driftwood wrote:
According to latest CDC study of 3 days ago Masks are virtually worthless . So I would stay put
awhile and see if this CDC report gets traction...
Honestly the ignorance on display is just astonishing. I honestly don't understand how any human could be this stupid.
First of all, the main point of masking in this context is not to keep the wearer from getting infected. The point of wearing masks it to keep people who may be infectious without knowing it from spreading the infection to others. So it's completely irrelevant how many people got infected while wearing a mask. The relevant question is how many people got infected despite everyone around them wearing a mask. Anyone debating whether masks protect the wearer from infection is completely missing the point.
But even if you do want to argue that point, this "study" doesn't mean what you claim it means. It's not even a study. It's just a self-reported survey of a non-random sample with no control group. You can't conclude anything at all about the efficacy of masks from this. And if you think you can, then I hope you have a legal guardian, because you are too stupid to make any decisions for yourself.
At a bare minimum the least you would need to even start speculating is you would need to know how what percentage of not-infected people report wearing masks. If 85% of infected people claimed they wore a mask, but 95% of not-infected people claimed they wore a mask... then the evidence suggests that masks make a positive difference. If all you know is how many infected people claimed they wore a mask and you don't even know how many not-infected people claimed to have worn a mask, then you know absolutely nothing at all. Even if you did have that info, the groups are self-selected and subject to selection bias, but at least I understand people being too stupid to understand selection bias. The level of stupidity we have on display here is simply beyond my comprehension.