On February 17th fact-checker Iria Carballo-Carbajal, a neuroscientist by training, but apparently without any education in epidemiology, published a ‘fact-check’ article on the Health Feedback website. In her headline, Carballo-Carbajal makes the following statement: “Multiple studies show that face masks reduce the spread of COVID-19; a Cochrane review doesn’t demonstrate otherwise.”
This article is now being used by social media companies to suppress all references to the Cochrane study. I became aware of this on March 10th when I received a notification that a post by a member of a Facebook group I manage contained ‘false information’. The post referred to an opinion piece in the New York Times, published on February 10th. The ‘independent fact-checker’ resource referred to in the notification was the aforementioned article by Carballo-Carbajal. Getting a fact-check stamp can be a serious issue for a newspaper, no less so for a scientific institution. Therefore, it didn‘t come as a surprise that already on March 10th Cochrane editor Karla Soares-Weiser published a statement trying to downplay the study results and incorrectly claimed the study only aimed at assessing the effectiveness of interventions to promote mask wearing, when, in fact, the clearly stated objective of the study was to assess the effectiveness of the physical interventions themselves, not only the effectiveness of their promotion.
The same day the New York Times published a piece claiming in the headline that masks work, dedicated to smearing Cochrane study author Dr. Tom Jefferson. For example, the article claims Jefferson stated in an interview that there is no evidence the SARS-CoV-2 virus is airborne, when what he actually said is that there are many transmission routes and further evidence is needed to ascertain precisely how transmission occurs.
This chain of events is a shockingly clear example of how the censorship industry works. It is all the more shocking considering how seriously flawed Carballo-Carbajal‘s ‘fact-check’ is, both factually, logically and ethically.
- The strawman
Carballo-Carbajal begins by creating a strawman, in this case a claim she attributes to Dr. Robert Malone, referring to a recent post on his blog. Under the heading ‘Claim’, the purported claim is set out as follows: “Face masks are ineffective at reducing the spread of COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases, a Cochrane review demonstrates.” This claim, quoted beside a picture of Dr. Malone, is nowhere to be found in his blog post.
As if this were not enough, Carballo-Carbajal continues, presenting what she calls a ‘full claim’: “Review ‘failed to find even a “modest effect” on infection or illness rate’; ‘the CDC Grossly Exaggerated the Evidence Supporting Mask Mandates’.”
The problem with this is that while Dr. Malone is correctly quoted in the first part of the paragraph, the second is something he simply does not say in his blog post, in spite of having quotation marks around it.
- The ad hominem
Carballo-Carbajal then attacks Dr. Malone, claiming he has spread “misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines”, referring to another article, also published by Health Feedback. What does the purported misinformation consist of, according to that article? The article is a ‘fact-check’ of a Washington Times opinion piece by Dr. Malone and Dr. Peter Navarro published in 2021, where they argue against the U.S. Government’s universal vaccination policy, saying it is based on four flawed assumptions: first, that universal vaccination can eradicate the virus; second that the vaccines are highly effective; third that they are safe; and fourth that vaccine-mediated immunity is durable.
Carballo-Carbajal could hardly have been less lucky with her reference. It is now abundantly clear that universal vaccination cannot eradicate the virus, that vaccine-mediated immunity wanes very quickly, even to the point of becoming negative, as infection studies and reinfection studies have already shown. The fact that the vaccines are not “(near) perfectly effective”, quoting Malone‘s and Navarro’s article, is now abundantly clear; it is in fact the reason why they cannot eradicate the virus. As for the third point, this is what Malone and Navarro say in their article: “The third assumption is that the vaccines are safe. Yet scientists, physicians, and public health officials now recognise risks that are rare but by no means trivial. Known side effects include serious cardiac and thrombotic conditions, menstrual cycle disruptions, Bell’s Palsy, Guillain Barre syndrome, and anaphylaxis.” In other words, they aren‘t safe, they have many known rare side-effects, and this is becoming clearer as time passes.
In short, Carballo-Carbajal tries to disqualify Dr. Malone by accusing him of ‘misinformation’ about something other than the subject of her article. This is the classic ad hominem tactic almost universal in ‘fact-check’ pieces. Her failure is spectacular, as all the purported pieces of ‘misinformation’ are now already verified facts.
