A large RCT mask study was recently conducted in Norway. It involved about 4,000 people, half of whom wore surgical masks when they were outside the house and half of whom didn't. Here are the results:
The folks who wore masks got COVID at a slightly higher rate than those who didn't.
On the bright side, the mask wearers apparently got fewer colds and other respiratory diseases. So that's good.
But if it's COVID you're worried about, this is yet more evidence that it's N95 or nothing. Surgical masks and cloth masks have either small or no protective effects.
POSTSCRIPT: The study lasted two weeks, which suggests that over the course of a year more than a quarter of all people get COVID. That's a lot! Be careful out there.
Marginal odds ratio 0.58 - 1.98, "open label" and self-reported. That is not a result.
Yeah, this sample is too small and self-selected to be meaningful.
We don't know if those who masked were more susceptible or more exposed or whatever.
"Surgical masks and cloth masks have either small or no protective effects."
It may protect others, which this study seems to not measure at all.
This.
Actually, this study indicated, within its resolution, that masks are extremely effective in preventing someone from getting infected, which is a secondary benefit of masks. The editors and reviewers should be permently banned from participating in the scientific process for allowing the utterly false conclusion to be incorproated in this paper
Kevin is so contrarian that he comes to the opposite conclusion of the authors!
He also missed this nugget: It has been presumed that FFP2 masks (N95 by American standards) protect people better than surgical masks because of their higher filtering rate, but randomised trials and meta-analyses suggest that surgical masks offer similar protection to FFP2/N95 masks in healthcare settings.
Right? The summary of the study is literally:
"This pragmatic trial provides evidence that wearing surgical face masks in public spaces REDUCE the incidence of self-reported respiratory symptoms"
"Conclusion
Wearing surgical face masks is superior to not wearing surgical face masks in reducing the risk of respiratory symptoms over 14 days. The effect size was moderate, but wearing a face mask is a simple intervention with low burden and of relatively low cost and is one of several public health and social measures that may be worth considering for reducing the spread of respiratory infections."
Kevin is bound and determined on this one, just like he is on the housing stuff, for *some* reason.
That's always the hard part for some people.
"Wear a mask to protect OTHERS? F--- Them!"
Surgical masks don't work by filtering. How they work has not yet been determined. (Note it took months and thousands of attempts to demonstrate that the covid 19 virus could be spread via the airborne route. All original tests failed because the method of air sampling was deactivating the virus. Viruses are extremely fragile and easily 'killed, which could be how masks work. (And it should in fact be somewhat obvious that viruses must be fragile as R_os are typically 2 or less. i.e. the average person only infects 1 or two other people, generally someone they reside with or spends hours in tight quarters.
I thought the purpose of masks is to prevent the wearer from spreading contagions to others. Do surgeons wear masks to keep themselves from catching something from the patient or to prevent them from spreading something to the patient?
If surgeons and other health-care personnel have to deal with highly contagious people they like to use very strong protection, better even than N-95.
Did the study determine that all the mask-wearing cohort wore the masks properly and continuously? No? Because that kinda makes a difference. And most people don't wear their masks properly. I can't tell you how many people don't cover their noses, how many people take them off to speak, how many people constantly fidget with them, and how many people don't bother to make sure the masks are properly fitted. Next up: A study of how many high school boys who swear they had sex with their girlfriend who, as it happens, just moved to Canada, come down with an STD.
"Did the study determine that all the mask-wearing cohort wore the masks properly and continuously?" Would have been irrelevant. Study indicated that masks were very effective in reducing infection but was too small for any result to be statistically significant.
When will people understand?
The main purpose of wearing a mask, any mask, is to protect others from you, not for you to be protected from others. Way too many selfish self centered Americans like Kevin have never been able to grasp this simple concept. It isn't about you it's about the rest.
But even on top of that, the study says the opposite of what Kevin says it says: it says that wearing a mask DID provide moderate protection to the person wearing it.
I'm with Solar on this, and one of the many mysteries is how plenty of experts didn't manage to get this, to me, simple point across.
Exactly. We figured this out early during the pandemic and there were even the "Your mask is for me. My mask is for you" signs.
Yes, yes, yes to these comments.
