Approximately one year ago, I wrote about the Bangladesh mask study – the only randomised control trial of community masking since the start of the pandemic. (The well-known Danish study examined the effect of masking on the wearer; not the effect of community masking on community-level outcomes.)
While the Bangladesh study did find significant differences between the treatment and control arms, I described it as a “missed opportunity”. That’s because it wasn’t an RCT of mask-wearing per se, but rather of mask promotion campaigns. And the latter may influence transmission through mechanisms other than mask-wearing – such as by changing people’s behaviour.
Now there’s a new critique out claiming the study’s original conclusions may be wrong. It’s a bit technical – let me explain.
In a typical RCT: 100 patients get the drug, another 100 get a placebo, and you compare how many in each group get sick. But the Bangladesh study had a much more complex design – as shown in the figure below.
Headings across the top represent different stages of the experiment: first villages were randomized; then individuals within those villages were sought for consent; then they reported their symptoms etc.
The main thing to notice is that there was a statistically significant 8.6% difference between the treatment and control arms in the number of people who agreed to take part – 170,497 versus 156,938. (For those well-versed in stats, the corresponding p-value was less than 0.00001.) This isn’t supposed to happen in an RCT.
As noted by Maria Chikina and colleagues, who wrote the critique, this difference arose because the staff who went out to the villages and sought people’s consent were unblinded (i.e., they knew whether they were visiting a treatment or a control village). As a consequence, those in the treatment arm behaved slightly differently from those in the control arm.
Crucially, the 8.6% difference is as large as the main result of the original study: seroprevalence in the treatment arm was 8.7% lower than in the control arm. This means the main result could be due to factors other than the experimental treatment – even though the study was technically an RCT.
In fact, when Chikina and colleagues calculated the difference in seroprevalence measured as a count rather than as a rate – i.e., by comparing the absolute number of cases in each arm, while ignoring the denominator – they found it was only 1.8%. And you could argue this is the “correct” way to calculate the difference, given that randomisation of the denominators failed.
Overall, the new critique doesn’t prove the original conclusions are wrong. But it does show the data are consistent with mask promotion campaigns having had zero causal influence on the outcome variables.
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So what is the point of democracy? The parasitical class, aka those that work for the state, will always act in their own best interests. At this point the only political party I would support is one whose entire purpose was to dismantle the state itself.
The snag could be that if we got rid of Councils and national governments, we’d be left with large corporations et al without any organised political influence.
That’s a common error of thinking.
The state works for the large corporations, not for you. Corporations are the ones that hijack the state apparatus and use it to set up regulations that favour them.
If you take away the state you won’t be less protected from corporations. THEY won’t have the protection of the state and will have to perform for their customers.
Yes, we know we have a fake Conservative Party and the men in grey suits who run the Tory Party and two third of their ‘wet’ MP may be much closer to the blob than most realise. Publicly ministers may rant on about the awkwardness of the blob but privately the party and the mandarins appear to be pushing the same agenda.
“…cabinet ministers are not just unable to control….” Almost certainly true, but is it real news? Years ago, a late Borough Councillor explained to me the internal structure on similar lines. In effect, he described the boundary between elected Councillors and professional servants, e.g. the Borough Solicitor, or other departments. My experience as a Parish Councillor has been similar – an employed Clerk can be quite robust when they want to be, e.g.
Elected MPs can find that it’s a long drag to re-educate the Permanent Secretaries and others, if there has been an established set up over the years, until the other side wins an election.
The psychology of civil service management is not limited to Westminster, but is most likely similar at all levels of nominal democracy.
“A long drag”? The Tories have been in office 13 years!
My old employer sat on an EU committee. The committee was tasked with defining a new set of EU regulations. The 1st item on the agenda at each meeting was ‘where should the next meeting be held?’
The committee was still going strong 15 years later when I left. No new regulations, but plenty of all-expenses paid meetings.
Maybe just, maybe it is time to start again. But we need a new everything- a new political, financial, medical, media, internet, energy system.
New public?
