We lied, and lied, and lied . . .

. . . but you can trust us this time

. . . and this is far from being a complete list.

I lifted this from Twitter - a fascinating slice of e-life and probably not overly representative. Broadly speaking, there seem to be 3 groups of people.

1. The faithful true believers : covid19 is super-duper deadly, masks work better than one of Jesus’ cures, my government is bravely doing everything it can to keep us safe and no-one is safe until we’re all safe. I’ll follow the "science” - whatever the government tells me the “science” is

2. The holiday-makers : I don’t care about this shit, I just want to go on holiday again. Just follow the damn rules so I can get bladdered in Ibiza again.

3. The thinkers : I can see something is desperately wrong with the narrative - too many things don’t add up

Doing the rounds on Twitter at the moment, heavily pushed by those in group 1, is an article from the bmj, published on 18th November, that is being used to argue that masks are 53% effective (which is not quite what the article says, but this is the figure being used by mask-proponents)

53% ????

Really?

So, more effective than vaccines after 2 months?

People in group 1 accept this figure uncritically. 53% is a very significant effect. An effect that large should be easily seen in the data. It’s not, of course. So we need to explain the inconsistency of a claimed large effect not being evident in the actual data.

This is just one example (of very many) of the curious case of 53% effectiveness not being remotely visible in the actual data.

Of course when you look into the bmj article a bit closer you’ll see that they exclude most studies (only 6 mask studies included). They do include the “Danish mask study” which did not find any statistically significant benefit to mask wearing - but, perversely, they give this RCT a lower weighting in their analysis than an associational study that “found” high effectiveness.

It’s fucking junk science - but ferociously gobbled up by the true faithful.

You will never find any true scientist use an argument like “it’s peer reviewed” as some sort of evidence of veracity. We scientists know all too well that peer review is not evidence of anything other than “it looks OK to me”. An awful lot of “peer reviewed” stuff turns out to be shit (a technical scientific term). I’ve written a couple of papers like that myself - I was wrong, and the “peer review” process didn’t pick up on it. Thankfully, it has been a rare thing for me - but it happens, and more often than lay people realize.

There are very good a priori physics-based reasons why those surgical masks cannot possibly be effective at reducing the impact of an airborne aerosolized respiratory virus. I’ve discussed some of them here. And the effectiveness of masks is largely a physics issue - not a medical one.

The statement that masks are largely ineffective at limiting respiratory virus outbreaks was not even controversial back in 2019. The overwhelming majority of the studies done before 2020 had not been able to find any significant effect. It was so uncontroversial it even formed part of government advice across the world on what to do in the event of a respiratory virus outbreak - and even the WHO did not recommend the use of face masks.

So what changed? Our understanding of the basic physics and biology did not change. We didn’t suddenly discover some new physics or biology in 2020. No, what changed was the political situation - not the scientific one.

The evidence for the effectiveness of masks is extremely weak, at best. It was then. It still is now. And it’s obvious from the physics why they should not be effective. But the true believers believe they work - because “science”.

But let’s suppose, for a moment, that we live in some hypothetical fictitious universe where the laws of physics and biology are different and masks have a significant effect. Even in this alternate reality they are only going to be effective if someone is actually infected (and shedding enough viral load to infect others with any significant probability). With a prevalence of 1 person in 50 being infected that means that only 1 person in every 50 would actually need to wear a mask.

For the other 49 non-infected people in every 50, mask wearing would be an utter irrelevancy.

But the government propaganda machines have this neatly sewn up too. You see back in 2019 we knew that asymptomatic transmission was not a significant driver of respiratory infections. Miraculously, science in 2020 changed yet again - and now people with no symptoms of anything whatsoever could be spreading their icky germs everywhere - dispensing great clouds of viral load infecting whole cities with their foul, diseased breath.

Of course, no one seemed to stop and wonder how someone could simultaneously be shedding large viral loads whilst displaying no symptoms whatsoever. The virus is propagating in the body to the point where significant viral load is being breathed out - but the immune system (responsible for the symptoms of a respiratory infection) is doing nothing?

Now I’m sure with all the wonderful variations of natural biology this sort of thing might be possible - but happening to any significant degree? I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make much sense. And, of course, asymptomatic transmission, whilst technically possible, is not a significant driver of respiratory infection.

Again - the studies conflict here. But one thing to note when reading these (mostly associational and/or self-reported) studies is the very wide variation of the estimates of asymptomatic transmission. We have studies that show very little evidence of asymptomatic transmission right up to studies that claim high percentages. This wide variation, alone, should make one sit up and ponder the “science” here - it’s all over the place. Does that sound “scientific” to you?

Doesn’t sound it to me either.

I think someone broke “science” in 2020 - and we desperately need to fix it again. It has become a tool of government propaganda - rather than a process to ascertain the truth (or as close to the “truth” as we can manage with incomplete and flawed methodologies and data). Science is always provisional - if you think it isn’t, you haven’t understood the scientific method at all.

“Science”, sadly, has just become another of those lies propagated by governments everywhere. To what end? I have no idea - but it’s hard to see anything other than malign intent here.

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