Why does this matter? Because most of the articles claims are based on "spoke to us" quotes from anonymous staffers which cannot be independently verified. So it falls to the reputation of those publishing and their journalistic integrity/process, and at that point I leave it to you to make up your own mind.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bari_Weiss#2017%E2%80%932020:_...
I understand the argument you're making, and it's not an obvious call, but I think it comes with more downside than upside, at least for HN. It's a trope of tribal internet argument (I mean in general—not talking about you here) to follow a "DAG of shame" in which you hop from any node to the most shameful associated thing, with the intention of discrediting the node from which you started. The problem is that each of those hops loses a lot of information, and one ends up in places that aren't particularly relevant, like whatever that university project is.
What's bad about this for HN is that it makes threads more generic, predictable, and repetitive. It also polarizes discussion along the most intense axis. All of this makes discussion less interesting and more inflammatory.
So while it's not an obvious call (more like 60-40 than 80-20) I think we're better off as a community to resist the habit of replacing topic X with the biggest or most shameful other-topic-Y that the dots connect to. It's not that there's no value in it, but it's the wrong move, given what we're trying to optimize for (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
"The rest of the world has accepted the endemic nature of Covid and moved on, but the U.S. is an int'l outlier, still pushing mass testing & chasing down every case." [0]
I'm not sure what inverse universe he lives in given that we barely do any official testing, and contact tracing never even got off the ground.
His retweets are also all the other well known covid-minimizers - including the infamous Jay Bhattacharya.
[0] https://twitter.com/MartyMakary/status/1546533258187390977
A good summary with links is here: https://www.the-scientist.com/features/counting-the-lives-sa...
Following standard ideological grooves to discredit the other tribe's sources is not acting from specialist knowledge in any case. The only specialty at work in such discussion is the specialty of internet battle. That's ultimately just a way to turn every thread into a boring, if intense, flamewar.
One of the things that follows from HN's core principle of intellectual curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...) is the principle of diffs (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). Diffs are what's interesting. This is the positive formulation of the principle that repetition is bad for curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...).
For topics that burn hot, like political/ideological ones, this "diff" principle implies that discussion is most interesting (and therefore best for HN) when people don't take the obvious path from their own initial position—that is, when they don't repeat the reaction that they've had most often before. That is a hard thing to ask on the hottest topics, which tend to melt into a few (well, two) monolithic piles of tar. But I think it follows from the principle.
Here's another thing that I think follows, and is even harder to swallow. To the extent that someone has strong political/ideological views, if they're not seeing articles on HN that they strongly disagree with, at least semi-regularly, then there's probably something wrong with HN*.
That isn't always great for community spirit because it only takes a few disagreeable data points before the mind starts to defend itself with a "this place sucks" reaction (and there are people on all ideological sides who develop such reactions). I wrote about this here, if anyone wants to read more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.
* To ward off one common misunderstanding: that is not a Goldilocks argument for split-the-difference centrism! It's an argument for unpredictability. Since centrism is just as predictable as other ideologies, it should encounter just as much to be put off by.
There are a lot of valid scientific reasons to criticize the CDC's approach to the COVID pandemic, including their own publications[1]. One could also point to the different paths taken by other OECD nations with respect to children and see that the CDC diverged sharply, but presented no data to justify those policies.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/eis/field-epi-manual/chapters/Communicat...
“Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have concluded that lockdowns have done little to reduce COVID deaths but have had “devastating effects” on economies and numerous social ills.”
https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/files/2022/01/A-Literature...
