74 Replies to “The Sound Of Settled Science”

  4. Lancet is garbage – don’t know why anyone would look at their crap. They already had to withdraw a bogus hydroxychloroquine study. Their probably guilty of murder. Back in the Iraq war days they published a bogus paper with a hugely ridiculous death toll that meant the US was responsible for 500,000 deaths. Simple math showed it was utter crap by a factor of more than 10. It’s not like CNN didn’t report every single death

  5. Of course not. 2-layer surgical mask -reduces- the ammount of infectious droplets spread on your breath. Does not eliminate it.

    Which is why hospital use disposable gowns, gloves and handwashing, plus disinfection of surfaces, plus isolation rooms with controlled ventilation, in a layered approach to prevent the spread of viruses and bacteria.

    And in labs they use moon-suits with remote air supply. And they have some serious decontamination processes. Because viruses are scary small and freaking persistent.

    Wearing a surgical mask reduces the amount of goober the average slob spreads wherever he goes by maybe 10%. As soon as they opened the schools, the virus went to every place it is going to go. Trying to blame spikes in cases now on restaurants etc. is BS.

    1. The children were sent back to school because Karen was sick of taking care of her own children and wanted to get on with what her childless friends had been doing the whole pandemic—getting blitzed out their cerebellums by noon at the latest, often at taxpayer expense.

      Having to deal with her screaming brats sober, all day, every day, was Karen’s idea of hell.

    2. To add to what you have said. The most effective petri dishes and spreaders are of course the school buses. In schools they make kids separate, disinfect water fountains, play only within their class, wear wet face diapers all day and then they put them on schoolbuses to mix with all other classes in a very close contact, each of them sweating and breathing heavier than normal because of the masks while the heaters on buses do their best to circulate the air. Perfect example of COVID kabuki.

      1. I used to live in the UAE. Everyone – locals and expats alike – hid from the august heat by taking home leave to the four corners of the earth. They would all come back in September and the kids would start school. Two weeks later the whole country was sick. Like clockwork. Every year.

      2. Covid strictly affects the elderly in long care homes with 1 or 2 comorbidity and where nursing staff rove between homes.
        And it keeps on 9 months later.
        Canada wide deaths for ages o to 40?

        29

  6. The virus is one one-thousandth of the diameter of a hair. So thinking that a mask will stop it is like believing a page wire fence will stop a tossed BB.

    1. 100nm and no mask can stop anything under 300nm, impossible without suffocating you.

  7. Dollarama has five-packs of masks, from China, of course. “Three layers. Breathable. Non-medical use.” What. An. Effing. Joke!

  8. Mask mandates have almost certainly INCREASED infection rates. People were led to believe that they actually worked and so dropped their guard. It gave them a false sense of security and so they wore the political talismans. And what is really important in all of this is that the study was done with SURGICAL MASKS…..and the majority of people walking around are wearing cloth masks…..designer cloth masks, no less. Just another government screw up in a never ending series.

    1. Remember back when, Tam, Fauci, the WHO and other “experts” told us not to wear a mask because it offered no protection, then don’t wear a mask as it could make the disease worse. I hate to admit it, but it may be the one time they were actually correct.
      Not one gutless, PC politician in Canada will acknowledge the science the Danes have put forth and revoke their useless mask mandate. The sheeple will not allow it.

      1. “Remember back when, …”

        Yep, Chicoms cornered world markets and masks were selling at unit prices of ten to twenty dollars. And they were telling us mask are not needed. Black Prince sent Canada’s strategic supply to Chicoms at a price of zero per mask and shelves in every Canadian pharmacy were picked clean by Chicom nationals sending them home. Then Canada tried to buy masks from Chicoms but someone else gave them a better price… those were the days.

      2. My guess is the mask makers paid up. Then and only then did we have to mask up. Kinda like the mouthwash deal. Buy some stock in Listerine, pump the stock by advising use of mouthwash, dump the stock, unrecommend mouthwash. Rinse and repeat.

  9. “medical masks were NOT effective protection”
    Well, of course not! An old piece of cloth is totally good though. /sarc off

    The dramatic rise of infections *after* mask mandates were in place makes perfect sense when one realizes that masks do little to nothing, and are little more than placebos. Never mind medical masks; it is insanity that a mask that is permissible can be any piece of old cloth, that is, simply a ‘face covering’.

    1. Until you reach herd immunity a virus is going to spread. You can slow it down at the expense of increasing overall numbers of infection but you cannot stop it.

  11. I don’t wear a mask but I watch those who do for instance when I visit Costco. Or Home Depot.

    What I see is a lot of people touching their masks adjusting their masks moving their masks around, but they then do not wash their hands or disinfect.

