{"id":4995,"date":"2023-10-17T20:28:36","date_gmt":"2023-10-18T01:28:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=4995"},"modified":"2023-10-17T20:28:40","modified_gmt":"2023-10-18T01:28:40","slug":"what-went-wrong-with-a-highly-publicized-covid-mask-analysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/10\/17\/what-went-wrong-with-a-highly-publicized-covid-mask-analysis\/","title":{"rendered":"What Went Wrong with a Highly Publicized COVID Mask Analysis?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Scientific American<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Cochrane Library, a trusted source of health information, misled the public by prioritizing rigor over reality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The COVID-19 pandemic<\/a> is ongoing, but in May officials ended its designation as a public health emergency<\/a>. So it’s now fair to ask if all our efforts to slow the spread of the disease\u2014from masking, to hand washing, to working from home\u2014were worth it. One group of scientists has seriously muddied the waters with a report that gave the false impression that masking didn’t help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group’s report was published by Cochrane, an organization that collects databases and periodically issues \u201csystematic\u201d reviews of scientific evidence relevant to health care. This year it published a paper addressing<\/a> the efficacy of physical interventions to slow the spread of respiratory illness such as COVID. The authors determined that wearing surgical masks \u201cprobably makes little or no difference\u201d and that the value of N95 masks<\/a> is \u201cvery uncertain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The media reduced these statements to the claim that\u00a0masks did not work<\/a>. Under a headline proclaiming \u201cThe Mask Mandates Did Nothing,\u201d\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0columnist Bret Stephens wrote that \u201cthe mainstream experts and pundits … were wrong\u201d and demanded that they apologize for the unnecessary bother they had caused. Other headlines and comments declared that \u201cMasks Still Don’t Work,\u201d that the evidence for masks was\u00a0\u201cApproximately Zero,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0that\u00a0\u201cFace Masks Made \u2018Little to No Difference,\u2019\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and even that\u00a0\u201c12 Research Studies Prove Masks Didn’t Work.\u201d<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Karla Soares-Weiser, the Cochrane Library’s editor in chief, objected<\/a> to such characterizations of the review. The report had not<\/em> concluded that \u201cmasks don’t work,\u201d she insisted. Rather the review of studies of masking concluded that the \u201cresults were inconclusive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fairness to the Cochrane Library, the report did make clear that its conclusions were about the quality<\/em> and capaciousness<\/em> of available evidence, which the authors felt were insufficient to prove that masking was effective. It was \u201cuncertain whether wearing [surgical] masks or N95\/P2 respirators helps to slow the spread of respiratory viruses.\u201d Still, the authors were also uncertain about that uncertainty, stating that their confidence in their conclusion was \u201clow to moderate.\u201d You can see why the average person could be confused.<\/p>\nGdtdWk<\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scientific American The Cochrane Library, a trusted source of health information, misled the public by prioritizing rigor over reality. The COVID-19 pandemic is ongoing, but in May officials ended its designation as a public health emergency. So it’s now fair to ask if all our efforts to slow the spread of the disease\u2014from masking, to hand washing, to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":4996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-headlines"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Screenshot-2023-10-17-at-21.26.49.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4997,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4995\/revisions\/4997"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}