- The argument
Carballo-Carbajal‘s main summary (including “Details” and “Key take away”) goes as follows:
Claims that face masks are ineffective at reducing the spread of COVID-19 based on a Cochrane review didn’t take into account the limitations of the review. While many users presented this review as the highest-quality evidence, the individual studies it evaluated varied greatly in terms of quality, study design, populations studied, and outcomes observed, which prevented the authors from drawing any definitive conclusions.
Randomised controlled trials are considered the gold standard when assessing the effectiveness of an intervention. However, this type of study can vary greatly in quality, particularly in complex interventions such as face masks, affecting the reliability of the results. In this context, many scientists consider that randomised controlled trials should be seen as a part of broader evidence including other study designs. When taking those studies into account, evidence suggests that widespread mask usage can reduce community transmission of SARS-CoV-2, especially when combined with other interventions like frequent handwashing and physical distancing.
I shall break up this statement into parts and then examine the validity of each part. We must keep in mind that the source quoted is Dr. Malone‘s blog post, thus any reference to “claims” must be to Malone‘s blog post, which is the only source quoted. References to unidentified sources, such as “many websites and social media posts” must be disregarded because no references are provided:
- Statement: Dr. Malone claims the Cochrane review shows masks are ineffective at reducing the spread of COVID-19.
Discussion: As shown above, Dr. Malone does not make this claim. Instead he claims the study “failed to find even a ‘modest effect’ on infection or illness rate”. There is a critical distinction between claiming A doesn‘t work and claiming A has not been proven to work. The two do not have the same meaning.
Verdict: Carballo-Carbajal‘s statement is false.
- Statement: Dr. Malone does not take into account the limitations of the review when making this claim.
Discussion: To begin with, Dr. Malone never makes the claim referred to, but a different claim. Notwithstanding this, in his blog post he clearly cites the study authors’ disclaimer on the uncertainty about the effects of face masks: “The low-moderate certainty of the evidence means our confidence in the effect estimate is limited, and that the true effect may be different from the observed estimate of the effect... [T]he high risk of bias in the trials, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low compliance with the interventions during the studies hamper drawing firm conclusions and generalising the findings to the current COVID-19 pandemic.” It is therefore untrue that Dr. Malone “didn’t take into account the limitations of the review”.
Verdict: Carballo-Carbajal‘s statement is false.
- Statement: [T]he individual studies […] evaluated [in the review] varied greatly in terms of quality, study design, populations studied, and outcomes observed […] prevented the authors from drawing any definitive conclusions.
Discussion: The study results are clear: “There is low certainty evidence from nine trials (3,507 participants) that wearing a mask may make little or no difference to the outcome of influenza-like illness (ILI) compared to not wearing a mask (risk ratio (RR) 0.99, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.82 to 1.18. There is moderate certainty evidence that wearing a mask probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory-confirmed influenza compared to not wearing a mask (RR 0.91, 95% CI 0.66 to 1.26; 6 trials; 3005 participants). … The use of a N95/P2 respirator compared to a medical/surgical mask probably makes little or no difference for the objective and more precise outcome of laboratory-confirmed influenza infection (RR 1.10, 95% CI 0.90 to 1.34; moderate-certainty evidence; 5 trials; 8407 participants).“
Those results are repeated in the Authors’ conclusions, adding the disclaimer that “[T]he high risk of bias in the trials, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low compliance with the interventions during the studies hamper drawing firm conclusions and generalising the findings to the current COVID-19 pandemic.“
This disclaimer is the straw on to which Carballo-Carbajal clings with all her might. But as the lead author of the study has explained, this does not change the results of the study, it only states that the results may be affected by uncertainties arising from limitations in the studies used. In his own words: “It’s called caution, and it’s called being honest with the evidence that we have found. This is the best evidence that we have” (see reference below).
It looks as if Carballo-Carbajal does not understand the meaning of a disclaimer in a scientific paper. Instead, she tries to use this to invalidate the study results and back up her claim that masks work, despite the lack of evidence. A disclaimer in a study does not invalidate its results.
Verdict: Carballo-Carbajal‘s statement is misleading.
- Statement: Randomised controlled trials are considered the gold standard when assessing the effectiveness of an intervention.
Discussion: The reference on which this statement is based is Dr. Malone‘s blog. While this statement may well be true, inferring that something is generally “considered the gold standard“, based on the opinion of one scientist, is a grave error.
Verdict: Carballo-Carbajal‘s statement logically invalid.
