A Danish study over 30 days, with 6,000 participants, randomly assigned to wear or nor wear masks. However, three medical journals – The Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association – have refused to publish the study, leading to speculation that it reveals a message that goes against the status quo.
If I offered a bet that it doesn’t say masks are no use, would anyone take it, at any odds? But then, we mayn’t know, because we’re not adult enough to judge. Only technocratic experts can do that. We must obey them without question. Or putting it another way, the axe-grinders are conning us again.
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“We cannot start discussing what they (the medical journals) are dissatisfied with because, in that case, we must also explain what the study showed, and we do not want to discuss that until it is published.”
I wonder if the journals have raised an issue about the ethics. They could do that because they don’t like the findings of course but ethical approval is usually sought beforehand. The issue might be that asking people to go out longer than is advised could be viewed as against their interests. But it seems to serve a useful purpose and they are all adults, presumably not in their eighties.
I’d love to see the findings, it does look like it’s going to be negative. .
I also wonder if people wearing masks might stay out longer than the people not wearing masks, due to extra confidence.
It’s great not being able to see the study or the findings - so much more to speculate about 
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Reuters’ take on things
A one-percent improvement in protecting others from an infected mask-wearer? Perhaps this is why it’s so marginal ( 
)
PS: Just picked this up from the ever-estimable Ed Murray, posted at the Hulk. Usual suspects, including dan (who says London icus are overflowing, but why would that be? Covid, or some other - cough, cough under-cough-funding reason…?) team up to deny the good expert, and insist - by unilateral, unaccountable one-man censorship - his views can’t be allowed on the Hulk. So glad I jumped ship. Never going back:
https://www.facebook.com/101793534989842/videos/374759900442739
Was the study really meant to demonstrate that masks work, or to add some weight to arguments against them? In fact it did show a slight benefit from mask wearing which wasn’t statistically significant but seems likely to be the case. It’s unlikely that one or two people out of 2500 would not have been saved from infection if an infected person coughed or sneezed nearby. But how many of the other 2,450 participants who were forced to wear masks suffered other health consequences, or even became infected by breathing their own breath?
More significant than this study is that the CDC found that 85% of CV infected persons had worn a mask according to the recommendations…
The wider point of course is that masks are a peripheral item, because 95% of infection is passed through hand or device contact between people in close proximity, who even though they probably aren’t wearing masks, would not have been protected had they been…
This guy Tom Woods, whom I haven’t heard before has some really simple and caustic comments about mask. Watch from 11 minutes 30.
Er - Tom Watson? Corbyn’s imp? Tom Woods, it sez 'ere.
Sorry. Brain fog from Corona virus 
Now corrected
It’s had ‘the treatment’ from Facebook - the dreaded (not) fact check, and the ‘MISLEADING’ tag to scare away fact finders…
Now the fact check has been fact checked by Tom Woods.
As the reliable Jeremy R. Hammond contributed to the rebuttal, I’ll let him take up the story:
https://www.jeremyrhammond.com/2020/12/03/tom-woods-obliterates-another-faux-facebook-fact-check-article/
I’ve not been through it all, but according to Hammond it’s Facebook that’s been doing the fibbing.
I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you!
Do you know whether the Danish study had finally been published? The Danish study had finally been published:
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817
I’m just getting round to reading it now.
Incidentally, did you notice this piece of research published recently?
quote
As face masks became mandatory at different points in time across German regions, we can compare the rise in infections in regions with masks and regions without masks. Weighing various estimates, we conclude that 20 d after becoming mandatory face masks have reduced the number of new infections by around 45%.
I’ve only really skimmed the report, but could not find any mention of testing numbers and cycles. Unless I missed it, we all know that the more you test, the more “cases” you get. The higher the PCR cycles, the more “cases” you get.
Maybe we need to ask the Facebook fact checkers to fact check it?
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This quote from Jeremy Hammond strikes a persuasive note:
“Take the time to try to verify information to make sure it checks out. (Go to the original source, if possible. You’d be surprised how frequently sources are cited that either don’t support or contradict the claim being made. I encounter this continuously. Also seek corroboration from other sources.” [my added bolding]
It gets ever more unmistakable that we - in the West - are being subjected to a massive scamming effort. We should trust NOTHING that authority tells us about covid; especially not the bought WHO and the bought CDCs.
PS: Thanks for this post, ED. This is why I reside now here at 5F, and no longer bother with the Hulk. I went there accidentally yesterday - slip of the finger - having not visited for some time. At once the fetid atmosphere of the TDS-panicked gatekeepers leapt out. I sampled it a bit, then left, reinforced in my determination to dump an ex-truth vessel that has become toxic. You already know from rueful experience, Evvy, the sort of slag-storm you’d encounter if you tried to post this material at the Hulk! Yet imagine: is there really anything at all objectionable in it - apart from the hard reality that it provokes an instant cog-diss crisis in TDS victims, leading to adhom-rich, fact-lite denial-slagging. Truly pathetic sheep-capitulation to authority! Go the goats!! 