"You wear funny hats so you're not a credible expert on waffle irons" would be an ad hominem.[1]
Noting the reputation and past history of a speaker or source, or noting well-known rhetorical red flags (http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/sophist_refut.1.1.html) is what we'd now call a strong Bayesian prior. It's not a proof that a source, speaker, document, or publication is wrong, but it's a fairly strong grounds for suspecting that might be the case.
https://www.thoughtco.com/ad-hominem-fallacy-1689062
And in a world in which asymmetric costs favour bullshit, it's a useful and often necessary approach.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini's_law
________________________________
Notes:
1. In practice, "funny hats" might well be references to non-Western clothing (see The Little Prince for a fictional illustration), or speech, or gender, or religous affiliation (religious exclusion was common in top US universities well into the 1970s). It's still practiced in many regards. What this ignores is the specific capabilities or validity of claims or methods.
No, if you look in the site guidelines you'll see that they say "Most" stories on certain themes are off topic, and that word is there intentionally. It allows for exceptions, especially when there's either something interestingly different about a story, or some significant new information to discuss.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
For past explanations about how we think about this in terms of political topics, see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... There are lots of links there to where I've explained this in detail. If anyone has a question that I haven't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
Stories drawn from the arts, like music and also literature and painting, or more generally from history, archaeology, you name it, are most welcome here as long as they offer something of intellectual curiosity. So if HN commenters are pushing back on a story just because it's about e.g. music, that would be bad. (But if it were a gossipy story about a famous musician, say, that would be different.)
Sex is its own special case in all things, so we would have to talk about that separately.
– John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (https://www.utilitarianism.com/ol/two.html)
It's in the wikipedia article linked by the GP. To help you out -
In September 2021, concerning COVID-19, she tweeted an article by Glenn Greenwald which argued that proof of a negative test is far more meaningful than proof of a vaccine, contradicting experts who argue that testing is insufficient and should be considered temporary to allow more time for vaccine hesitancy issues to be addressed.
Assuming she hasn't deleted her tweet:
https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1440687368957095940
She said she was like Galileo here: https://www.ft.com/content/5d840a5c-fa0c-4d08-9574-59f0d3e8c...
>I'm not saying censorship alone is an answer -- but the marketplace of ideas is not functioning as you describe.
Honestly, neither is curated news. At the time of this poll, 41% of people who identified as Democrats believe that if someone caught covid, their chance of hospitalization was 50% or higher. The actual number is 1-5%. Massive amounts of Republicans and Independents also believed this as well. You assume a fair, pure and incorruptible curator, which doesn't exist. Censorship isn't the answer.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/briefing/atlanta-shooting...
Let's see your numbers of <6 years and <8 etc.
> If Covid only affected kids
In all age groups, it affected children the least.
'In total, 540,305 people were tested for SARS-COV-2 and 129,704 (24.0%) were positive. In children aged <16 years, 35,200 tests were performed and 1408 (4.0%) were positive for SARS-CoV-2, compared to 19.1%–34.9% adults.' https://adc.bmj.com/content/105/12/1180
> You are the one spreading disinformation
Crossing into personal attack will get you banned here regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are, so please don't do that.
Your comment would be much better without those bits.
https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-Focus-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense
It certainly has populist appeal, and is consciously used to evoke same.
It makes more sense now that several USA politicians have had "unscripted" moments in which they admitted that we are at war with Russia. [0][1] It will make even more sense when someone admits we have had "special forces" killing civilians in Donbas for years. As in, if we're at war, even if we don't dare declare it and even if most Americans would vote against it despite constant corporate media gaslighting, it is in some sense "disloyal" for pacifists to complain about war.
The censorship made no sense in February when we all pretended that the whole thing was totally unprovoked Russian aggression and we were just sad witnesses. At that time, the censorship just proved that something stunk about the war-media story.
[0] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/04/26/ukra-a26.html
[1] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/04/ukraine-nato-rus...
The protective effect of prior infection is not uncertain, nor is it changing. There have been dozens of papers now, all saying the same thing: natural infection is at least as protective (if not more so) than even 3 doses of the current vaccines. If you are hearing otherwise, you are being misinformed. Full stop.
Here's the latest paper in a long line of consistent evidence, last week in the NEJM:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2203965
> No discernable differences in protection against symptomatic BA.1 and BA.2 infection were seen with previous infection, vaccination, and hybrid immunity. Vaccination enhanced protection among persons who had had a previous infection. Hybrid immunity resulting from previous infection and recent booster vaccination conferred the strongest protection.
