Talk:Face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic

Did they work for Omicron?
Perhaps not:. Any thoughts? Should this be included in the article? MidnightBlue  (Talk)  19:13, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I hit the paywall, but if it follows the stricter inclusion guidelines found at WP:MEDRS, it should be added. Also, if this is added, please cite the study itself and not the coverage in the popular press. Crossroads -talk- 18:41, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Here are some short extracts from the article:
 * The study conducted by the University of East Anglia (UEA) found that masks in particular were not effective once the first wave of Omicron had passed, although they had previously helped to reduce infection rates...
 * ''Professor Paul Hunter, of the Norwich Medical School at UEA and the study’s lead author, told The Telegraph that “those people who didn’t wear masks got all their infections in the first couple of weeks [of the wave] and were then immune, whereas the people who had been wearing masks weren’t immune because they’d not had Covid up until that point.
 * “The value of masks was always delaying the pandemic until most people had the vaccine,” he said.
 * “Masks contributed to that, and so therefore probably saved many lives, but once Covid was here to stay, and certainly once Omicron came with it being much more infectious … masks were ultimately of no value for most people.”
 * The study was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health and published in PLOS ONE.


 * I couldn't find it at PLOS ONE, but it looks like you might have to be a (paid) subscriber. MidnightBlue   (Talk)  20:23, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Rather glaring omission of CDC study
Much has been made of a CDC-published literature review (out of U. of Hong Kong) in 2020 showing a lack of transmission-reduction efficacy by face masks in actual practice rather than based on assumptive projections from their ability to suppress droplet spray. This was particularly about influenza, but what holds for one coronavirus is almost certainly going to hold for the rest of them. (While both Jefferson, Dooley, Ferroni, et al. (2023) and Cash-Goldwasser, Reingold, Luby, at al. (2023) have suggested that results could differ on a coronavirus-by-coronavirus basis, there is no actual evidence this is true to date, and considerable evidence against the idea.) The review is based on 14 randomized controlled trials, i.e. precisely the sort of data that our lead and our "Efficacy" section incorrectly claim is missing. Our present article's pretense that this and some similar, later material simply doesn't exist is not doing any favors for WP's credibility, and is against WP:DUE policy. If such reviews turn out to be flawed, there will be newer reviews that say so and why (and specifically address this and any other obsolete reviews by name). Both sides on the matter (or all sides, if there are more than two with in-depth representation in high-quality, peer-reviewed material) need to be covered properly in the article. This CDC review is all over the place in far-right and anti-mask media, so its total absence from WP coverage of the subject looks like intentional suppression and simply adds fuel to the "WP is a leftist propaganda farm" fire. 2001:5A8:4260:3100:C444:87AF:E299:2F41 (talk) 01:48, 18 June 2024 (UTC)