Once again, the witty Professor hits another homerun right out of the park here:
That basically explains the TSAP's evolving position over time. Originally we were pro-mask since we honestly believed they worked based on some spurious observations in a few East Asian and Eastern European countries, plus a few sketchy studies, and thus they seemed like a safe pathway out of lockdown. But as time went on, the evidence just kept on mounting against them. And the past 18 months pretty much answers that question--if they worked, not only would it be so obvious to everyone that no one would have to be forced to wear them, but COVID would have been gone within a few weeks of (near) universal masking as the R value would thus drop well below one and even close to zero, and we would not still be having this debate to this day.
Are you old enough to remember when face masks were initially discouraged by nearly all of the experts as well as "experts", including Dr. Fauci himself? And then, seemingly out of the blue, the idea caught on that masks not only work, but work so well that if 80% (or is that 90%, or 95%, or 99%?) or whatever % of the population were to wear them, COVID would be practically wiped out, or at the very least 100,000+ lives would be saved? Right? And the logical implication being: the sooner everyone would wear them for just a few weeks, the sooner no one would ever have to wear them again, because COVID would be gone!
Well, that didn't really pan out, did it? Look, you can cherry-pick the data all you want, but it's pretty self-evident that masks made no practical or statistical difference overall in terms of COVID case, hospitalization, or death rates, even with the strictest mandates and/or very high compliance above 90% or 95%. While no one can completely rule out modest benefits perhaps in very selected instances, the macro-level data supporting universal masking simply isn't there. Clearly, after 18 months, if a "signal" still cannot be boosted even with great effort, is was most likely just noise all along.
And all that applies a fortiori to children as well, as we have noted previously. There is even less evidence in favor, and even stronger arguments against forcing kids to wear them, especially at this juncture.
Thus, we are re-learning the hard way the painful lessons our ancestors learned in 1918. There was clearly a reason they stopped wearing masks in 1919, after all. And no, it wasn't "selfishness" or "anti-science" sentiment, but a rather a good strong dose of reality that turned even their greatest enthusiasts against them in droves. They simply didn't work.
And now with some "experts" wanting to bring back mask mandates yet again at this stage (!), despite the obvious fact that they would even LESS effective still against the MORE contagious Delta variant, beware. The following Tweet sums it why that is a very bad idea in both theory and practice:
Mask mandates are in fact the THIN end of a very long and thick wedge of coercion. Slopes are indeed much, much slipperier than they appear.
QED
AUGUST UPDATE: Looks like there is even more evidence that masks are basically useless and little more than window dressing overall. That is true even for adults, let alone for children to whom it applies a fortiori to. The pro-mask side of what passes for "debate" really can't rely honestly on science anymore, so they increasingly resort to censorship and ad hominem attacks instead. Ten years from now, if not much sooner, we guarantee that they will regret their stance just like they did not long after 1918.
SEPTEMBER UPDATE: About that poorly-designed Bangladesh study that the pro-maskers are claiming "proves" once and for all that "masks work!", well, it clearly doesn't prove that at all. It also says nothing at all about children, schools, or mandates, since neither of these were studied at all by this study. The best it possibly says is that voluntary use of surgical masks when combined with distancing MIGHT work modestly at the margin in VERY selected instances (even if only a placebo effect as a universal symbol for "keep your distance!"), while cloth masks (i.e. the most commonly used kind) are basically completely useless, and it only goes downhill from there.
Medical fascism is the order of the day.
ReplyDeleteSad but true, it seems.
DeleteI just added another new update as well.
DeleteAnd another new update as well.
Delete