- Statement: Gold standard studies vary greatly in quality.
Discussion: This claim is not backed up by any evidence. It may be true, or it may not.
Verdict: Carballo-Carbajal‘s statement is not supported by evidence.
- Statement: Many scientists consider that randomised controlled trials should be seen as a part of a broader evidence.
Discussion: The source for this is an article in The Conversation by three epidemiologists and one expert in primary healthcare. The authors certainly make this claim, but without citing any references. Thus, the statement that it is based on the opinion of “many epidemiologists” is simply false. This is a claim made by three epidemiologists and considering the vast number of people with that training, the word ‘many’ is not warranted. It must be added that appeal to numbers (argumentum ad populum) is a logical fallacy.
Verdict: Carballo-Carbajal‘s statement is not supported by evidence. Its relevance is based on argumentum ad populum, a logical fallacy.
- Statement: When studies that do not fulfil the requirements of gold standard research are taken into account, they show widespread mask usage can reduce community transmission.
Discussion: It is of course true that by lowering the standard you may get different results, but this statement is problematic, for Carballo-Carbajal seems to draw the conclusion from it that despite the result of the Cochrane review, masks do in fact prevent transmission. This is evident from this passage, toward the end of the article: “A growing body of evidence from RCTs and observational studies suggests that consistent mask-wearing can effectively reduce the spread of respiratory viruses like SARS-CoV-2 in both healthcare and community settings. … For the time being, face masks are another layer of protection in addition to vaccination, frequent handwashing, and physical distancing when the circulation of respiratory viruses is high.“
This means Carballo-Carbajal‘s claim is not only that low-quality studies suggest something, but that that what they suggest is actually true. This claim is even clearer in her headline: “Multiple studies show that face masks reduce the spread of COVID-19.” A subtle difference on the surface, but an all-important one. It means it is justified to rephrase the original statement as: “When studies that do not fulfil the requirements of gold standard research are taken into account, they show widespread mask usage can reduce community transmission and this is a valid conclusion.”
This brings us to the question of why the low-quality studies Carballo-Carbajal quotes were not included in the Cochrane review. Luckily, we have a transcript of a detailed interview between the lead author of the study, Dr. Tom Jefferson (JF) and Dr. Carl Heneghan (CH), where this is discussed in detail:
CH. Now look, I’m going to take you to task here. In the author conclusions people are going to read this review and start to look at this and say, look, we’ve got the high-quality evidence, we’ve got randomised controlled trials and particularly at the mask level they’re going to say, look, you’re showing in the community this lack of effect, but you start with the high risk of bias in the trial, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low adherence with the intervention during the studies, which hampers us drawing firm conclusions. Now I push that point because the obvious answer then is to go to all the observational studies where people have done systematic reviews and certainly drawn firm conclusions about what to do. So could you just elaborate on what that means in the context of 78 trials – that’s a lot of randomised control trial evidence – can you elaborate on what that means?
TJ. It’s called caution, and it’s called being honest with the evidence that we have found. This is the best evidence that we have, but unlike some of the ideologists pushing the idea that non-randomised studies, observational studies, could give answers, some of them come up with sweeping answers, sweeping statements, certainties, which simply do not belong to science. Science is not about certainty, science is about uncertainty, it’s about trying to move on the agenda, and accumulate knowledge. The use of non-randomised studies in respiratory virus assessment of interventions with respiratory viruses means that people do not understand, those who did those studies do not understand the play of several factors. For instance the seasonality, for instance the capricious comings and goings of these agents, they’re here one day, and gone the next. If you look at the SARS-CoV-2 behaviour in the U.K. surveillance for the last 12 months its up and down, and it’s just completely independent of any intervention, and also it’s very quickly up and very quickly down. Observational studies cannot account for that. Also, a very large proportion of observational studies are retrospective, and so they are subjected to merciless recall bias; researchers draw conclusions from data that they got from asking questions such as “Can you remember a month ago how many times you wore a mask” or “What you did on this or what you did on the other day” without keeping a diary. This is just simply not science. Inferring meterage, distancing, when the original studies did no such thing. So this is just an endless list of biases which cannot be taken into account by observational studies. And the only way that we have to answer questions is to run large prospective randomised control trials to answer a specific question in a specific population.
