Amity Island
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Study shows Covid fatalities higher in areas using masks
- Thread starter Amity Island
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They never were intended to protect the wearer.
It was made very clear during the pandemic, by the government, by scientific advisers, by BBC items with fancy 3D graphics of spatter clouds, even by memes about people urinating, that the purpose of mandating mask wearing was to limit transmission BY people who were asymptomatic and potentially spreading the virus without knowing it.
There was a very minor protection for the wearer, but the majority of the effect was to limit transmission.
I’m not sure it is very helpful to share a study which seems to go against the scientific consensus, by a lone author with no other academic research papers to his name, and which has been criticised for severe limitations, and is likely to upset (or at least irritate) forum members, so I am going to lock the thread.
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For information we have asked the Diabetes UK Information Team for their reaction to this study, and while they have not been able to fully review the study, or dissect it in detail, they did make the following observations:
On a brief read of the study, it uses data from a relatively short period – August to October 2020 before any vaccines were available. So even if correct, the conclusions may not still be applicable.
It is difficult to assess the extent to which the author has adequately taken account of potential confounding variables - such as mask wearing being more prevalent in areas where disease incidence is higher, and amongst people who are already more vulnerable to severe outcomes.
The hypothesis for why this counterintuitive result may appear to have occurred – the Foegen effect – has been demonstrated in 6 hamsters (with 4 additional as controls) assessed within very limited timeframes. But not in primates or humans. So there doesn’t appear to be a proven mechanism to explain his observations.
Government and health bodies such as the NHS and WHO make decisions based on all of the available evidence, not one individual paper. Importantly, they will grade the quality of the evidence and base their decisions on the highest quality evidence. There’s a large body of evidence overwhelmingly in favour of mask wearing. The study shared is not designed in a way to be able to test whether mask mandates resulted in increased deaths – it is just a correlational study and there are many possible explanations for the findings.
The conclusions drawn in the paper are very questionable.
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