Originally posted by Badabing
I went grocery shopping today without a mask. I didn't get asked to wear one by shoppers or staff, and didn't even get a mean look.
With 90+% of people wearing masks and still hitting record numbers of deaths and new cases, you have to wonder why people think masks are useful.
The CDC recently came out with a study on mask mandates in Kansas (where mandates differed on a county by county bases). According to them the findings indicate that mask mandates are effective in controlling the spread of this particular virus.
Originally posted by Artol
The CDC recently came out with a study on mask mandates in Kansas (where mandates differed on a county by county bases). According to them the findings indicate that mask mandates are effective in controlling the spread of this particular virus.
I read about this.
Poorly designed study. As the Dutch study pointed out, these studies always fail to control for other factors involved which have stronger influences on new cases.
When you do control for those factors and finally isolate the mask-wearing portions of the variables, the differences disappear and we get no statistically significant result from mask-wearing.
Primarily, missing from the study is field-observations to verify mask-wearing adherence and self-report mask wearing frequency.
Also in the study: the "mask mandated" counties were a minority of the counties but comprised a majority of the population. Meaning, this was a rural vs. urban and surburban comparison. We know from case counts and timeline trends, rural areas lagged behind urban areas. So they didn't even make a proper temporal apples to apples comparison. I can't take credit for being smart enough to point out this trend: this is also a criticism of studies like these from other researchers.
The best research into mask wearing is in the face (pun intended) of no mandates and no other policies being followed to isolate the mask-wearing efficacy. When those studies are done, that's when you see the benefits disappear. When every single controlled study shows mask offer no stastitical benefit compared to no masks, you have to wonder what they are really measuring in these poorly designed studies. Are they measuring human behavior with masks? Do humans naturally socially distance more when they are wearing masks like some sort of behavioral placebo that actual results in something better? In which case, masks should be supported for this reason alone. Even if they don't work, if they cause humans to subconsciously socially distance better, that's good enough.
But, back to the study:
During June 1–7, 2020, the 7-day rolling average of daily COVID-19 incidence among counties that ultimately had a mask mandate was three cases per 100,000, and among counties that did not, was four per 100,000 (Table). By the week of the governor’s executive order requiring masks (July 3–9), COVID-19 incidence had increased 467% to 17 per 100,000 in mandated counties and 50% to six per 100,000 among nonmandated counties. By August 17–23, 2020, the 7-day rolling average COVID-19 incidence had decreased by 6% to 16 cases per 100,000 among mandated counties and increased by 100% to 12 per 100,000 among nonmandated counties.+
So by the end of the study period:
16 cases per 100,000 among mandated counties
12 per 100,000 among nonmandated counties.
Uh-huh.
No mention of the non-mandated countries comprising almost all the rural counties. No emphasis on rural counties still having fewer cases per 100,000 compared to the mask-mandated counties. Only a focus the percentage changes in cases per 100,000. Hmmm...seems odd, don't you think?
Look at the "Figure." It shows a massive uptick in cases in the mask mandated counties shortly after the mask-mandate went in place. This is a trend we have seen in other studies. Why didn't this study point that out?
If you go back and look at the "mandated masks" counties, you see a much different picture:
Here are a list of all those counties:
Allen, Atchison, Bourbon, Crawford, Dickinson, Douglas, Franklin, Geary, Gove, Harvey, Jewell, Johnson, Mitchell, Montgomery, Morris, Pratt, Reno, Republic, Saline, Scott, Sedgwick, Shawnee, Stanton and Wyandotte.
Are them are in the "severe red" category for cases per 100,000.
Let's see them plot their data (it's simply an Excel spreadsheet so this is not difficult at all, to do) until present and see what happens to their trend lines.
It would take me probably 4 hours to do that. I'm not interested in doing it.
