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2022/08/would-there-be-climate-change-under-socialism
As any fule kno, there would still have been climate change had Space Marshal Knuudlx Zabrok from Planet Epsilon Agbat descended to Earth on his moonriding gammascope, assassinated every single world leader and forced the global population to eat worms.
Nevertheless, the general thrust of this crashingly dull and stupid article is clear. ‘Climate emergency’ is the lever to once more apply the nostrums of socialism and, thanks to a mind numbingly incompetent succession of leaders since 1990 in this country, culminating in the egregious Bunter, taxation at its highest since 1945, we are already almost there.
All we have to do to return to some semblance of normality is to make the ingestion of harmful chemicals illegal. Oh! Hang on……
so Monro I read the article you linked by Leigh Philips. I think as calls for socialist planning go it’s pretty humanist and avoids the backward looking reaction of much green ideology. Maybe because not all sceptics are raving right wingers I found it interesting for another reason. As an economist who has studied radical economics as well as mainstream I think there is a place for planning but it should be democratic and accountable. Sadly the sort of planning we see today plans for a few. Today every policy is driven by sharp market makers, shrieking advocates and nefarious NGO’s. Then largely uninformed and impressionable civil servants and a barely curious set of ministers plan. The market failure and open rent- seeking of energy companies over climate policies is a case in point. Energy providers use the subsidy fuelled transition and geopolitical shocks to increase their supernormal profits and reduce consumer surplus to consumer risk because energy policy is crafted by them. Train privatisation delivers poor services while profits are repatriated to state owned companies in Europe. Let’s have a wider debate.
Train privatisation delivers poor services….and yet we would have no train service at all, were it not for the private companies that set the railways up in the first place.
The centrally planned NHS delivers poor services, knocked into a cocked hat by the social insurance funded healthcare systems of our near neighbours.
Pure capitalism is, pretty much, profit driven anarchy. Pure socialism is, of course, public spending until you run out of other people’s money and they get upset, as Bunter has just discovered.
Fortunately (perhaps), in this country, we have a first past the post system which allows the pendulum to swing between elements of socialism and capitalism and, hey, its deja vu all over again, we’re now back to the Seventies for the time being.
And yet what would have been the best time to be alive for a citizen of this country? You’re looking at it. This is probably as good a system of government as we are ever going to get.
Democracy: the least worst system of government.
A complete failure to understand what is going on.
And don’t forget our salvation will not arrive via the ballot box.
There will be no ‘salvation’.
This is as good as it gets.
Get used to it.
My earlier remarks concerning harmful chemicals refer:
‘Gates tries to show in this book that he gets it, while at the same time demonstrating on every page that he just doesn’t. As he draws up his elaborate plans for global governance, Gates writes that he does so knowing that he hasn’t been elected. He tells us he wouldn’t want to be anyway (after all, we can surmise, if he were elected, he might be accountable).
Gracefully, Gates understands that people are angry at the huge increases in wealth disparities during the pandemic, and pledges to return his profits to “make the world a fairer place”. He recognises that poor people across the world have suffered, and are far less able to deal with lockdowns, and even acknowledges that harsh measures might not be a good idea in some of them… And yet he recently went on record as saying that ‘if every country does what Australia did, then you wouldn’t be calling it a pandemic’. We can, in fact, judge him by his actions, and his words: he says one thing, and funds and promotes others.’
https://unherd.com/2022/05/bill-gates-wants-to-build-a-dystopia/
My earlier remarks about harmful chemicals refer:
The conspiracy that shadowy actors are secretly controlling the government has long flourished in the murkier corners of the internet. But the theory burst into the mainstream of Western politics when former US President Donald Trump began to espouse it at his rallies, claiming that “unelected deep state operatives who defy the voters to push their own secret agenda are truly a threat to democracy itself”.
‘Donald Trump’s staff “were now in some of the most powerful jobs in American politics, and they discovered that even despite that they still couldn’t make the American political system do exactly what they wanted.
The US system contains necessary checks and balances to limit how much power a president can exercise – but this “boring” truth was overlooked by Trump. Instead, says Elledge, the “deep state” became a useful scapegoat for the failings of the president’s administration: “it’s a useful political idea because it conjures up an enemy, but it keeps it vague. So you can keep changing who the deep state might be.’
The New Statesman 11 August 22
New Statesman gaslighting.
Yawn.
Many studies claim that yawning is your body’s effort to cool down your brain.
Dysbiosis and inflammation of the gut have been linked to causing several mental illnesses.