Norway is saying what it is, because we know that most people -- vaccinated or previously infected -- will eventually get re-infected. But even if you are re-infected, you will be well-protected against severe illness.
[1]: https://www.fda.gov/drugs/development-resources/table-surrog... "Table of Surrogate Endpoints That Were the Basis of Drug Approval or Licensure"
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-booed-al...
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/20/politics/donald-trump-booster...
https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/arts-culture...
With enough amplification from drown child's noses some virus fragments might be found. But vaccines won't help with drowning or car crashes, which each kill more children.
The fact that vaccines make you less likely to become infected in the first place and also they make the disease shorter means that vaccines also reduce transmission.
“In the current study, most COVID-19 cases among students and staff were acquired from the community and approximately 10% of cases were acquired within school. The researchers found that for every 100 community-acquired cases, school districts with mandatory masking had approximately 7.3 cases of in-school infections, while optionally masked districts had 26.4 cases of in-school infections. In other words, school districts with optional masking had approximately 3.6 times the rate of in-school COVID-19 cases when compared to schools with mandatory masking. These data also show that mandatory masking was associated with a 72% reduction of in-school COVID-19 cases, compared to districts with optional masking.”
From Pediatrics:
https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/149/6/e20220...
That said there are conflicting studies: “This report details the findings of a case-control evaluation of the association between vaccination and SARS-CoV-2 reinfection in Kentucky during May–June 2021 among persons previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 in 2020. Kentucky residents who were not vaccinated had 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with those who were fully vaccinated (odds ratio [OR] = 2.34; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.58–3.47).” https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm?s_cid=mm...
The nuances are complicated. False positives are a real concern for people avoiding vaccination. People that survive the first infection without vaccination are a meaningfully different population than the vaccinated population. Similarly people that get vaccinated after infection have received vaccination more recently etc.
https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/how-are-covid-19-deaths-c...
But also, it was just methodologically flawed -- they didn't bother to correct for the bias that people who were vaccinated after infection in early 2021 were probably behaving differently than those who had not been vaccinated at that time.
If you're going to cite an old MMWR article as "evidence" against the now overwhelming pile of papers demonstrating that the immune system works pretty much as we expect from immmunology 101, don't forget that in early 2022 they released this much better, much larger (N=1.1M people) cohort study, which dramatically showed the opposite of what you're claiming. Prior infection obviously provided robust protection against Delta, on par with the vaccines:
In March 2022 (this year), sleuthing by members of the public into inflated pediatric death counts resulted in the CDC deleting 72k alleged covid deaths, blaming a coding error for the overcount: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/24/cdc-coding-err...
In one county in Colorado, a coroner pointed out that 2 of 5 covid deaths were actually due to gunshot wounds: "Grand County Coroner Raises Concern On Deaths Among COVID Cases" (Dec 2020): https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/grand-county-covid-dea...
The way that a "covid case" or alleged "covid death" has been counted may have improved over the past 2 years, but 70+ thousand purported covid deaths were just admitted to have been illusory a few months ago and there most definitely have been significant financial incentives for hospitals to claim a particular patient had covid and further incentives for specific treatments (remdesivir, placing them on a vent, etc.).
A few months ago, the CDC quietly cut the covid death toll by 72k: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/24/cdc-coding-err...
People who died for any reason within weeks of a positive covid test result were being counted as covid deaths, even gunshot victim: https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/grand-county-covid-dea...
The loosey-goosey way covid deaths have been counted in the USA, inflating the death toll, seems to be an area of curiously selective collective amnesia.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.23.21268276v...
