Cloth masks are worse and may increase the rate of infection.

[AnaadiNitya]

Carl Heneghan is a clinical epidemiologist with expertise in evidence-based medicine, research methods, and evidence synthesis.
He is Director of the NIHR SPCR Evidence Synthesis Working Group a collaboration of nine primary care departments across UK universities. He set up and directs the Oxford COVID Evidence Service, has over 400 peer-reviewed publications (current H Index 67); published 95 systematic reviews. He is Editor in Chief of BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, and Editor of the Catalogue of Bias.

He recently attended an online
aCOVID 19 special response committee meeting. He is saying there is no evidence these masks work especially in the way we are being told to wear them.

Here is the video

I wonder if people who wear cloth masks, which will be the general public, are more likely to put themselves in riskier situations than those who don’t. Which may well contribute to the spread

Yes I agree

Is this in a peer reviewed journal? His first example is about flu, which is different to COVID, and saying that infections went up after 24th July is completely confounded with ball the pubs and shops and hair salons opening around the same time. That is why it went up - because we were having much more contact with each other. I’m very surprised he either didn’t realise that or didn’t make it clear.

Surely it makes sense that if you have a face covering it is more likely to catch the droplets carrying the virus, and even if the benefit isn’t huge, surely it is better than nothing. I don’t know why people are so worked up about such a minor thing. The government, who constantly claim they are led by the evidence, want you to put a mask on, so for the love of all that is good and holy, will you just put a fucking mask on. It’s not a big ask ask in the grand scheme of things.

Cloth masks do not work that’s why they are not allowed in health care settings. For proper masks to work 200,000 people would have to wear one continuously for a week to stop one person catching the virus

Where is the evidence for this?

@AnaadiNitya they have not gone up. Also look at Czechia. The only country requiring masks (cloth being better than nothing and in reality mainly cloth as it was all that was available) from the outset for everyone everywhere outside the home and a tiny tiny tiny fraction of deaths and cases per 1M. Also the evidence of the Asian leading epidemiologists who have been through this before.

I can’t find the link on the government website saying masks are no use. Can someone point me to it?

@SarahBellam

Is this in a peer reviewed journal? His first example is about flu, which is different to COVID, and saying that infections went up after 24th July is completely confounded with ball the pubs and shops and hair salons opening around the same time. That is why it went up - because we were having much more contact with each other. I’m very surprised he either didn’t realise that or didn’t make it clear.

Surely it makes sense that if you have a face covering it is more likely to catch the droplets carrying the virus, and even if the benefit isn’t huge, surely it is better than nothing. I don’t know why people are so worked up about such a minor thing. The government, who constantly claim they are led by the evidence, want you to put a mask on, so for the love of all that is good and holy, will you just put a fucking mask on. It’s not a big ask ask in the grand scheme of things.

I wear a surgical one thanks

[quote iseeu]**@AnaadiNitya* they have not gone up. Also look at Czechia. The only country requiring masks (cloth being better than nothing and in reality mainly cloth as it was all that was available) from the outset for everyone everywhere outside the home and a tiny tiny tiny* fraction of deaths and cases per 1M. Also the evidence of the Asian leading epidemiologists who have been through this before.[/quote]
Eh? Transmission rates have gone up. Where have you been?

Actually, this is all it says on the government website. Nothing about them being ineffective. Did you read an old version or something?

Twitter and youtube?? I only take serious scientific advice from facebook I'm afraid, bugger

@SarahBellam

Is this in a peer reviewed journal? His first example is about flu, which is different to COVID, and saying that infections went up after 24th July is completely confounded with ball the pubs and shops and hair salons opening around the same time. That is why it went up - because we were having much more contact with each other. I’m very surprised he either didn’t realise that or didn’t make it clear.

Surely it makes sense that if you have a face covering it is more likely to catch the droplets carrying the virus, and even if the benefit isn’t huge, surely it is better than nothing. I don’t know why people are so worked up about such a minor thing. The government, who constantly claim they are led by the evidence, want you to put a mask on, so for the love of all that is good and holy, will you just put a fucking mask on. It’s not a big ask ask in the grand scheme of things.

If it’s down to the pubs opening up why hasn’t there been a second wave? 47,600 pubs opened up.

@Littleposh

Twitter and youtube?? I only take serious scientific advice from facebook I'm afraid, bugger

Not even some one that’s been on BBC news night? He was the one who raised the PHE issues.,,

Hugh Trevor-Roper was Regius professor of Modern History at Oxford. I’ll wait for the peer reviewed evidence thank you.