The modern state is out of control. The only solution is to dismantle most of it. Which is actually good because the modern state is also bankrupt and can’t afford it’s technocratic infrastructure.
Radically reduce the state’s budget. Urgently!!
Cut cut cut like in Argentina!
That’s the promise. Let’s see if it happens.
Politicians will never control their ‘civil’ ‘servants’, the NHS, the BBC, the public sector at large, para-statal large companies, unless they use the levers of power actually available to them, budgetary control and statutory reform.
The Conservative party was given an eighty seat majority to enable it to get off its backside and become a reforming government under an eloquent and apparently far sighted PM.
Unfortunately both party and PM ‘talked the talk but didn’t walk so good’, preferring to ‘swank about in footer bags’ locking its citizens up in their houses for no scientifically discernible reason.
Difficult to say which is more bat shit crazy, the King and all his horses or this mind bendingly crass numpty dumpty of a government.
One just has to stop and consider the typical skill set of a successful politician. Their main skills are good at talking, good at making themselves look good compared to others, good at sussing out who to be friends with, who to suck up to and who to stab in the back.
They don’t know how to run anything. They can rally people around an idea or a cause, but when it comes to executing they have no clue. They look around for someone to execute for them.
Who do they have to execute for them? Effing civil servants, another class of people who have no clue how to run anything. Glorified admin workers.
So when someone who doesn’t know how to run anything relies on a bunch od arrogant, glorified admin workers who are limited at best and don’t even want to do the work, you end up with nothing. Well with a guy going round desks leaving “please come back to work” notes.
It would be comical if it weren’t so tragic.
Glorified Marxists more like….And you can’t even protest them at their building cos they’re all working from home!
Can they sack them?
If they could, can you imagine Rishi Sunak putting an advertisement in the press: “Wanted – entirely new civil service. Great opportunity for ambitious young minds, as no training can be given, the last lot having been sacked and ideologically corrupt anyway. Apply to the Minister of your choice, who actually knows zilch about how his/her brief works on the ground.”
No doubt Dominic Cummings and his equivalents would apply, together with lots of bright young politics graduates and technocrats eager to bring in the new order.
It seems that the history of collapsed states shows anarchy (like armed gangs robbing you and no redress), chancers grabbing the resources, and only a slow claw-back to some kind of freedom under a ruthless but far-sighted leader. Think USSR.
If they were all sacked tomorrow, or a bomb went off (can only wish) there would be chaos but when you consider how most are working against the interests of the British citizens, it would be for the better in the long run.
That seems to be the policy of Reform…I prefer Reclaim but that policy is good red meat. We all know about the long march through the institutions, Whitehall is an example.
Nobody can really influence the senior civil service or the currents of thought that go on beneath.A point has been reached where the schism is too wide to even countenance compromise. We are in the process of taking control of this country and attempting to move it in the right direction. The enemy is simply involved in trying to grab the last of the spoils before the system goes down. It isn’t difficult to see who the winner will be. It will have to have authenticity it will be interesting to see what it looks like. I think in most minds it is still waiting to be born.
The takeover was finished in 1996. You should’ve been paying more attention.
It won’t be so easy in a few months time in the sense that we won’t be able to just read at our leisure and talk shite on social media. It will be a situation where you wouldn’t even have time to think about such trivialities.
That is why most of the third world isn’t woke!
Completely different status quo and power arrangement. I mean it is happening as we speak. You have to have a grasp on it.
They will try to bully you ansd if you resist they will try to size you up. As long as you are beyond their parameters. They don’t know dick about real resistance.
The Blob works best in the dark. The Blob people exchange notoriety and publicity for power. A charismatic politician who connects directly with the citizenry, and who exposes actors and actions of The Blob is its worst nightmare. It’s part of the reason Trump was targeted by the bureaucracy. It’s also the reason why I think Javier Milei in Argentina has a decent chance of making a difference.
Go for their money with anyone funded by the taxpayer having PAYE removed at source.
Stop the tax loophole for “charity” foundations and gifts.
Bring in purchase tax for online orders to protect the public facing shops and businesses.