If you have the time and you're interested, you can use this data which is very amazing and thorough across the US. Multiple studies can be done to analyze this data if they want to determine how policy worked:
Contrary to that CDC study, another study from the CDC showed that people who got SARS-CoV-2 wore masks a majority of the time: 85% of the cases. The people who never wore a mask comprised 3.9% of the cases:
Originally posted by dadudemon
CDC just published some research on how got the coronavirus and who didn't based on habits such as mask-wearing.Guess what the results were?
71% of the case patients (people with symptoms and coronavirus) said they always wore a mask.
3.9% of the case patients said they never wore a mask.
The only way to reconcile this data is to determine the percentage of the population wearing masks or not. If the population percentages for what level of mask wearing also marries up to the cases by mask-wearing adherence, then we have found the explanation in the data. However, we do know the answer. During the study period, Only 59% of Americans were wearing masks and 14% were never wearing masks.
Guess what this tells us if you correlate the two figures?
If the "never maskers" are only 3.9% of the cases but comprise 14% of the population, that means they are underrepresented in the cases. Meaning, the mask-wearing group is overrepresented in SARS-CoV-2 cases. If I was as dishonest as the pro-maskers, I'd say that wearing a mask clearly increases your chances of contracting the coronanvirus.
To put it more clearly:
Never-maskers were 14% of the population but only 3.9% of coronavirus cases.
Maskers* were 59% of the population but 85% of the cases.
*I'm only including the Always and Almost Always groups into "maskers" because the "sometimes" group could vary too much to say they wear a mask a majority of the time." The "sometimes" and "rarely" groups are not represented in these figures.
This is such a dumb ass question. Most certainly they/we are protected. We have every god**** right to not take a poison shot which you call "vaccines" if we don't want one. No one has any right to force vaccines on anyone, period, regardless of the circumstances. Same thing goes for trying to force people to wear a f***ing face diaper.
Only authoritarian assholes would disagree with anything I've said here.
If vaccines truly work as well as the pro-vaxxers claim and they and their loved ones have already taken the shot, then they shouldn't be b*tching about people who choose not to take shot since all of those who took the shot should be protected regardless.
And don't whine to me about "we need to get herd immunity!". You thinking that does not negate an individual's right to refuse a "vaccine".
Oh, just noticed this thread was about public speakers speaking out against vaccines/masks and not people having a right to refuse them. Reading thread titles from my phone is kinda hard sometimes because the words are so small and my vision isn't as good as it used to be. Yes, I know I can zoom in and I tried that.
In any case, my answer is pretty much the same anyway. Public speakers have a 1st amendment right to speak out against vaccines and masks and that right should always be protected.
Originally posted by eThneoLgrRnae
If vaccines truly work as well as the pro-vaxxers claim and they and their loved ones have already taken the shot, then they shouldn't be b*tching about people who choose not to take shot since all of those who took the shot should be protected regardless.And don't whine to me about "we need to get herd immunity!". You thinking that does not negate an individual's right to refuse a "vaccine".
During an outbreak of the delta Indian variant in Bradford, England a few weeks ago there were 50 people seriously ill in hospital.
1 of them had both doses of the vaccine (2nd dose had only been given the week prior and wasn't fully effective at the point of hospitalisation)
3 had been given 1 dose
46 had been eligible for vaccination but had not taken the opportunity to get vaccinated.
I also had to take a shit ton of shots in boot camp. I have watched videos from experts (who of course have since been wrongly silenced) saying that veterans, in particular, are especially at risk from vaccines because of dangerous risk of them negatively interacting with all of the other shit that the military has put in them.
Then when you also throw in the fact that vaccine manufacturers have 100% liability protection and that Bill Gates is on record saying that vaccines would help lower the population, yeah, there's just no way you're gonna force me to take that poison shot, sorry. You can b*tch and whine and call me "antiscience" all you like.
Originally posted by eThneoLgrRnae
The risks just aren't worth the reward, imo. I'd much rather take my chances with a virus that has over a 99% survival rate rather than take my chances with a dangerous vaccine.
It seems to me getting a vaccine is simple and easy to promote societal togtherness (thats probably made up.) If you want to push on it feel free put support your position through science please.