    Hands now covered with virus if they are infected and being spread to whatever they touch.

    If you are not wearing a mask there is nothing to touch or adjust. No reason to put your hands to your face.

    I would be willing to bet that a person with a mask will touch his face dozens or even hundreds of times per day and then touch things around them spreading the virus in that manner.

    1. Saw someone here on the left coast wearing a mask while driving alone with the top down on his convertible.

  12. I still shake my head at all the sheeple wearing masks when they’re driving a car…alone…no passengers. And of course, the morons wearing them while walking outside – alone – by themselves.

  13. Of course, it is published AFTER the US Presidential Election.

    We couldn’t show that President Trump was correct or anything now could we?!

  14. Says masks did not reduce infection rate by more than fifty percent. Okay, I tend toward spaciness ( Lord knows ), but doesn’t that mean they work ?
    I read this over four times and I’m not getting it. Please explain.

    2. From the study:

      Yet, the findings were inconclusive and cannot definitively exclude a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection of mask wearers in such a setting.

      The study didn’t get enough cases to come to any conclusion, but it looks like the masks had some effect, odds are.

      2. Note also the possible 23% increase in infections among mask wearers. Also not definitve but unknown.

        1. OMG, stop it people, when your confidence interval overlaps zero it means that the point estimates are not statistically different than zero. It does not mean that the effect could be anywhere between the cutoff values, it means there is no effect.

          1. I guess that explains why the authors said that their findings were inconclusive right in their study.

          2. “Inconclusive” can mean two things:
            1. We did not find a statistically significant result therefore anything we say after does not really matter.
            2. We found significant contradicting results.

            It is the first one.

    3. They saw no effect.
      One way or another.
      Measurements were bouncing around/inside rate of error.

      If masks work, they, them, you know would of ginned up a nice study and put their names to it. They don’t. It would have to be so Stalin era fake that their careers would be over. Medicrats are extreamly risk adverse. You think Fauci wants to lose his 800k/yr, $17 billion budget with him getting bootlicked or fearful of him? 20 years dictator of NIH.

      1. This study was like a poll with a +/-30 pt margin of error. They didn’t have enough cases to get a solid result, all they proved, by their own admission, was that the masks had less than 50% efficacy when worn by a single member of the household, where other members were not wearing masks outside, when that member of the household was outside and when 95% of people were not wearing masks.

        They said themselves that their study design could only detect an effect greater than 50%, even a 25% effect protecting the wearer would be huge in terms of reduction of hospitalizations, where nobody else is wearing masks. This study has zero applicability to the issue of mask mandates.

  15. The coronavirus microbe is small enough to fit through the fashionable garments of social piety.

    No one in this country will make anything suitable for medical professionals to wear and no one will stop importing this virus.

    Square one, is my point.

    1. Here is a study that was published in April that shows that while surgical masks don’t block flu or rhinovirus aerosols, for some reason it does block coronavirus, probably due to static charge, or maybe the spikiness of the virus itself acting like burdock, IDK

      https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0843-2?ContensisTextOnly=true

      We will see if my comments get deleted like they did the last time I pointed out that there is a lot of scientific evidence that masks work, none of which is over ruled by this Danish study that failed to get enough COVID cases to make a conclusion.

      1. “…for some reason it does block coronavirus, …”

        It is a smart advanced virus. For example you can’t get it while BLMimg but you can get it while protesting lockdowns. Also you can get it bars or restaurants after 10PM.

        1. Not true. It may have been because they were a response to somebody’s tangential to the topic rant that “masks don’t work” but I wrote a couple detailed comments explaining why that person was wrong, and they were deleted.

      3. Yes, about that:

        “A basic understanding of how masks work helps. Masks are filters. The material used in a standard surgical mask (by far the more common type of mask) reduces transmission of bacteria. Both bacteria and viruses are microscopic microbes, but they differ greatly. Bacteria are living cells, while a virus is a particle that requires a host cell to replicate. A coronavirus virion (particle) is spherical, averaging around 125 nanometers in diameter. Compare that to bacteria’s 1,000-nm size. It’s a grape compared to a grapefruit. A surgical mask whose purpose is to block bacteria will do little to prevent passage of the smaller coronavirus particle. That’s why N95 masks, which block 95% of all airborne particles, are the gold standard in hospitals treating COVID-19 patients. They have a much more selective filter.”

        https://www.fastcompany.com/90483762/why-masks-arent-better-at-protecting-us-from-viruses

        Now, pretend to be a victim somewhere else.