As Jefferson explains here, the limitations of observational studies make it virtually impossible to draw from them the conclusion that Carballo-Carbajal does. Carballo-Carbajal quotes a number of observational studies to support her claim. I will not go through all those here, but looking at a some examples should be sufficient to illustrate some of the problems Jefferson discusses, as well as refuting some of Carballo-Carbajal‘s unsubstantiated conclusions.
For example one of the studies quoted, Wang et al., concludes that face mask use by the primary case and family contacts before the primary case developed symptoms was 79% effective in reducing transmission. This is a retrospective observational study where the evidence for mask usage is purely based on participant‘s after-the-fact own self-reporting.
Another one, Mello et al., shows how viral particles accumulate in masks, but Carballo-Carbajal takes this as evidence that “available data indicates that mask-wearing is more effective when combined with other control measures, such as physical distancing and frequent handwashing”.
To summarise, Carballo-Carbajal claims that since high-quality studies do not prove the effectiveness of masks against transmission, then unreliable observational studies, which are excluded from the “gold standard” meta-review, precisely because of their unreliability, prove what the high-quality studies fail to prove.
Verdict: Carballo-Carbajal‘s (rephrased) statement is false. Without rephrasing it is irrelevant.
- Statement: The effect of mask usage is greater when combined with other interventions.
Discussion: This statement is problematic. It is already clear from the high-quality evidence provided by the Cochrane review that the claim that masks reduce transmission is unproven. This means claiming they add to the protection provided by other interventions must be incorrect.
Verdict: Carballo-Carbajal‘s statement is false.
Summary
Carballo-Carbajal begins by falsely attributing to Dr. Robert Malone two claims which he has never made. Those false claims become the basis of her ‘fact-check’.
She then wrongly accuses Dr. Malone of making false statements regarding a different matter, an ad hominem argument irrelevant to the subject of the article.
Out of the eight claims made by Carballo-Carbajal in her summary, backed up by her main text, four are plainly false, one is logically invalid, one is misleading and two are not supported by any evidence, one of which is based on a logical fallacy.
Considering how this seriously flawed article is now being used to suppress the dissemination of important scientific research, as well as to press the Cochrane Editor-in-Chief into making false claims about the objective of the paper and downplaying its results, and to censor a review of the findings by an important mainstream newspaper, there is clearly an urgent need to push back against the ‘fact-checking’ industry. The level to which this censorship has escalated is a threat to scientific research and development.
This article was first published on Thorsteinn Siglaugsson’s Substack newsletter, From Symptoms to Causes. You can subscribe here.
Update: This article has been corrected. An earlier version incorrectly stated that Carballo-Carbajal had mis-stated the conclusion of Wang et al.
Stop Press: Eugyppius has weighed in on the New York Times article trashing the Cochrane review referred to above.
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Bottom line— “People say believe half of what you see son, and none of what you hear.”
Heard it through the Grapevine. Marvin Gaye.
The arse-checkers – paid by whom? Pharma, Kill Gates, your loving government, Soros, various orgs affiliated with the aforementioned?
Should we ask the criminals what they think of criminal activities and label that ‘fact checking’?
Good article, and I would like to see what Science Feedback have in rebuttal…..?
If you press on Iria Carballo-Carbajal..she works for and presented this article as one of the scientists on Science Feedback..
If you put Science Feedback funding into Google…..you see their largest funding comes from META…..(Facebook)….
..this is also on their website…”Health Feedback is a member of the World Health Organization’s Vaccine Safety Net, a network of websites that provide reliable information on vaccine safety.”
They also supply fact checking on the ‘climate emergency’….
Which pretty much guarantees they are liars….and are paid to mis-inform the public…..
I’m sure a bit of research will also find Bill in there somewhere?
https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/science-feedback/
As the Twitter Files have shown, this isn’t about fact checking at all..it’s pushing one agenda, their agenda, to the exclusion of everything else…including the truth….
Odd how we didn’t need them before the Covid/Climate scams..?.?
Brilliant ebg and thanks for the digging. No surprises there, not that I anticipated any.
Is this “Fact Check” a softening up exercise for Billy’s next release?
The elephant in the room was that despite vast COVID budgets, there seems to have been very little interest in running high quality trials to see if masks worked. I wonder why.
Because they damn well know that proving or disproving this is currently beyond our technical abilities. Hence, they’re trying correlation fishing instead. Whenever an desirable effect A happened to happen after an intervention B, it’s claimed that this is evidence that B must have worked. Or the superficially weaker claim that since A happened after B, we can’t be certain that B didn’t cause A and because we want A, we must to B to be on the safe side, which is the usual ad ignorantiam these people employ the time.