Edit - graph added, then changed to only show Germany
As PatB says discussion of testing would have been useful. The paper in the intro (“Significance”) says
" We employ public regional data about reported severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infections for Germany."
the title is " Face masks considerably reduce COVID-19 cases in Germany".
If only severe levels are counted it is more convincing.
[I’m self-isolating this part of my earlier posts which read:
"Though, I’ve been looking at the stuff from Del Bigtree asking why, if cases are shooting up, resulting deaths aren’t doing the same. If you look at Germany (see graph below) it’s the same there - ie deaths not following increases in cases. So I’d have liked this important fundamental to have been gone over in the paper.
Germany, and indeed every ‘major’ European population, shows that cases are not matched by deaths, as Bigtree indicated. Here’s his link:
I now think this claim is incorrect due to
- It’s not easy to visually estimate proportionate deaths increases from the bottom of graph;
- A statistical correlation coefficient of eg weekly deaths v cases is positive in all the countries I looked at;
- The correlation wasn’t very impressive at first, but you need to count the start of the epidemics separately because at the beginning only people walking in sick to clinics and hospitals were getting tested, whereas in the so-called second wave they’ve been going mad testing asymptomatic people;
- You also need to adjust the data to take into account the lag in time between cases and corresponding deaths.
All this renders the correlation between cases and deaths (eg since summer) strong.
This doesn’t mean that focussing on cases as ‘diseases’ isn’t propaganda, but deaths even from mis-labelled asymptomatic ‘cases’ will still be in proportion to mis-labelled ‘cases’- because they would be mis-labelled Covid-19 deaths as well!]
Note that although my own graph misses some of the start of the pandemic’s cases the impression that so-called cases are higher now than at the peak of the deaths is actually a correct one.
At first I wondered if this was just another ‘before’ vs ‘after’ study, where a credible inference of actual cause and effect depends on identifying and adjusting for other causes.and influences that might have brought the results about. But they claim to deal with that by manufacturing a ‘control group’:
"First, the method can be applied to policy interventions (thereafter treatment) which only target a small number of treated units (in our case, one or a few regions). Treatment effects are identified by comparing the development of outcomes in treated and control regions during the treatment period. For causal inference, the proper selection and weighting of control regions is crucial to credibly estimate what outcome would have been observed in the treated region in the absence of the treatment. To establish this counterfactual, the SCM approach constructs a synthetic control group as weighted average of regions in the donor pool of controls. "
How well this functions I can’t tell.
I’ve wondered if masks worked best when there was a risk of breathing in droplets containing a large dose of virus, and if they might be counter-productive in situations of lesser risk by reducing exposure to small dosages which might actually be useful for the immune system to encounter. I say “I’ve. wondered” but I think this idea was implanted by immunologists I may have read a while back.
In the discussion they mention limitations like it was only one country but this might be good for regional analysis as what’s happening with international travel might have a huge effect. But equally, if there was low international travel, even though it might be the same everywhere in the country, any mask effect might be enhanced but might be lost in situations of high international travel.
I’m coming over to the idea that chapter and verse on mask effectiveness is a million-piece jigsaw that won’t be completed in time for Xmas!
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Wassat - did you say fat-chequers? 
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My money’s on the Cummins/Yeadon/Bigtree interpretation:
The epidemic - such as it was - is over. Been over since May. And now. having had its new-mutation debut-kill (just marginally bigger than previous years, if that), this Spring, it’s in the background nuisance category along with all the other flu/cold bugger pathogens that annoy some, and kill a few, each year; whilst most of us just shrug them of as a chronic, but not particularly frightening, bloody nuisance requiring a few days off work. (And those of us who know about mega-C treatment don’t even get that! )
And yes, I know that the pneumonia that follows for some unfortunates kills them nastily. Every year. And we deal with it without hysterics because - that’s how it goes; how it’s been going for thousands of human generations. You know: life and all that. It comes in the old-age package.
Calling this the chaotic cock-up of all time is generous. There’s been plenty of that headless-chicken syndrome this year. But I’m still with Del when he calls it a huge fraud. There are many gics and gic-servants who should do long community-service sentences for this con. But don’t hold yer bleedin’ breath. The vaccs profits guarantee that that idea will be drowned out completely.
Too bad about the Bellenders’ great reset, though. That looks like a non-starter.
And just one more study showing the futility of mask wearing. This one using a different methodology, from the"epi-centre of the epi-centre", the US…