About anti-maskers citing that Cochrane study

Even though it's 6-7 months old, because a modest (and almost certainly short-term) uptick in COVID cases has COVID doomers spouting #MasksUp on Twitter, a flawed study from the Cochrane Collaboration is getting airplay on Twitter again itself.

And, flawed it is.

The main thing is, and most the review participants admitted it, is that it does NOT track well mask compliance or lack thereof. This:

The Cochrane Review also combines studies where face masks or respirators were worn continuously5 with studies where these tools were used inconsistently.

Means its got a degree of flaws right there. 

Especially when combined with this:

The Cochrane Review does acknowledge that “adherence with interventions was low in many studies.” This, in part, is why some experts don’t think RCTs are the best way to study whether or not masks and respirators are effective. Scientists aren’t following a person around to see if they are actually wearing the intervention consistently—there is a lack of certainty in methodology.

Derp!

The second is that only 6 of the 78 randomized controlled trials it studied actually were done during COVID. Therefore, even if its masks advice might be true in general, it can't be extrapolated specific to COVID so readily.

The third is that Tom Jefferson, lead author for the scientists on this study, may have had some axe-grinding, as this indicates:

“Scientific review confirms doubters’ stance on masks and COVID-19,” declared a popular Instagram post from Fox News. 

The lead author of the Cochrane review, Tom Jefferson, seemed to endorse this interpretation when he said in an interview, later quoted by conservative columnist Bret Stephens in a widely viewed opinion piece for the New York Times, “There is just no evidence that they” — referring to masks — “make any difference.” 

But experts — and the Cochrane Library — say this is an inaccurate representation of what the review found.

Wow.

Beyond that pull quote, the axe-grinding? This:

He has endorsed several unorthodox views about COVID-19 and some of his writing has been republished by the Brownstone Institute, a group that has described itself as the “spiritual child” of the widely criticized Great Barrington Declaration. In the latest update to the Cochrane review, under a section in which authors disclosed potential conflicts of interest, he reported “declaring an opinion on the topic of the review in articles for popular media.”

Well, Great Barrington me! (He also comes off as a bit trollish in a dry, understated British way.

I don't know if Cochrane has any sort of internal review process, because his 15-plus years as author of papers on respiratory virus intervention certainly needs review. Anyway, given that he's previously been cited by Brownstone, it's clear he knew what he was doing in interviews on this and being used by Bret Stephens. The fact that he did so while overstating what the study found is additionally problematic.

Per Zeynep Tufekci, Karla Soares-Weiser, editor in chief of the Cochrane Library, DID call him out at the time. Being a sociologist, she things part of what drives anti-maskers is seeing that some early rules were indeed kind of dumb.

But, with Jefferson, it's not "dumb." It's medically deliberately self-misinformed:

In that interview, he said there is no basis to say the coronavirus is spread by airborne transmission — despite the fact that major public health agencies have long said otherwise. He has long doubted well-accepted claims about the virus. In an article he co-wrote in April 2020, Jefferson questioned whether the Covid outbreak was a pandemic at all, rather than just a long respiratory illness season. At that point, New York City schools had been closed for a month and Covid had killed thousands of New Yorkers. When New York was preparing “M*A*S*H”-like mobile hospitals in Central Park, he said there was no point in mitigations to slow the spread.

Wow. Yep, like a Tom Malone, this is the wingnut guiding wingnuts. And, more from Tufekci, it seems that he's been editorially rebuked by Soares-Weiser before, and hasn't taken kindly to it. So? If there's a way to boot him from writing the respiratory virus reports, do it!

Tufekci adds these thoughts at the end, noting that "masks/no masks" is also a simplistic false framing.

Masks are a tool, not a talisman or a magic wand. They have a role to play when used appropriately and consistently at the right times. They should not be dismissed or demonized.

This is definitely true.

Back to the first link for more on that:

“Other research does tend to point in the direction of at least some protection,” Dr. [William] Schaffner told Health. “Nobody thinks masking is the complete and total answer. That’s also a false expectation. But they are an additional layer of protection.”

That's the bottom line.

Well, really, the bottom line right now, contra the doomers, is, there is no big surge. (We did cross the 200 deaths/wk threshold the last week of August, but still stayed below 300 deaths, and that appears to be on the decline again.