"Duration of Shedding of Culturable Virus in SARS-CoV-2 Omicron (BA.1) Infection" (see "Figure 1. Viral Decay and Time to Negative Viral Culture."): https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2202092
Or differently put, if you have absolutely unrealistic expectations and deferred any critical thinking to another party, you are putting said party in a very very difficult situation. And if they not just lack the backbone to tell you this, but start pretending to be that competent and certain to match your expectations, it can become very dangerous.
https://www.businessinsider.com/covid-patients-nyc-hospitals...
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01453-0 relating to the study https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01840-0
Children younger than 5 years old–especially those younger than 2– are at higher risk of developing serious flu-related complications. A flu vaccine offers the best defense against flu and its potentially serious consequences and also can reduce the spread of flu to others. Getting vaccinated against flu has been shown to reduce flu illnesses, doctor’s visits, missed work and school days, and reduce the risk of flu-related hospitalization and death in children.
"Persistent Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging Findings in a Cohort of Adolescents with Post-Coronavirus Disease 2019 mRNA Vaccine Myopericarditis" https://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(22)00282-7/fulltext
did you forget something here?
> If you believe that it's not for a majority of experts are not to decide, and a majority of laymen are not to decide, and a majority of Americans are not to decide, then who do you think should make the decision?
Democracy. In our system of government we elect leaders, those leaders are responsible to the people who have elected them. This has been sidestepped in recent decades by appointing experts who have the ability to use the force of law without explicit congressional approval. This is unconstitutional and the supreme court in the past year has twice affirmed this view[0][1]. We can't allow our leaders to hide behind people that they themselves have appointed when those appointees make choices that may have disastrous consequences.
> most people understand that the CDC is a normal org like any other, or indeed, like any normal person, which tries its best to do what it can with what it has, and aren't expected to be able to predict the future
Funny they didn't mention that while making proclamations from on high. "I did my best" is of little comfort to someone harmed by their choices.
[0]https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/21a23_ap6c.pdf
[1]https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf
Criticizing the meat of the article is fine, or pointing out a particular ax the author might have to grind is valid too. I'm taking issue with the criticism that Bair Weiss is a bad woman therefore anything on her site is fake news.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32100018
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bari_Weiss#2017%E2%80%932020:_...
The figure (specifically Fig1D and Fig1E of https://www.nejm.org/na101/home/literatum/publisher/mms/jour...) speaks for itself.
I would rather the authors soft-pedal the alarming results and get published than not get published at all. Just as I approve of POWs appearing to collaborate by sitting for media interviews that may, on the surface, make their captors seem humane and then blinking "T-O-R-T-U-R-E" in Morse code.
Ignoring the charts and clutching at that line of text still requires one to accept that vaccinated and boosted persons didn't clear covid any faster than unvaccinated persons, which completely contradicts the vaccine-pushers' dogma that the adverse effects and deaths occurring in younger demographics (especially but not solely among younger males) post-vax are worth it, on balance, because the shots reduce spread to and hence deaths among more vulnerable groups.
I feel like everywhere I look in the anti-COVID-vax community, no one reckons with the fact that their position gets others sick, and those people might die. Even this article focuses strongly on children not needing masks or vaccines, mentioning not at all kids getting others sick.
Some cites:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33721405/
https://hms.harvard.edu/news/children-spread-covid-19
https://ufhealth.org/news/2021/uf-study-sheds-light-roles-ch...
FTFY
> see huge disparity in myocarditis risk found to result from a 2nd Moderna jab vs. covid infection for males under 40 in Patone et al. on MedRxiv
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.23.21268276v...