It’s also a good idea to have a more detailed look at their other statements. Eg, evidence suggests that widespread mask usage can reduce community transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Evidence is something which constitutes proof of something else. The first part of this sentence is thus equivalent to The evidence doesn’t prove that. And then comes widespread mask usage can reduce … widespread is an imprecise quantifier suggesting a large number but what it precisely means is unknown. Presumably, it just exists as safeguard: Whenever A doesn’t occur after B, lack of widespreadedness must have been the cause! And lastly can reduce … This means doesn’t necessarily reduce or, in plain English, does not work. When subtracting all the fluff, Carballo-Carbajal’s statement is just Face masks don’t work. That’s obviously a great reason why they must be mandated.
This isn’t even misinformation anymore, it’s outright disinformation.
Malinformation.
Deliberate, maliciously, bloody lying.
Anyone who properly understands scientific method knows proving negatives is extremely difficult. Contrast “I have evidence the squirrel has been steeling nuts off the bird feeder” with “I have evidence the squirrel has never stolen nuts off the bird feeder.”
One photo is all that’s required to establish the first assertion. The second assertion is at least a couple orders of magnitude more difficult to prove.
Jay Bhattacharya tweeted a great answer those whose arguments boil down to “you have no evidence masks don’t work”
He parodied the argument with the tweet:
“We have no good evidence, so let’s mask all the toddler! /s”
Negatives can’t be proven as this would require omniscience.
Well we have people who have that, and prescience… Greta Nutcase for example, and Charles III.
IMO that’s not quite true. You have to have a closed/circumscribed enough system you are be able to do it. Of course you can take it to a philosophical level and claim negatives can’t be proven, but, for closed systems, that can result in obstinate scepticism to the point of absurdity.
So in the squirel example, you can have multiple certified logged video cameras with redundancy, recording all the time, installed at the time the bird feeder is installed. You can then determine a squirrel has never stolen the nuts. Obviously this is a lot of work for so small a result. You can argue a hacker might have compromised the logged video or come up with some other objection, but, unless you have reasons to think the experiment is a target, the objections start to become absurd. So it is possible to determine the negative – albeit with a lot of effort – to a degree that is beyond reasonable doubt. Though in a philosophical/ontological sense you can continue to argue pretty much anything you want to.
I think there’s a misunderstanding on your part here. Your example uses a single, specific event, namely, These nuts were not stolen by a squirrel.
That’s true in two cases: 1) The nuts are still there. 2) They were taken by someone or something which was not a squirrel. If either 1) or 2) can be shown to be true (and both are positive assertions), that a squirrel didn’t take them follows as implication.
But the mask issue is really about laws-of-nature style stuff, ie, general statements. Using your squirrel example, we have the positive claim Squirrels steals nuts. This can, for instance, be proven by catching and recording one in the act. But the negative claim Squirrels don’t steal nuts cannot be proven experimentally as this would require observation of the past, future and present behaviour of all squirrels wich ever lived in any situtation where they could possibly have stolen nuts.
True, of course.
But a reminder is necessary.
There is positive and probably conclusive evidence that wearing masks has serious disbenefits.
Mental illness in kids?
Inhalation of moulds and bacteria?
Communication problems?
Just like with Net Zero, the benefits of tiny increases in CO2 and temperature are never admitted. Neither is the benefit of not wasting Trillions on non-solutions to non-existant ‘problems’.
Well the point with Masks is that the statement “Masks don’t work” is a negative and difficult but not impossible to prove. This then means it gets qualified because a good scientist will do that. Which then gets exploited by pro maskers because they mistake or exploit that qualification. I like Bhattacharya’s tweet because the the lack of evidential support for masks working and the inability to provide evidence proving a negative are not equal and have always been true in all circumstances outside of the pandemic. The result is a the kind of absurd scepticism of the proofs “Masks don’t work” or have little effect that I was referring to in my last comment. Such scepticism becomes a kind of mind-game without real world consequences. Unless you misunderstand its significance and match and try to give it a significance it does not deserve:
“We have no good evidence, so let’s mask all the toddler! /s”
Bhattacharya’s comment highlights the absurdity.
The scientific process rests on falsifiable evidence. In order for it to be falsifiable it must be verifiable.
