Atomic wrote: ↑Tue Nov 17, 2020 12:14 pm
And, regarding the utility of masks:
New study: Lockdowns & masks are useless and might even increase COVID-19 spread
A recently completed research study by Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in cooperation with the Naval Medical Research Center and published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that strict quarantine, tightly controlled social distancing, and continuous use of masks did absolutely nothing to contain the spread of COVID-19, and might even have increased its spread.
Study
cited here.
Have you actually
read the study, to compare its findings against those flashy headlines? They're very different... in fact I'm not sure they're even on the same planet.
From what I can see in the study itself,
- " continuous use of masks did absolutely nothing to contain the spread of COVID-19"... I don't see any such language or anything like it in the study as reported in the link you cited.
- "and might even have increased its spread"... nope, not that, either. No such claims or conclusions are in the study.
Those words all appear to be the private conclusions of the editorialist on behindtheblack, not those of the study's authors. And, because the behindtheblack blogger appears to have misunderstood a very important aspect of the study (see down at the bottom) he's jumped to some completely unsupportable conclusions.
What the study actually says is:
CONCLUSIONS
Among Marine Corps recruits, approximately 2% who had previously had negative results for SARS-CoV-2 at the beginning of supervised quarantine, and less than 2% of recruits with unknown previous status, tested positive by day 14. Most recruits who tested positive were asymptomatic, and no infections were detected through daily symptom monitoring. Transmission clusters occurred within platoons. (Funded by the Defense Health Agency and others.)
The description of the study, and the discussion, follow along similar lines - the study authors report numbers and facts, but they aren't drawing comparisons between "wearing masks and locking down, vs. not doing so". This is a "retrospective" study (looking at what happened in one situation), not a comparative or controlled study looking at two different sets of choices. They did not put two groups of Marine recruits through two different protocols (one in quarantine and wearing masks, and the other doing neither of these two things). All of the recruits in this study were subject to the same isolation protocols (see below).
Now - looking at just the numbers they reported:
A total of 1848 recruits volunteered to participate in the study; within 2 days after arrival on campus, 16 (0.9%) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, 15 of whom were asymptomatic. An additional 35 participants (1.9%) tested positive on day 7 or on day 14... Of the recruits who declined to participate in the study, 26 (1.7%) of the 1554 recruits with available qPCR results tested positive on day 14.
So - of those who participated, just under 1% seem to have come into quarantine while already infected (positive in the first two days).
There were also 1500 recruits who declined to participate in the study - there's no information about whether they were COVID-positive when they came in (but it's probably reasonable to assume that roughly the same percentage were positive, so maybe another 10 or so). Since they weren't tested during those two weeks, they wouldn't have gone into isolation unless they became obviously ill. So, that's maybe 25 COVID-positive on entry.
About 35 of the participating recruits went positive during those two weeks, and maybe another 15 of the nonparticipating recruits. That would be 50, or a 2:1 ratio.
Since the generation time of COVID is roughly a week, this would suggest an R of 1.4 or so (each infected person passing on the infection to about 1.4 other individuals).
That's not great, but under the circumstances it's not horrible. It's a long way from a "super-spreader" event, where one person infects numerous others (as appears to have happened at the Rose Garden).
Consider that this was a big group of recruits, using shared bathrooms and shared dining facilities... lots of potential for transmission. This was not a family environment.
All in all, it looks to me as if the isolation/masking/distancing/cleaning protocol worked pretty well. Compare the spread here to what has happened on cruise ships, for example, or in prisons... they aren't even of the same order of magnitude.
Also, the author of the "behindtheblack" column appears to have made a major mis-reading of the study conditions. He claims that because the non-participating recruits showed a lower infection rate, and "because they weren't subject to the same strict lock-down rules", it shows that masks and locking down are worse than useless.
His error is simple: the study report says very clearly that:
All recruits wore double-layered cloth masks at all times indoors and outdoors, except when sleeping or eating; practiced social distancing of at least 6 feet; were not allowed to leave campus; did not have access to personal electronics and other items that might contribute to surface transmission; and routinely washed their hands. They slept in double-occupancy rooms with sinks, ate in shared dining facilities, and used shared bathrooms. All recruits cleaned their rooms daily, sanitized bathrooms after each use with bleach wipes, and ate preplated meals in a dining hall that was cleaned with bleach after each platoon had eaten. Most instruction and exercises were conducted outdoors. All movement of recruits was supervised, and unidirectional flow was implemented, with designated building entry and exit points to minimize contact among persons. All recruits, regardless of participation in the study, underwent daily temperature and symptom screening.
The lockdown conditions were the same for all recruits! The only difference that I can see in the report, between the "participating" and "non-participating" recruits, is that the "participating" recruits agreed to be tested for COVID on entry and on day 7, while everybody was tested on day 14.
And, once again, the study has not "strict quarantine, tightly controlled social distancing, and continuous use of masks did absolutely nothing to contain the spread of COVID-19, and might even have increased its spread." That's just sloppy journalism making those claims.