""" This article is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed ... Of the 42,200,614 persons included in the study population, 2,539 (0.006%) were hospitalised or died from myocarditis during the study period; 552 (0.001%) of these events occurred during 1-28 days following any dose of vaccine ... First, we confirm and extend our previous findings in more than 42 million persons that the risk of hospitalization or death from myocarditis following COVID-19 infection is higher than the risk associated with vaccination in the overall population. ... Despite more myocarditis events occurring in older persons, the risk following COVID-19 vaccination was largely restricted to younger males aged less than 40 years, where the risks of myocarditis following vaccination and infection were similar. However, the notable exception was that in younger males receiving a second dose of mRNA-1273 vaccine, the risk of myocarditis was higher following vaccination than infection, with an additional 101 events estimated following a second dose of mRNA-1273 vaccine compared to 7 events following a positive SARS-CoV-2 test ... Third, although we were able to include 2,136,189 children aged 13 to 17 years old in this analysis, the number of myocarditis events was too small (n=43 in all periods and n=15 in the 1-28 days post vaccination) in this population and precluded an evaluate of risk. ... In summary, the risk of hospital admission or death from myocarditis is greater following COVID-19 infection than following vaccination and remains modest following sequential doses of mRNA vaccine including a third booster dose of BNT162b in the overall population. However, the risk of myocarditis following vaccination is consistently higher in younger males, particularly following a second dose of RNA mRNA-1273 vaccine. """
I'm not sure that this strongly supports your apparent position.
> recent studies indicate vaccinated persons take longer to clear recent Omicron variants than those who have refused the vaccines... so younger people aren't helping anyone else by subjecting themselves to the risks of the vaccines
Except that absolute risk of getting infected in the first place is decreased in a vaccinated cohort. Which is pointed out by the same study you're referencing: "vaccination has been shown to reduce the incidence of infection and the severity of disease." So that kind of sounds like a way in which they might be helping both themselves and "anyone else."
> And myocarditis and pericarditis aren't the only severe or fatal adverse effects being observed.
What else? At what rates? Because I've certainly care for plenty of (by and large unvaccinated) people that have died from the disease, young (20s-30s, thankfully none younger have died in my care) as well as old.
> It's madness.
In that we agree.
Is that right? I just keep hearing that there is some conspiracy trying to obscure the data, I figured it would be unavailable.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34865500/
We report on 139 adolescents and young adults with 140 episodes of suspected myocarditis (49 confirmed, 91 probable) at 26 centers. ... Twenty-six patients (18.7%) were in the intensive care unit, 2 were treated with inotropic/vasoactive support, and none required extracorporeal membrane oxygenation or died. Median hospital stay was 2 days (range, 0-10; IQR, 2-3).
Of 97 patients who underwent cardiac MRI at a median 5 days (range, 0-88; IQR, 3-17) from symptom onset, 75 (77.3%) had abnormal findings: 74 (76.3%) had late gadolinium enhancement, 54 (55.7%) had myocardial edema, and 49 (50.5%) met Lake Louise criteria. Among 26 patients with left ventricular ejection fraction <55% on echocardiogram, all with follow-up had normalized function (n=25).
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2788346
Approximately 96% of persons (784/813) were hospitalized and 87% (577/661) of these had resolution of presenting symptoms by hospital discharge. The most common treatment was nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (589/676; 87%).
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34734240/
All cases occurred within 2 weeks of a dose of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine with the majority occurring within 3 days (range 1-13 days) following the second dose (6/7 patients, 86%). Overall, cases were mild, and all patients survived.
COVID-19 Vaccination-Associated Myocarditis in Adolescents: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34389692/
None of the patients required inotropic, mechanical, or circulatory support. There were no deaths. Follow-up data obtained in 86% of patients at a mean of 35 days revealed resolution of symptoms, arrhythmias, and ventricular dysfunction.
From the paper you linked to:
""" Median hospital length of stay was 2 days (range 1-4 days) with no intensive care unit admission and no significant morbidity or mortality. All patients had resolution of chest pain and down-trending serum troponin level before discharge.