So if ‘masks are effective’ is the hypothesis, verifiable evidence must be produced so that others can test it and see if they can confirm it or show it to be false.
The pithy ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’ is logical fallacy.
In science it is, until evidence can be produced that can be tested.
The onus is on the proposer of the hypothesis to demonstrate the positive, not for others to prove the negative. It’s not how science works, although these days we have The Science™️ which consists of computer models trained to give what ever answers support the politics or ideology du jour.
Yes, well put.
Interesting news and proof of conspiracy and corruption from Austria just in, and doctors being financially incentivized to jab, making up to 64,000 Euros per month!
”This is literally ‘hot off the ‘presses’: Austrian alternative media outlet Der Status published leaked documents from the Austrian Chamber of Physicians (Ärztekammer) that show, beyond reasonable doubt, the grand conspiracy between government, the Chamber, and its protagonists……
You’ve gotta love them German-speakers for being so stupid to actually put these things into writing.
We now have definitive proof that the subsequent shenanigans—first and foremost the obnoxious Covid Passports—were based on the unholy trinity of questionable medical ethics (ahem), government coercion, and arbitrary definitions.
Remember that ‘fully vaccinated’ used to be two injections? Now it’s at least three, with the fourth jab ‘optional’ (haha, see above), and the Covid Passports come with expiration dates varying from 3-6 months, irrespective whether you’re ‘vaccinated’ or ‘recovered’.
In other words: arbitrary categories by government fiat, arrived at with the collaboration of the overwhelming majority of the medical profession.
If history is any guide, the Covid Passports are the functional equivalent of Aryan Certificate deployed by Nazi Germany: both documents were clearly politically motivated and based on sham ‘The Science™’.
Yet, Covid is revelatory: we’ve seen the abject lack of integrity, morality, and compassion on part of the political caste, its willing executioners in legacy media, and its perpetrators among medical professionals.”
https://fackel.substack.com/p/leaked-documents-show-vaccine-conspiracy?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web
Just seems like a giant rabbit hole to me. I don’t care if masks “work” – I’m not going to wear one to prevent the spread of covid or any other mild-for-most respiratory virus with which we have coexisted since time immemorial. I don’t care whether lockdowns “work” either.
Totally agree.
The real issues are that these discussions ignore masks significant harm and that they constitute an impermissible assault on ones bodily autonomy.
Still, debunking their effectiveness is a worthwhile endeavour to prevent their reintroduction. As with the gene therapies, ever more former proponents are slowly getting red-pilled, and we need them and that trend to continue.
One of Germany’s leading aerosol experts output was serving as a main justifier for mask mandates, and he has since Cochrane become far more sceptical and expressively turned against mask mandates.
Such developments aren’t going unnoticed.
That’s given. But it’s nevertheless helpful to put a magnifying glass to the statements of the author of this fact check. She doesn’t even claim that masks work, all she does is she uses weasel-wording supposed to make the reader unsure about the effects of masks
so that she can then go down the It’s just a mask! Why are you making such a fuss about that! Wear one because it could help and we must do anything in our power which could help to combat the dreadful disease! road. It’s useful to understand the mechanism of these lies because it keeps being reused.
This includes to keep pointing out that this is – again – a not so covert appeal to ignorance and that appeals to ignorance never make valid arguments.
That’s up to you of course. Up to 30 thousand people die of flu each year in the UK so I am quite interested in ways of reducing infection. Given the amount of work they put into it, presumably the authors of the Cochrane review and their critics were interested.
“That’s up to you of course.”
It is at the moment, but it wasn’t before and may not be again. I’m not interested in ways of reducing infection that intefere unduly with life, and it’s not my job to keep other people safe, just as it’s not their job to keep me safe.
Seconded.
With you tof.
You can’t reason with fanatical cult members, least of all with ‘for the greater good’ ones.
They need to deny or ignore all the evidence against anything they advocated for the greater good, because otherwise, they would have to admit that they thereby actually did something bad themselves, which they couldn’t handle at all.
These are two Twitter threads that discuss both misinterpretations of the Cochrane report.
But I am really waiting for what Tom Jefferson has to say about his dressing down.
The greatest evil is done in the name of the greater good… always.