Masks of almost any kind help prevent transmission even if they don’t do much to protect the wearer. Fundamentally they’re a partial barrier that reduces the velocity of outgoing breath: if I’m wearing a mask I’m effectively further away from you.
Because of that, if all or most of us wore cloth masks, we’d reduce overall transmission. In particular, we’d “bend the curve downward” (remember that?) and reduce the overwhelming of hospitals that was such a threat in early 2020.
And by reducing the number of cases the protection for everyone - including the wearer - can be substantial.
Spread of airborne diseases is exponential; reducing the exponent even slightly integrates to a lot more survivors.
I’m beginning to think that we can no longer trust Kevin to accurately read and understand any study. Once again he’s just misread the data.
it's his june presidential debate moment.
Moments last 8 months now?
A study involving face masks in the types of public places mentioned here - public transportation, grocery stores, outside - probably won't tell you much about covid transmission at all, because those are places where covid doesn't actually transmit very well. Covid is not measles. It just doesn't spread easily between total strangers.
It's pretty clear that covid spreads best in tight spaces where people chitchat with each other. That means that if study participants didn't wear a mask at work and family gatherings as well as on the bus, they weren't really protecting themselves much. They were likely unprotected while engaging in the riskiest behaviors, and protected while doing things that really werent very risky.
It would be like testing bike helmets by having people wear helmets while on dedicated bike paths but not wear them while biking on busy roads. That study would discover that bike helmets do not prevent bicyclist deaths.
"Overall, 163 (8.9%) participants in the intervention arm and 239 (12.2%) in the control arm self-reported respiratory symptoms."
So the justified conclusion of the study is that wearing masks reduces "self-reported respiratory symptoms." Whether you think the difference is really meaningful is up to you - the fact that it is "statistically significant" does not answer that question.
Kevin focuses on the self-reported Covid which was about equally frequent between groups. The study provides no evidence that wearing masks reduces Covid incidence, and it does not claim that it does.
As other commenters say, the real point of wearing these masks is reduce transmission from infected people, not really for personal protection. In that respect, it's like vaccination - if everyone does it then everyone is protected.
A 33% reduction in over 200 cases was not statistically significant. How could anything possibly be meaningful when looking at 20 cases.
"I'm with Solar on this, and one of the many mysteries is how plenty of experts didn't manage to get this, to me, simple point across."
Or maybe they got it across too well and that is why lots of people weren't willing to wear masks. What do you think would happen to seat belt usage if they only protected other drivers?
Would I wear a surgical mask in public? Not unless I was dressing up as Dr. Fink for Halloween.
Would I wear an N95/KF94 mask in public? Of course. I still do when I go to the grocery store or stand in a crowded line.
FWIW, a respiratory virus is still a respiratory virus. If you can catch Influenza you can also catch COVID. So, contradictory data would tend to suggest that COVID was extremely prevalent at a time when Influenza wasn't.
Plus one.
Lol so you’re the psychopath still literally wearing a mask in 2024. Wild stuff. I definitely believe whatever you have to say and trust it very much. Loooool
The reviewers of this piece should be banned from every reviewing another academic paper because of their gross incompetence. The claim that the result was not statistically significant should never been allowed to be incorporated in this paper. In fact there was a major reduction in occurance of respiratory infections. But, unfortunately the correct conclusion was that the study was too small for any result to have been statistically significant. But because of the gross incompetence of the editors and reviewers, conservatives are going to be crowing about how masks don't work when this study shows they are extremely beneficial. (And note, the primary benefit of masks is to prevent the wearer from spreading viruses, not to prevent the wearer from acquiring the disease.)
Because conservatives need evidence in their favor to make up nonsense?
Have you been paying attention to anything at all?
All the medical personnel (nurse, doctors, etc) in the US used surgical masks among other protective measures during the pandemic. The majority of these workers spend their days working among infected people for more than a year. Most did not get sick by covid.
Go tell them that masks don't work.
“Most did not get sick by covid.”
Citation?
This is absolutely not what I’ve seen or seen reported. The first person I know who was exposed to Covid for sure was a guy whose roommate was an ER doctor. The doctor got it maybe a month in.