Follow-up cardiac MRI LVEF (57.7 ± 2.8%) was significantly improved from initial (54.5 ± 5.5%, P < .05), and none of the patients had regional wall motion abnormalities. LVEF by echocardiogram was normal for all patients at the time of follow-up. """
Though to be fair -- because I think there are too many shills on both sides of this topic -- it also notes:
""" Notably, in our cohort, although there was significant reduction in LGE at follow-up, abnormal strain persisted for the majority of patients at follow-up. """
So thank you for prompting me to delve a little more into the outcomes of the vaccine-associated myocarditis cases. I feel even more reassured than before -- the cases seem to be exceedingly rare, even in the highest risk demographic. For anyone outside that highest-risk demographic, the risk of COVID-related myocarditis is higher than vaccine-related. When this exceedingly rare complication occurs, the majority of cases result in a brief hospitalization during which they are treated with ibuprofen.
I think it will be interesting to see how the risks of having COVID a second time compare with the risks of vaccination. I think it's fully possible that the immunity from prior infection could drastically reduce the risks of disease and shift the balance, but until this is better understood, it seems that the risks of vaccination seem to be extremely low -- even lower than the risks of COVID, even for the lowest risk demographics.
I don't think the DAG-of-shame game really has to do with curiosity about facts. It has to do with tarring ideological enemies. Maybe they deserve it, maybe they don't, but it's not the quality of discussion we want here.
Rather than an ambiguous phrase like "noting facts about sources", I think we're better off applying the clearer distinction between curious conversation and ideological battle. There's a binary distinction between those two things (as binary as these things can get), and we know which one we want on this site.
Moreover, one destroys the other, so it needs to be actively moderated. I don't just mean what moderators do, but the general sense of dampening excesses and avoiding extremes. We want a culture of moderation on HN—not for its own sake, but because curiosity only flowers in a temperate climate.
(By the way, I'm not disagreeing ideologically with any of the comments that I'm objecting to here. This is about discussion quality and attempting to organize the site around one specific value: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009286742...
Here's another:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04460-3
> Between 70% and 80% of the CD4+ and CD8+ T cell response to spike was maintained across study groups. Moreover, the magnitude of Omicron cross-reactive T cells was similar for Beta (B.1.351) and Delta (B.1.617.2) variants, despite Omicron harbouring considerably more mutations. In patients who were hospitalized with Omicron infections (n = 19), there were comparable T cell responses to ancestral spike, nucleocapsid and membrane proteins to those in patients hospitalized in previous waves dominated by the ancestral, Beta or Delta variants (n = 49). Thus, despite extensive mutations and reduced susceptibility to neutralizing antibodies of Omicron, the majority of T cell responses induced by vaccination or infection cross-recognize the variant.
I may have read a third, but I can't find it easily, and these two should be more than enough to back up what I wrote / get you started.
How about this one? https://wpde.com/news/nation-world/man-who-died-in-motorcycl...
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi9069
First, note that this wasn't studying in the context of a mask mandate - in the sample villages, masks were distributed, and people were recommended to wear masks when around others. In practice, this brought mask usage up to 42% on average, as compared to 13% in control villages. So, even in this context where the majority of people weren't wearing masks, they still saw an effect in the cloth mask villages. They also saw a larger effect in the surgical mask villages.
Thread from one of the study authors: https://twitter.com/Jabaluck/status/1433036923610742789
It is worth noting that the effect was smaller and the sample size for cloth mask villages smaller than for surgical mask villages, so the confidence is lower than for surgical masks. But with that said, note this from the study author:
> We find a clear and large statistically significant impact on COVID symptoms. We find an imprecise zero for serologically confirmed COVID. The most likely interpretation is that cloth masks reduce COVID, but not as much as surgical masks.
https://twitter.com/Jabaluck/status/1433227618497728514
Now, was the effect relatively small for cloth masks? Yes. But given the results here, plus results we have from mechanistic studies of cloth masks, a reasonable conclusion is something along the lines of: cloth masks have some effect on transmission, albeit a relatively small effect. Other types of masks are better.
Additionally, if the assumption of "the types of masks worn by the vast majority of school children" is correct, then studies showing that mask mandates in schools had an effect on transmission would suggest some efficacy for cloth masks.