Not a high tech approach i know but Having done a basic research from many different sources, if bacteria was the size of a zorbing ball the holes in a standard surgical mask would be relative to the gaps in a builders scaffolding! That’s why they are used in surgery, bacteria is too large to fit through. Viruses on the other hand, are many factors smaller than this, about the size of a tennis ball at the same scale so, how many tennis balls would a builders scaffolding stop? Hardly viable!
Surgical masks are designed to stop exhaled water droplets which may contain bacteria. The top rated mask, the N95, is claimed to stop water droplets and particles of 3 micron and above, thus it may not stop many free bacteria.
But speaking, coughing, sneezing invalidates this as they break up droplets into aerosols and force them through the fabric.
Plus after about 15 minutes the fabric is water logged and this actually facilitates movement of micro-organisms across the fabric.
And… these masks are not designed or intended to protect the wearer.
Thanks for that, as I say , I don’t know the actual mechanics of it all (as most people dont)
but I thought surgical mask are just for stopping bacterial infection of a patient during surgery and hazmat gear is what you need for viruses (pity they didn’t seem to have either at the Wuhan lab!)
You are correct. And a good point. If surgical masks were so effective, why HazMat suits?
The test would be to release a cocktail of serious virus, like Ebola, Smallpox into a sealed room and invite politicians, experts and useful idiots to go and sit in there for a few hours wearing just a mask as barrier protection.
History also makes references to the known facts, look at old Hollywood films, “Outbreak” and “the Andromeda strain” you didn’t see Charlton Heston or Dustin Hoffman leaping for a surgical mask did you? Full Hazmat for those guys! Well, they didn’t know what we know now!!! they could have managed with a cheap Chinese made plastic mask
and it would have been perfectly safe and effective!
Now you’re talking.
In the UK, they apparently didn’t have gloves, aprons, hats, swabs, etc etc. Especially after NHS friends and families had had their wants lists fulfilled.
I have never seen it stated, but wonder if wearing surgical masks and eye covering might have benefits to the surgeon if he accidentally nicks an artery?
Not unknown, apparently.
As far as I’m concerned people who want to promote the wearing of masks and enforce their use are advocating slavery. And so they are my sworn enemies.
I don’t understand them, I don’t relate to them, I think they are dangerous.
If masks ‘work’, if A is wearing one then it doesn’t matter if nobody else is wearing one since A will be protected from everyone else, and they protected from A.
If masks ‘work’, the best way to protect granny is get her a mask to wear then it won’t matter who else is wearing them.
The same is true of vaccination. This has only ever been about protecting the person vaccinated, not others.
So it’s not about protection, it is as you say about enslaving others to their diktats.
They were and are the political uniform of a totalitarian movement in its infancy. The tone of somewhat giddy excitement surrounding the imposition and enforcement of masking has always suggested to me that universal masking advocates (as opposed to people who put them on out of anxiety ‘just in case’) never cared so much about the masks or their efficacy, more the act of wearing them and the message it sends.
Let’s not forget the Millions spent on flying in masks from China, Turkey, South Sandwich Islands, GodKnowsWhereistan, to a gaggle of breathless reporters and a blaze of television lights; masks subsequently quietly incinerated as being ‘below standard’.
And certainly not to forget how many of our Beloved Leaders’ sisters, uncles, chums suddenly became millionaires!
70 years of prior research has shown no benefit of mask wearing, no evidence they reduce spread of or deaths from respiratory viruses, even in mask and hygiene obsessed Countries like compulsive social distancing Japan.
The Cochrane Review – clue in title – was a meta study of various papers which of course varied, not a study carried out by them. The point is none of them produced evidence of effectiveness.
If mask wearing is effective, there MUST be evidence to show this. There is none, anywhere, at any time.
Judging the benefit of mask wearing based solely on the supposed ability of masks to act as a significant barrier to the virus, first assumes spread is only by water droplets whereas it is predominantly airborne aerosol against which surgical masks are ineffective as they are not designed for this. It overlooks that how the mask is used and handled is the deciding factor, as with any equipment or tool. Since the majority of people, including medical/nursing staff, do not use and handle masks correctly, the barrier effect they supposedly have is absent, even a cause of cross-infection.
And finally. Sweden. The Swedish population went nearly entirely mask free. The data shows of all Countries Sweden’s excess deaths (which includes CoVid deaths) is the lowest and particularly lower than mask obsessive and vaccine obsessive Countries.
The raw data is a fact.
