Massive "Gold Standard" Meta-Study on Masks Finds That Masking Makes "Little to No Difference" in Covid Protection

A meta-study is a study that doesn't create its own data set, but instead takes the data sets of already-published studies and re-analyzes that data, combining it into one big pool of information.

JustTheNews:

'Little to no difference': Massive mask meta-study undermines remaining COVID mandates

Researchers in "gold standard" collaboration struggle to find benefit from surgical over no masks, or N95 respirators over surgical. Findings buoy warnings by PPE expert that even "perfect rate of capture" by N95s can't stop COVID transmission.

An international research collaboration that reviewed several dozen rigorous studies of "physical interventions" against influenza and COVID-19 through last year failed to find even a modest effect on infection or illness rates from masks of all qualities.

Published in the peer-reviewed Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, run by the British evidence-based medicine charity Cochrane, the study raises new doubts about ongoing mask mandates and public health recommendations worldwide.

The CDC is still recommending masking in areas with "high" transmission levels -- fewer than 4% of U.S. counties -- as well as indoor masking to protect high-risk contacts in "medium" counties (27%).

Masks are still required in educational institutions in Democratic strongholds such as New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington and California, according to the Daily Mail. Boston Public Schools denied its "temporary masking protocol" in early January was a "mandate," following a public letter against the policy by student Enrique Abud Evereteze.

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The team added 11 new randomized controlled trials and "cluster-RCTs," which randomize groups of subjects rather than individuals, to its prior review from November 2020, for a total of 78 studies. The additions included COVID pandemic trials: two from Mexico and one each from England, Norway, Denmark and Bangladesh, the latter two well known internationally.

The Danish study had trouble finding a major journal willing to publish its controversial findings that wearing surgical masks had no statistically significant effect on infection rates, even among those who claimed to wear them "exactly as instructed."

Mainstream media overlooked red flags in the Bangladeshi mask study, which found no effect for surgical masks under age 50 and a difference of only 20 infections between control and treatment groups among 342,000 adults.

...

They measured risk ratios, which below 1 means the intervention improved the outcome and above 1 worsened it. The closer to 1, the less effect it had.

In the community, mask-wearing "probably makes little to no difference" in either influenza-like or COVID-like illness (0.95) or "laboratory-confirmed" infections of either virus (1.01). While the confirmed-infections finding had a much wider confidence interval, the team called both these results "moderate-certainty evidence."

The only masks that might have any protective effect are N95 masks, which practically nobody wears and which are rarely worn properly.

But even with that top-of-the-line mask, the study struggled to find any benefit. They just can't rule one out.

The article notes that White House "advisers" attempt to undermine these studies. One expert, Megan Mansell, says we'll continuing seeing "unreasonable responses when a decent [randomized control trial] is published."

She actually said "RCT," which isn't defined in the article. I think it means randomized control trial.

Tucker Carlson noted that the Biden Junta has announced that the covid emergency will end in May, and yet seems very very sad about an emergency ending.

In fact, Biden says his neverending covid emergency won't end until the Supreme Court steps in and tells him it must end:

posted by Ace at 03:26 PM

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