Two relatively large-scale observational studies: https://twitter.com/roby_bhatt/status/1502244997764157442
That said, I'm endlessly disappointed that there wasn't a consistent, strong push for people to upgrade from cloth to surgical once supplies of surgical masks were no longer an issue. And mask sizing was also an issue - there are so many masks out there that are oversized for kids. Imagine if the federal government had coordinated with schools across the country to ensure supplies of kid sized surgical masks at every school. Alas.
Look a Figures 1, 2 and 4, and you'll see clearly that protection against severe disease remains quite robust. Protection against severe, critical or fatal Covid-19 due to any Omicron infection is shown at 91% (95% CI 60-100) after prior infection (Figure 2D).
It goes into how Democrats get mired in reacting / reading / responding to everything, when detractors are acting in bad faith to consume their time / fill the airwaves and media.
I recommend the book. It's great, short, and applicable far outside Democrats / politics.
Even if we split this into two groups - those under 18 with comorbidities, and those without, there's still good evidence for both groups to get vaccinated. I don't know if there is a good breakdown nationally, but even just looking at NYC, the evidence becomes compelling. NYC has a dataset that breaks down deaths by age group and by comorbidity status:
https://github.com/nychealth/coronavirus-data/blob/master/to...
For under 18, as of 9/11/21 (yes, I wish they'd push a more recent update), 29 total deaths, 19 with an underlying condition, 5 without, and 5 pending/unknown. Underlying conditions by NYC's metric is pretty broad:
> Underlying conditions currently include diabetes, lung disease, cancer, immunodeficiency, heart disease, hypertension, asthma, kidney disease, gastrointestinal/liver disease, and obesity.
So, in New York City alone, and as of nearly a year ago, you had 5 kids under the age of 18 with no known underlying conditions who died of Covid. Just an educated guess, but it's quite plausible we've had 100+ deaths nationally in the under 18 with no underlying conditions group. That alone is pretty strong evidence in favor of vaccinating everyone in the under 18 group, and not just those with underlying conditions.
All that said, the primary reason for vaccine mandates for schools is related to transmission. And here too, there is good efficacy.
Ultimately, the harm/benefit calculation is quite clear in favor of vaccinations for kids, outside of rare scenarios. The main debate is whether the risk of backlash from schools mandating vaccination is worth the clear benefits of increasing vaccine uptake in these age groups.
> Cloth masks are security theater. Nobody’s disputing properly worn N95s. GP is talking about what has been pushed for two years and the credibility that has been destroyed. They’re not talking about recent shifts.
Cloth masks reduce transmission. They're not great at doing so, but they do still have an effect. Surgical masks are better. KN94/N95/etc are much better. Yes, we should have long ago moved to surgical as the minimum viable mask in mask mandate scenarios. It's unfortunate that we didn't. But even still, cloth masks do still help a small amount.
Here's a transcript of the US Assistant Secretary of State and the US Ambassador to Ukraine planning the coup. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
Here's Obama saying he brokered the deal for the transfer of power, resulting in the democratically elected leader fleeing. https://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2015/02/01/pres-obama-on-...
The term is actually well defined, especially what is supposed to be documented by it. I am German and they borrowed it straight from the government regulation. The "Negativnachweis" https://www.rv.hessenrecht.hessen.de/bshe/document/jlr-Coron...
>(1) Soweit nach dieser Verordnung der Nachweis zu führen ist, dass keine Anhaltspunkte für eine Infektion mit dem SARS-CoV-2-Virus vorliegen (Negativnachweis), kann dies erfolgen durch
>(1) >If, according to this regulation, proof must be provide that there are no indications of infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus (negative proof), this can be done by...
And you being vaccinated with a leaky vaccine doesnt mean there is no indication you are infected. Not in any way. This is misinformation that actually kills, because it allows COVID to spread. And its not information spread by some morons who drink bleach but by the government and quite literally taped to the doors of the figurative house of science. Because people lack the integrity to call out bullshit for what it is.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/apr/01/jeff-jacks...
