Causality
- Thread starter Crazyhole
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First off, I would question your 'evidence.' If I come down with Covid-19, I'm not going to embarrass myself by confessing I wasn't wearing a mask in public or social distancing.
"Uh, yeah Doc, I wore a mask...um, pretty much most of the time. um, honest."
No. And anyone that does doesn't understand the basic premise that correlation does not equal causation.
Interesting that the tweet ignores that the control group had a higher reported rate of mask wearing.
It also shows that there is less than a 4% difference between those who wore masks often/always and got it as opposed to didn't get it.
Its interesting how few categories have large statistical variations.
Viruses gonna virus. The mask is a combination of a very weak preventative measure only when used by those that are sick and wearing them to keep large respiratory droplets from emerging (does nothing for small droplets) and a soothing measure to make people feel safer because they are taking some action.
In this study, what distinguishes the control group from the case group?
In this study, what distinguishes the control group from the case group?
Not positive, but I'm pretty sure that the "control" group is just people that didn't have symptoms based on how they describe the case group.
The spread between these two groups seems pretty reasonable. If you assume both widespread masking (85-90% in this case) and an elevated risk profile for non-maskers - say 50% increase in chance of infections - you'd get these results.
Let's assume 1,000 infections in a group where 90% of the population wears masks.
If it was totally random, you'd expect 900 mask wearers, and 100 non-wearers in the positive group. But what if non-wearers actually had a ~50% higher chance of catching the virus? Giving us a breakdown of 150 non-maskers and 850 maskers.
Thus going from 90% to 85% is reasonably equivalent to showing a 50% elevated risk factor for non-wearers.
Don't forget that we had this study as well that concluded that cloth masks should not be recommended for health care workers. Let's remember that they are in saturated environments, but the principles still hold in less saturated environments even though the chance of encountering the virus and saturating the mask is much lower. Since most people don't wash their cloth mask after every exposure, though, you are still running a decent risk of saturation through multiple exposures in places where the masks are never fully drying out.
I'm all for the layered approach to personal protection on this. We just need to make sure that we recommend and widely push protocols that the people can and will follow.
A cluster randomised trial of cloth masks compared with medical masks in healthcare workers
The aim of this study was to compare the efficacy of cloth masks to medical masks in hospital healthcare workers (HCWs). The null hypothesis is that there is no difference between medical masks and cloth masks.14 secondary-level/tertiary-level hospitals ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
I'm all for the layered approach to personal protection on this. We just need to make sure that we recommend and widely push protocols that the people can and will follow.
This simply isn't true. If you think it is, you're not keeping up with all of the research that's gone into masking during the last 6 months. No it's not definitive. But we have limited information to make decisions with. But it's far beyond making people feel safer. There are countless studies and lab experiments showing potential benefits to masking as it relates to COVID. But it's hard to find a good argument (grounded in data and lab experiments over the last 6 months arguing what you've said.
Here's a decent state of affairs on this topic from Nature.
Face masks: what the data say
The science supports that face coverings are saving lives during the coronavirus pandemic, and yet the debate trundles on. How much evidence is enough?
www.nature.com
This is all good and well, but scientific studies on mask wearing don't take into account real-world circumstances like how often people touch their mask.This simply isn't true. If you think it is, you're not keeping up with all of the research that's gone into masking during the last 6 months. No it's not definitive. But we have limited information to make decisions with. But it's far beyond making people feel safer. There are countless studies and lab experiments showing potential benefits to masking as it relates to COVID. But it's hard to find a good argument (grounded in data and lab experiments over the last 6 months arguing what you've said.
Here's a decent state of affairs on this topic from Nature.
Face masks: what the data say
The science supports that face coverings are saving lives during the coronavirus pandemic, and yet the debate trundles on. How much evidence is enough?
None of what you linked refuted what I said. The cloth masks that most people use and the lack of proper protocol in real life settings results in the cloth masks having a weak preventative effect. The droplet sizes and ability to filter out aerosols is an issue, as is people rendering their masks nearly ineffective for any type of filtering other than large droplet through misuse and mishandling.This simply isn't true. If you think it is, you're not keeping up with all of the research that's gone into masking during the last 6 months. No it's not definitive. But we have limited information to make decisions with. But it's far beyond making people feel safer. There are countless studies and lab experiments showing potential benefits to masking as it relates to COVID. But it's hard to find a good argument (grounded in data and lab experiments over the last 6 months arguing what you've said.
Here's a decent state of affairs on this topic from Nature.