  16. I noticed that this was studying the effect that mask wearing has on the wearers. It didn’t find a big difference for the wearer.
    But, people are not being mandated to wear masks to protect themselves. The reason that people are being mandated to wear masks it to keep infected people from spreading Covid to others. So, while many people will say that this study disproves the idea of wearing masks, they will just be showing their ignorance of the purpose of mandated masks.
    People already think that anti-maskers are dumb and this will exacerbate that impression.

    1. The purpose of the study was to determine if the wearing of a medical grade mask versus no mask provided a significant reduction in the rate of infection among the participants. The study determined that the difference between wearing a mask or not wearing a mask was .03% in terms of rate of infection. A difference that minute is statistically insignificant. Wearing a mask is a waste of time. The study was not trying to find out anything other than that.

  17. Were infected masks sent from China ? Sure would answer a lot of questions about covid showing up in unexpected places.

  18. Kate, this also could have been put under the heading of “Things you won’t see on the CBC.”

  19. The other thing is the question: “Where are all the sick people???”

    If you are to believe our would-be Democrat rulers and the Mainstream Media outlets (but I repeat myself), the ChiCom Flu has returned with a vengeance and people are dropping like flies. But I can’t think of anyone I know who is currently sick with this crud, and the very few people I know who are verified to have fallen ill with the disease are all recovered. Only one was hospitalized, but it was never considered a life-threatening situation.

    Sure, if we do testing, we will find this disease, or at least get positive hits from those tests. It’s a freaking Coronavirus, and those bugs are about as common as pigeon-poo on statues. There are similar Coronaviruses that will give you a false-positive for the ChiCom Flu. Those similar Coronaviruses are likely to also give you some level of resistance to the ChiCom Flu.

    The bottom line, however, even with a vaccine, the ChiCom Flu is going to be with us for a long time. You WILL be exposed to it eventually (if you haven’t been already), and you MIGHT fall ill from it. Masks don’t really help much, and I’d argue that even “social distancing” is only a very minor help. The very best advice, which we’ve known for years in dealing with the seasonal flu, is simply this: If you feel sick, don’t go out there needlessly spreading your disease to others. Stay home, get rest, see your doctor if you need to.

    1. That’s a brilliant capture. Now the awkward thing is politicians and public health people recommending masks and lockdowns have to figure out how to back down while saving face. All of them, Trudeau, Tam and all the other chicken littles are looking very foolish indeed. In another era, Trudeau would have been tarred and feathered.

  21. Under the heading of “Well Duh”.
    Anyone who has had to wear industrial safety masks,should have clued in immediately.
    For if “masks” worked to block the transmission of this virus..a specific mask # would have been specified.
    And the social shutdown ,the “crisis” would have been over.
    I need a couple of “Dr Tam” figurienes ,earring size as these would be as effective as any mask ,for what virus could overcome that Nutter?
    Or perhaps I should chant prayers to the Great Gitchagooly,for they too will be as effective as a “face covering of cloth”.
    Pure street theatre of the absurd,imposed upon us by people too stupid to continue feeding.
    “We need to be seen to be doing something”.
    To hell with citizens rights.
    To hell with the real economy.
    As i keep saying,the government mantra is this;”We shall protect you from the Dread Covid at all costs,whether you like it or not.
    We are willing to Fine Imprison and even kill you to protect from the disease with a 99% survival rate…”
    “Respect our authority”.

  22. Another mask problem — many can’t hear what people are mumbling behind their masks, so they lean closer, and to get the entire conversation, they go to those little slits between the plexiglass shields. So people are now talking to each other at half the usual distance with no shield in the way. Brilliant planning (and I may not be kidding, do you really think our governments don’t want people to get sick? Then why have I never once heard an endorsement of vitamins or zinc tablets in this entire charade? Those work better than masks but the sheeple don’t hear about it, unless it’s by word of mouth).

    My belief all along has been that COVID-19 is some sort of designer virus with accelerants for co-morbidities to create a death toll, and the ease of spread associated with the common cold so that lots of people get mild symptoms or at least can test positive. We are being played and I suspect it is for an entirely different agenda than public health. Maybe it’s some elitist conspiracy to deal with their invented nightmare of “climate emergency.” Seen any climate emergency where you live? Seen much COVID?

    Uh oh Pallister’s knocking on my door, Doug Ford right behind him, the conservative virus fighters. Be afraid, be slightly afraid.

  23. Lancet has form.

    March 09, 2010
    Lancet retracts 12-year-old article linking autism to MMR vaccines
    Twelve years after publishing a landmark study that turned tens of thousands of parents around the world against the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine because of an implied link between vaccinations and autism, The Lancet has retracted the paper.