It is clear from the fact-check article that the author uses a primitive tribal counting system when referring to the number of epidemiologists cited. I am told that their counting consists of one, two, many. They never needed specific larger numbers.
Under the heading ‘Claim’, the purported claim is set out as follows: “Face masks are ineffective at reducing the spread of COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases, a Cochrane review demonstrates.” This claim, quoted beside a picture of Dr. Malone, is nowhere to be found in his blog post.
Perhaps she gave the wrong link. The article also appeared in the Daily Sceptic under the title: “Masks Don’t Work, Gold Standard Review of Trial Data Concludes”.
As if this were not enough, Carballo-Carbajal continues, presenting what she calls a ‘full claim’: “Review ‘failed to find even a “modest effect” on infection or illness rate’; ‘the CDC Grossly Exaggerated the Evidence Supporting Mask Mandates’.”
The problem with this is that while Dr. Malone is correctly quoted in the first part of the paragraph, the second is something he simply does not say in his blog post, in spite of having quotation marks around it.
If you read her article carefully you will see she does not ascribe these quotes to Malone. She correctly ascribes them to other media sources.
Similarly, other websites like Reason.com, newspapers like Chicago Sun-Times, and media outlets like Fox News claimed that the CDC had “exaggerated” the evidence supporting mask mandates.
We must keep in mind that the source quoted is Dr. Malone‘s blog post, thus any reference to “claims” must be to Malone‘s blog post, which is the only source quoted. References to unidentified sources, such as “many websites and social media posts” must be disregarded because no references are provided:
The second half of Carallo-Carbajal’s article is quite clearly about the review and its implications not about Malone’s blog post. It contains many links to other material and has nine references at the end!
Thanks MTF, you have just perfectly demonstrated the point I was trying to make with my post above: “Just seems like a giant rabbit hole to me. I don’t care if masks “work” – I’m not going to wear one to prevent the spread of covid or any other mild-for-most respiratory virus with which we have coexisted since time immemorial. I don’t care whether lockdowns “work” either.”
Thanks for this excellent article. Let’s not be in any doubt: these people will happily (and knowingly) tell whatever lies and distortions are necessary to support their case. Maybe they tell themselves that the means justify the ends, but I’m not even convinced about that. They’re not interested in truth. Rather, they want to destroy.
If you ignore the nit-picking, this really comes to the whether the Cochrane review supersedes all other evidence on the wearing of masks. It is not a one-sided argument.
The latest version of the Cochrane review is based only on RCTs. RCTs are rightly acknowledged as being the best way of determining the effectiveness of various medical interventions. But there can be good RCTs and poor RCTs and good ways of combining them into one meta-analysis and less good ways. Other forms of evidence include (but are not limited to) observational studies. Observational studies are in many ways inferior to RCTs but they have advantages – in practice they can cover much larger populations than RCTs and the participants don’t know they are in a trial so they behave more naturally.
The RCTs in the review have several problems but most importantly, as Carballo-Carbajal says, they address a wide range of different outcomes. They look at different diseases (strains of flu, Covid) and whether masks protect the wearer or inhibit infection. In fact there is only one that addresses the use of masks to limit Covid infection – the Bangla Desh study. Ignoring all other types of studies on masks and Covid, then smashing together RCTs on other outcomes to come to one overall conclusion about masks is dubious to say the least.
Thanks MTF, you have just perfectly demonstrated the point I was trying to make with my post above: “Just seems like a giant rabbit hole to me. I don’t care if masks “work” – I’m not going to wear one to prevent the spread of covid or any other mild-for-most respiratory virus with which we have coexisted since time immemorial. I don’t care whether lockdowns “work” either.”
RCTs are designed to demonstrate causation. All so-called observational studies provide only correlations. Further, they’re an extreme example of cherry-picking data to suit a hypothesis[*] because for any observational study, the parts of the universe which weren’t observed are necessarily much larger than the parts of the universe which were. In other words, they’re unsuitable for proving or disproving anything, at best, they’re provding hints for future research. They’re also not proper experiments because they’re unrepeatable by design.
[*] In theory, Coronas witnesses and Facemask apostles could be honest, ie, also report about observational studies whose results weren’t what they had liked them to be. In practice, they’re obviously not and will thus discard observations wich aren’t useful for them in the hope that they’ll be more lucky next time.
Get the conclusion, the narrative then look for evidence.
Any studies or facts not supporting the narrative or ideology is ignored or censored.