Thursday Throughput: Masked Astronomer Edition

[ThTh1] So yesterday my Twitter feet lit up with the claim. Masks don’t work. Even the New York Times says so!

The most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illnesses — including Covid-19 — was published late last month. Its conclusions, said Tom Jefferson, the Oxford epidemiologist who is its lead author, were unambiguous.

“There is just no evidence that they” — masks — “make any difference,” he told the journalist Maryanne Demasi. “Full stop.”

But, wait, hold on. What about N-95 masks, as opposed to lower-quality surgical or cloth masks?

“Makes no difference — none of it,” said Jefferson.

What about the studies that initially persuaded policymakers to impose mask mandates?

“They were convinced by nonrandomized studies, flawed observational studies.”

What about the utility of masks in conjunction with other preventive measures, such as hand hygiene, physical distancing or air filtration?

“There’s no evidence that many of these things make any difference.”

Wow. This must be definitive right? Doctors have been wearing masks for no reason. We imagined that a strain of flu was straight up murdered by anti-COVID measures. It’s over? Masks are kaput?

Not quite.

If you look at the actual study, such bold conclusions are … a bit suspect. It combines 78 studies but only six were done during the pandemic and only two looked specifically at COVID-19 and masking. Moreover, it looked at mask mandates not necessarily masking itself. This has long been a confounding factor in studies of the efficacy of masks because because people don’t always comply with mandates and many people mask without them. Even the study itself concedes this in its conclusions, saying “The high risk of bias in the trials, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low adherence with the interventions during the studies hampers drawing firm conclusions.”

Given that, why is the lead author making such definitive statements? Well, because he has a long history of saying things like the flu vaccine doesn’t work (it does) and that the COVID-19 virus didn’t emerge from China (it did). He has associated himself with the Great Barrington crowed and runs a substack where he repeats anti-mask talking points. So it’s no surprise that while the paper is very circumspect in its conclusions, his statements are far from it.

As pointed out by Kelsey Piper, the biggest study in the sample showed fairly conclusively that masks worked. And this Twitter thread runs through the fundamental reasons why masks probably work. However, in the end, to borrow a phrase from Starslate Codex, it’s difficult to do randomized control studies of masks for the same reasons it’s difficult to do them of parachutes. You can’t convince someone they’re wearing a mask when they are not. The best we can do is try to monitor compliance in different communities and see how fast diseases spread. But monitoring mask compliance is difficult in a free society so here we are.

There are more specific confounding factors with COVID-19. Different states, cities and countries had different set of policies and, in the middle of the pandemic, vaccines were rolled out that were far more effective than masks. So the question of mask effectiveness may not only be unanswered, it may not be answerable.

In the end, I stand by my recommendation that people should mask when COVID or flu or at high levels and preferably with N-95 masks. There is little evidence that it does harm, good evidence that it does some good and lots of evidence that the people telling you they are useless either have an agenda or don’t know what they’re talking about. Or both.

[ThTh2] I’ve been hearing my entire life that robots are going to take over our lives. I’ll believe it when I see it.

[ThTh3] Sometimes science leads us to terrible but inevitable conclusions.

[ThTh4] Or good ones if, like me, you drink lots of Cokes.

[ThTh5] More data from JWST is showing that galaxies formed faster than we though, building up to large sizes fairly quickly. This is why we built the thing.

[ThTh6] You my have heard that vaccines are increasing infant mortality. What you heard was nonsense. Anti-vaxxers lie. It’s what they do.

[ThTh7] And speaking of the Great Barrington folks … they’re finally admitting they got it wrong.

[ThTh8] Exhibit 4,321 of why you shouldn’t get your science coverage from The Daily Fail. The science is that, when we detected the source of a gravitational wave event a few years back, we figured out the mystery of how gold is made in the cosmos. It comes from the smashing together of two neutron stars — the shriveled husks of dead massive stars. Recently, we identified a system in our own Galaxy that may one day — millions of years from now — suffer the same fate. When it does, the debris will enrich our galaxy with heavy elements, including gold. The Daily Mail’s headline? It will “shower space with gold”.

I’m just glad they didn’t go for the other phrasing.

[ThTh9] We know about aurorae on Earth. We now about them on other planets like Jupiter. Now we’re finding them on moons.

[ThTh10] Now that’s an acknowledgement.