    In a statement published on Feb. 2, the British medical journal said that it is now clear that “several elements” of a 1998 paper it published by Dr. Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues (Lancet 1998;351[9103]:637–41) “are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation.”

    Dr. Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, declined through a spokesperson to speak to CMAJ about this issue.
    https://www.cmaj.ca/content/182/4/E199

  25. Our results suggest that the recommendation to wear a surgical mask when outside the home among others did not reduce, at conventional levels of statistical significance, the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in mask wearers in a setting where social distancing and other public health measures were in effect, mask recommendations were not among those measures, and community use of masks was uncommon. Yet, the findings were inconclusive and cannot definitively exclude a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection of mask wearers in such a setting. It is important to emphasize that this trial did not address the effects of masks as source control or as protection in settings where social distancing and other public health measures are not in effect.

    This is like a poll with a error margin of +/- 30 points. If somebody tried to pawn off such a poll on you you would rightly call it garbage.

    1. I am puzzled why anyone would take a position like yours in favour of wearing masks. There is a lot of evidence that they are damaging, particularly when people are forced to wear them all day. Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto has had several pediatricians state that children should never be forced to wear masks– but that what is being done in schools. There is no evidence that masks are reducing transmission of the virus, so why do you support mandatory masks?

  26. Right. That settles it

    Objective:
    To assess whether recommending surgical mask use outside the home reduces wearers’ risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection
    in a setting where masks were uncommon and not among recommended public health measures.

    Limitation:
    Inconclusive results,
    missing data,
    variable adherence,
    patient-reported findings on home tests,
    no blinding, and
    no assessment of whether masks could decrease disease transmission from mask wearers to others.

    The paper includes a link to a variety of articles that reference it:
    https://annals.altmetric.com/details/94531651/news

  27. What scientists have claimed that wearing a mask reduces risk for the wearer? Masks are to reduce the risk to others. And as the study says “no assessment of whether masks could decrease disease transmission from mask wearers to others.” No wonder it was difficult to find a home for the paper. Up next, research showing the earth is not flat.

    1. Objective:
      To assess whether recommending surgical mask use outside the home reduces wearers’ risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection in a setting where masks were uncommon and not among recommended public health measures.
      That’s it that all. A very simple objective. Is the wearer’s risk of infection reduced by wearing the mask?
      The study determined that the difference between wearing a mask or not wearing a mask was .03% in terms of rate of infection. A difference that minute is statistically insignificant. Wearing a mask has no impact on risk of infection.

    2. This was a large scale study that looked at transmission rates in two groups. I think transmission rates broadly capture transmission in two directions. Not wearing masks or wearing masks within these groups did not result in significant differences in the rates of infection.

      1. I think transmission rates broadly capture transmission in two directions.

        I have been racking my brain trying to figure out how the study could measure the effect of both sides wearing masks when 95% of the people involved were not wearing masks. Maybe you can explain it to me. Oh, and to the guy who wrote the study, because he explicitly says that the study does not and cannot address that question.

    3. “Masks are to reduce the risk to others.”
      So what scientist invented that new bromide? Masks only function in one direction? “Scientist” opinion is all over the map on Covid 19 but the media amplifies the politically correct narrative and buries the doubts. Hence, the unidirectional mask nonsense. Masks work in both directions, but poorly. They also give false confidence in protection.

  28. There’s no “Uh Oh” about it. This study will be ignored and we’ll carry on like it never happened.
    To pretend otherwise is absurd.

  29. Could the 2nd wave be due to all the distancing, mask wearing, disinfecting, isolating and general germo-phobia to the point our immunity is so compromised that when the seasonal, annual flu comes along people are more prone to get sick? Our small town in MB had it’s first covid death, when a stray cat got run over by the curling rink. The cat by the way, was not wearing a mask or social distancing.
    Pallister’s covid brown shirts are manning the rat-line and going to fine someone.

    1. I believe the “second wave” is attributable to all the unnecessary testing. Most of these
      “cases” are not people who are actually sick, and since the PCR test does not measure viral load they may not even have enough virus to be infectious.

  30. I settled this problem for myself from the start. None of the foolishness works and you or I will get the flu at some point in our lives, now get up, get out and get over it.

  31. Since the study was about medical grade masks and most people are wearing cloth face coverings, the study is mostly meaningless as are the cloth face coverings other than as an experiment in people and thought control.
    I keep reading about new “cases” and I keep asking what’s a “case”. Are they sick? How sick? How many are very sick? How many are dying? “Cases” is another meaningless thing these days.
    I’m also noticing a lot of disposable blue masks on the ground. There must be millions of them by now. I guess until an orca chokes on one, that’s ok.

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