@SarahBellam

Actually, this is all it says on the government website. Nothing about them being ineffective. Did you read an old version or something?

I’m not sure who your directing that at as I never said it

Virus rates have gone up and I think it’s due to the fact people feel more ‘safe’ with a cloth mask on and not sticking to guidelines. When there was no masks people mainly stayed away from each other. Now they are happy to lean over some one to get their shopping I thought you were making a different point saying masks were ineffective - but, again, look at Czechia where it was mainly cloth - but the other factors are equally important such as it needing to be thick cloth, padded is best; needs to be boil washed frequently; also respecting social distancing is still required. So the problem is not the cloth mask it is getting the message out effectively. Which is made harder by threads like this, to be honest.

In the UK I think is that a significant problme has been that so many people have either had or wanted to believe misinformation or simply ignored advice, and that the advice was slow to come out.

Cloth masks aren't great. If they were medical folk around the world would be wearing them.

I think the error he makes is that the optimal policy is not necessarily based on scientific evidence. Sometimes if you wait for best evidence to act, you end up having acted too slow - as UK found out.

Singapore provided all their citizens with cloth reusable masks and made it compulsory whenever you go out of your home (except exercise and under 2s and medical exceptions). They have higher population density and much lower death rate than uk. Sure - it might be a fluke, but you have to balance the risks. Risk of no protection from sneezing on crowded public transport, to sneezing behind cloth mask.

If you look carefully theVietnamese study was cloth masks was vs surgical masks not no masks. So -of course it is good to continue collecting evidence, but it’s not unreasonable to keep the masks rule I think.

isn't all this a bit like saying a condom with a few tiny pinholes is not going to be as fully protective; agreed.
but on a desert island it's better than nothing.

half a loaf is better than none.
or, in more fancy language, the best is the enemy of the good.

@Foliageeverywhere122

Meh until it's published and peer-reviewed I wouldn't make any assumptions.

Yep he's a renowned epidemiologist, doesn't mean you should automatically take what he says as gospel

No - because some random on mumsnet knows better

@alexdgr8

isn't all this a bit like saying a condom with a few tiny pinholes is not going to be as fully protective; agreed. but on a desert island it's better than nothing.

Quite!

I want to know what the OP’s got against Dave from down the road ...

Yep he's a renowned epidemiologist, doesn't mean you should automatically take what he says as gospel

Well the government scrapped the way PHE delivered its data because of his findings so I think he is worth listening to or at least considering.

I just watched the video.

He talks about people in the home - well, clearly that is about a situation where you are close to another person all the time and so not comparable to the general public wearing them when out.
He says "opinion divides" and "no clear evidence" but actually leading experts such as Prof Kim WooJu have talked at length about mask wearing making it clear to what extent there is evidence. Why does he not refer to that? Why refer to Norway and not Czechia?
He talks about TR going up in the last weeks - but for goodness sake, that could relate to anything other than masks - partying being back with a vengeance, masks have not been required everywhere and also the TR masks in uk now relate to activities pre mask wearing.

"cherry picked low quality observational evidence to suit the argument" but isn't that exactly what he is doing? As well as ignoring the advice of the likes of Prof Kim WooJu in South Korea and the evidence from czechia.
"200000 people would have to wear a mask fully for a week to prevent one infection" again this appears to be missing that the recommendation about what works is that everyone has to wear a mask. His relationship 200000 and 1 is fiction - ie he has said there is no evidence out there so there will be nothing to support that assertion.

why don’t you actually read his credentials in the OP. He is the man that forced the Gov to review the PHE data. He is actually at COVID 19 special response meeting

I do know who he is but he could be the second coming and I still want to read and process the document not watch videos. Its how I process factual content at speed.

Cloth masks are not all the same. The commonest results I've seen are that bandana/scarf type masks a pretty useless, not least because people don't wash them frequently.

Same research indicates tighter woven fabrics, washed as per guidance are effective at stopping larger droplets outbound. Not as effective as surgical masks but sufficient for normal settings and without exhausting supplies of proper surgical masks (or creating a mountain of non recyclable waste).

So unless an experiment distinguishes between the types of fabric used its of limited value when talking about cloth masks.

@CasuallyMasculine

I want to know what the OP’s got against Dave from down the road ...

] Dave who does all the deep state/fake news stuff..