More specifically, there is a wide gulf between the scientific evidence on mitigation measures—the so-called “non-pharmaceutical interventions” or NPIs—and the way this evidence has been described. Back in Spring 2020, when these mitigation measures began to be imposed, I did my own mini-review of the scientific literature on the effectiveness of NPIs on the spread of infectious diseases, particularly respiratory viruses. I focused on the handful of studies that featured randomized controlled trials or quasi-natural experiments in a real-world setting. The consensus of this pre-Covid literature is that masks, frequent hand-washing and hand-sanitizing, distancing, and the like had either very small effects or no effect on disease severity or spread. This was at the time that shops, restaurants, schools, and offices were beginning to require masks and social distancing, installing plastic barriers and HEPA filters, adding extra cleaning and sanitizing, and other interventions – presumably on the basis of hard, scientific evidence. But that evidence was lacking. I didn’t see it until later but Slate Star Codex published a review of mask studies that covered many of the same papers and reached the same conclusions I did.
What about now, more than a year into the Covid-19 pandemic? Surprisingly, most of the evidence offered by government agencies is based on computer or lab simulations of the movement of particles (or anecdotes). The most highly touted field studies are observational (i.e., there are no treatment and control groups, making it impossible to assign causality). Given that the scientific (and social-scientific) establishment has maintained for decades that randomized-controlled trials are the “gold standard” for assigning causality, the absence of RCT evidence on masks and other NPIs is surprising. Here is a recent review of what we know. The majority of the evidence is that masks, distancing, plastic barriers, and the like have played at best a very small role, and most likely no role, in mitigating the spread of Covid-19.
The evidence is almost entirely at odds with the message presented to the public.
https://mises.org/power-market/scientific-credibility-and-file-drawer-problem
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The writer mentions something I noticed some time ago when I went searching for studies on masks: all the studies that supported mask mandates were post 2020. I posted a meta-analysis done by some oral surgeons done in 2015 that concluded face masks couldn’t be shown to have statistically significant effect on the spread of respiratory viruses.
And, in fact, *this was Fauci’s initial February 2020 position* on masks as revealed in one of his emails that was made public.
How did this happen?
