| "Then they ignored natural immunity. Wrong again. The vast majority of children have already had Covid, but this has made no difference in the blanket mandates for childhood vaccines. And now, by mandating vaccines and boosters for young healthy people, with no strong supporting data, these agencies are only further eroding public trust."
“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 argument doesn't make any sense. Why would masks have to be worn correctly 100% of the time, otherwise it's theater?
If a type of mask works well at 100% use, it probably also works pretty well at 85% use.
I don’t know that masking in schools was the best idea. In my limited purview I think it was a good idea in our child’s school, because things seemed to go well overall. I was responding to the GP who appears to think it’s idiocy to even countenance the idea because there are no studies, when there are, and that it’s so wrong that it’s a form of superstition.
And before you tell me “oh it’s just a minor inconvenience”, no it’s not. It may be for you, but I hate that I have to breathe my stale exhalation, hate that I can’t hear people wearing masks clearly, hate that I can’t see peoples facial expressions when they speak, hate that I get out of breath wearing them. Added to this sometimes is a self-righteous attitude from some mask wearers who can’t tell a virus from a bacteria. These are the questions that should be asked and answered, but asking such questions suddenly labels you as an anti-science moron which is very ironic.
Edit: oh and forgot to mention that I hate how much masks (reusable cloth masks are a placebo) add to an already horrible trash situation. Funny no one cares much about this.
...sure? We should balance that no matter what the effectiveness is.
I just wanted to address the 100% thing. So have a nice day, I guess.
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.