Try Gastro Ease
This is an interesting website, you can determine the elevation angle of the sun at different latitudes and longitudes during the day at different dates. I set the longitude to 0 and the time zone to 0. What it shows is that at this time of year the sun is higher in the sky for longer than the southern tropics. At the summer solstice the sun is as high in the sky as it is at the equator but for longer. It’s the jet stream that determines our weather pattern.
It’s the new religion.
The scientists are the clergy.
The media are the evangelists.
And the whole thing is captured and controlled by the oligarchy of our time who are the patrons and beneficiaries of the whole thing.
It’s the same deal as with previous religions. The oligarchs fund the religion and in exchange the priests and evangelists deliver the submission of the population.
Mid tier rich people (companies) play along or get crushed.
Like any half decent religion it exploits small kernels of truth and the intrinsic desire of humans to be part of something bigger and transcendental.
And following in a long tradition, this new religion borrows heavily from previous religions.
So for example, in Christianity, God is omnipotent and loves us all. When something good happens, well there’s your proof of God’s love and mercy. When something horrible happens, like the horrific death of young children, well in that case God acts in mysterious ways and it’s not for us to question his plan.
The climate guys tweaked it to create their own version. We terrible humans are warming the planet and need to keep the temperature down by behaving properly. When there is a heatwave, there is the proof of rising temperatures and of our sin. But, when there is an unusual cold spell, ah, well that’s climate change – our sinful behaviour doesn’t just cause warming it also causes temporary “extreme” cold weather.
It’s not a coincidence that climate change worship is flourishing in those places where traditional religions are most in decline. i.e. Europe.
Another great piece from CM! And I think this is one that will be very useful for passing on to family and friends as a way of sowing seeds of doubt about the scientific basis of anthropogenic climate change.
Oh the irony! I have just come back from town in the lovely sunshine. Smack in the town centre were parked two vehicles hired by Extinction Rebellion. One was giving away “free” vegan burgers, along with warnings of the demise of the planet from cow farts and carbon dioxide. Alongside it was a sizeable van with both sides converted into massive video screens relaying loop videos of our impending doom.
The first van heated its Planet-friendly burgers on a small propane cylinder, like the hot-dog stall nearby. The second ran its power-hungry display off a portable diesel generator quietly chugging away inside the van.
The operation appeared to be staffed mainly by attractive white middle-class students probably armed with more air-miles and sound-bites than IQ.
Coming to a town centre near you soon!
You must not call that lovely sunshine it’s extreme heat because of climate breakdown and we’re all going to die because it’ll never rain again until it’s going rain again and the experts don’t yet know when this might happen! In particular, we must not fall for rumours that it’ll rain again in autumn! That’s not proven yet!
[As per Guardian article of today, pro forma about 57% of the English regions now being declared to be in drought]
The one conclusion that can be drawn when any water company declares a drought in this country is that said water company has completely and utterly failed in their primary purpose – to provide an adequate and plentiful supply of clean water.
The respective boards should be dismissed and forcibly removed if necessary. No firkin about with failures.
Nigel Farage says ‘it’s absolutely MAD’ Irish government paying farmers more than £4k per cow culled
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbTcK28usuk
GBNews
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The met office is gaslighting us about global warming. Plenty of chem trails over the Devon skies once again yesterday. What is being discharged? The met office says they are contrails. Really, that stick around for hours, spread widely and do not move like clouds? Causing our weathwr to be very queer for the past six months, at least.
Well I never. You don’t per chance think that they might also be gaslighting us on all corona things do you? He who pays the piper……
I’m in facebook prison for 48 hours for trying to share this. “Your message couldn’t be sent because it includes content that other people on Facebook have reported as abusive.”
We can see why so many refer to this as a money making scam. “Follow the money” has never been truer. Climate change only happens in rich Western countries for a reason. So many have been brainwashed by the constant trillion pound barrage of propaganda. It really has become a cult with the lemmings walking lockstep for the cool-aid. This is all funded through your tax revenues. This will not end until rich Western Countries stop allowing this abuse of their tax systems.
“Deborah Feyerick asked if asteroids falling to earth were caused by climate change”. That proves it, not a single ounce of brain power in any of them. No comprehension of reality.
Chris, I can’t really add anything to what you have published so well. The only thing is that Boris Johnson does nothing about removing the crazy climate levy which needs to be done now in fear of upsetting his wife. It will be a good thing when BJ finally goes, so we can actually be governed by who we vote for rather than their unelected partner.