Face masks: what the data say
The science supports that face coverings are saving lives during the coronavirus pandemic, and yet the debate trundles on. How much evidence is enough?
As I said in my next post, I'm all for the swiss cheese layered approach. What is dangerous is people (not you) that think that the mask is the single most important part of prevention and then give no actual instructions for how to be safe with the cloth masks. In some cases, the simple instruction of "wear a cloth mask" may actually be more dangerous to someone in real life.
What is truly amazing about this (yes, I started the thread) is that we are arguing effectiveness against a disease with a 99.9% survival rate regardless of what you do to prevent catching it.
Could it also be that the folks who caught it that are wearing masks are more often the front line workers who are around people the most? Doctors, Nurses, Grocery Store Cashiers, Servers, etc. are all wearing mask and interacting with the most people, while the non-mask wearers may not be out as much?
a member of the pedo-left being skeptical over CDC statistics? isn't that against yall's religion?
Clearly all of the CDCs statistics should be questioned. This one. Total deaths. All of it.
You aren’t mathing right. If 3 in 10 people with Covid didn’t wear a mask, but the mask rate is 95% then non-mask wearers were 6 times more likely to get the virus. This doesn’t even account for the fact that the main benefit of the mask is to avoid transmission of the virus to others rather than to prevent yourself from getting it.
So, naturally, we take preventative measures to avoid getting a bug or spreading one around, right?
I'm guessing that when you had the flu, you took some pretty strict measures to avoid passing your flu bug on to your pregnant wife and little kid, right?
So would it have really mattered to you if your state's Governor or your city's mayor had similar coronavirus safety protocols in place? How is behaving responsibly a loss of freedom?
How long do you guys going to play this stupid game?
We're supposed to believe the chuds who ridicule mask wearing and social distancing know more than the health experts?
Good grief, STFU already.
Nope, but my head hurts from reading the same tired, old stupid comments from maskless chuds about how masks 'clearly aren't working' since our COVID-19 infection numbers are going up.
Gee, I can't imagine why that is?
![[eyeroll]](http://l.yimg.com/j/assets/img/emoticons/rolleye/rolleye0011.r191677.gif "Eye roll [eyeroll]")
The OP shows little statistical variation between mask wearers and non-mask wearers according to the CDC, so explain your premise that masks DO work. These are numbers not produced by someone with an agenda.Nope, but my head hurts from reading the same tired, old stupid comments from maskless chuds about how masks 'clearly aren't working' since our COVID-19 infection numbers are going up.
Gee, I can't imagine why that is?
I'm just waiting for the day when this coronavirus is finally over, and we won't have these covid discussions anymore. I'll step up to the plate once the vaccine is shown to be safe and effective.
Sometimes it's amusing interacting with mouth breathing hill folk but not when they are deliberately playing dumb and demanding basic information be explained to them.
Self reporting of always mostly sometimes and never is not exactly quantitative
Your OP would have gotten an F on a high school science paper. As was clearly pointed out to you earlier, correlation does not equal causation.
Did you skip my math example above? That ~5% variation is roughly what you'd EXPECT if non-maskers had a 50% elevated risk of infection.
70% vs 74% of people practicing the same habit. Seems like it doesn't need a lot of ciphering.
Think of logical extremes. If 99.9% wore masks regularly, and 99.5% of the COVID positive group were mask wearers, that doesn't mean "there's only a 0.4% difference in the groups." It means 0.1% of the population is caching the virus at 4x the rate of the mask-wearing population.
In the numbers in that table, it's consistent with non-mask wearers having a 50% elevated risk. It doesn't prove anything, but it certainly doesn't suggest the groups are equivalent.
That’s if reliability of a non mask wearer to admit that fact is high. In the face of mandates and a Covid diagnosis I’m skeptical that it is.
Masks have proven to be largely ineffective against a disease that has a 99.9% survival rate. May as well shut off the lights because we are all going to die.
People with poor numerical literacy 'more susceptible' to Covid-19 'fake news'
Cambridge University study also suggests older people less likely to believe coronavirus misinformation
Seatbelts reduce risk of death by about 50% for front seat passengers in an accident. So if 99.9% of drivers wear seatbelts, a whole bunch of people are still going to die in car accidents. Does this mean that seatbelts are clearly ineffective?
You're arguing like 8 different things here. If the data shows seatbelts reduce mortality by 50%, would you agree they are a worthwhile method of making cars safer?
This is why lazy responses are acceptable. There's no point.
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