Friday, January 22, 2021

Sunrise - December 1

Finally found a study of the effectiveness of masks against transmission of Covid.   Last year a friend pointed me to studies showing mask effectiveness against SARS and circumstantial evidence that it might help contain the Covid virus.  I couldn't find any specific studies that masks worked on this virus though.  My state mandated mask wearing and I'm not such an egotist to simply disregard the probability that wearing a mask helps so I have been wearing one in public.  Finally three days ago the Lancet magazine published a study which did prove masks are at least marginally effective against Covid.  Interestingly enough, it was based on responses to a SurveyMonkey questionnaire.  I know that doesn't sound very scientific but the article pointed out how they had well over 300,000 people participate and broke out how that information was paired w/ data from each area about the number of cases  and rate of spread by  region.  The article included the requisite graphs and formulas used.  The article finished by concluding mask effectiveness to be just less than 1% but concluded wearing a mask was useful and that this was just a first study.   A very interesting article showing 'outside the box' thinking. 
 

1 comment:

Rachel said...

Do you remember if the article reported an r value? Did it provide a margin of error statistic?