It's usually considered bad form to continue to attack someone on a point once they've conceded an error. This generally makes people not want to concede errors, and that's already a big enough problem. All of my other statements are entirely consistent with one another and yes, the CDC should have gone with their best guess.
I think you're annoyed that I won't agree with you and you're trying to find some reason other than that I'm right so you're searching for inconsistencies where none exist.
No its pretty clear I hit nail on the head. Your posts reflect how you haven't been objective whatsoever regarding this topic and is the downfall of any assertions you've made. You felt the CDC made some nefarious decision about masking, and have continually changed your assertion to somehow continual modification of what you claimed the CDC actually did.
Anybody looking at the situation from an objective lens would have asked, how and why did the CDC make the decision they did? I looked at the science. At the time, it was felt that only those who were symptomatic spread the virus and the number of asymptomatic spreaders was not a major part of the equation. Apparently you have no concerns of those presumptions as you have not disagreed with them. Then I examined the reality of how the CDC and the WHO approaches these situations with a risk-based approach. There has been 20+ years of this approach. There has never been a policy towards actually endorsing universal masking. And then I looked at the actual data to support who should mask and who doesn't need to and why these organizations made their recommendations. And you've agreed! There's evidence to support masking healthcare workers but not the general public. Then you brought into public policy and I mentioned the critical mask shortage, and the feasibility of changing the recommendation. All of these variables played into the calculus, and makes the CDC's position justifiable. There is no information, data, or even argument you've presented that the CDC shouldn't have continued their risk-based approach, it was only later did we learn that the science was incomplete. But the CDC took their best guess as you want them to.
And that's the position I have stuck to throughout, and now you annoyed with me pointing out the numerous flaws and inconsistencies of your logic. I'm more than happy to keep on pointing out more of your inconsistencies, don't try to project your feelings onto me.
No, they said that AND they said masks were ineffective. They should have just stuck to saying the right thing and not the wrong thing.
Nope. Please don't try to rewrite what you said. You said very clearly: "
This comes back to my original point though, which is that prioritizing them for health workers made sense but I think if that’s the goal you just say that’s the goal. In terms of actual cost to an individual and society wearing a mask costs essentially zero."
No where in that "original point" do you acknowledge what they said regarding masks should be for healthcare workers, nor do you write about commentary about effectiveness.
In fact, they did exactly what you wanted. Now you are just trying to rewrite what you said. You mentioned bad faith arguments, correct?
Because their policy was to DISCOURAGE their use, not to not-encourage it. Those are two very different things.
That's quite a strawman. I'm still waiting for a complete argument as to why the CDC should have dropped their practice of risk-based masking. You've made the assertion, all I've seen now is they should have used their best guess! Well they did, they chose risk-based masking. But saying they should guess the other way not on the basis of any legitimate concern is not a persuasive argument to anyone, as that would mean to ignore precedence, to ignore science, and to ignore the realities of the mask stock.
This is a puzzling way to characterize the findings of those studies but again it seems to reinforce the difference between medical science and public policy. Like, if science shows that condoms effectively prevent the spread of STIs but people don't use them right so they aren't being effective the public health policy intervention would be to educate people on proper condom use, not to say they don't work. It should be easy to see how that would apply here.
I agree, it shows that reading scientific papers is not as easy as it seems. Please answer for all of us, what was the authors primary hypothesis in studies 2 and 4 as this describes their "intention to treat" analysis. As in, the authors hypothesized that masks would _________. Please fill in the blank for their primary endpoint. I am being very precise in my language because you have been very loosey-goosey. Did the authors accept or reject their hypothesis for the primary outcome?
And think about the problem of post-hoc testing. What other factors would be associated with someone who was randomized to wear a mask and was willing to wear it vs someone who was supposed to and didn't?
No, this is entirely consistent and entirely correct.
Nope. You now agree there's no clear evidence to support universal masking.
Right! It's okay to take chances and sometimes those chances are wrong. The issue with hydroxychloroquine was that people kept pushing it long after we knew with high confidence that it didn't work. Pretty stark contrast with masks there.
Hydroxychloroquine continued well into early May. But most hospitals moved away from using hydroxychloroquine before the major clinical trials were completed. So that's not how it happened.
But the point, again, is that decisions can have consequences, some with major negative outcomes. As discussed below, you're very much happy to railroad over those possibilities especially when it comes to masking.
We have already discussed this repeatedly, I'm confused as to why you keep asking the same questions. Rationing the masks was fine (and it's what we did!). There was no need to say masks were ineffective when they didn't know that. Then again, I think most people didn't believe them anyway because as I mentioned their messaging was essentially 'these masks are critically needed to protect health care workers but they won't protect you'. I strongly suspect the average person's reaction to that was 'you're full of shit'.
Saying we discussed it when you never discussed it isn't an argument. I'm sorry. There were 30 million masks in the national stockpile, how could have that supply been sufficient for healthcare workers and the general public if they followed what you wanted to recommend? This is a question of feasibility of what you want, and interestingly enough you won't address. How would it have been feasible with that supply?
I have no idea what the CDC did.
Why would you care about the publication date? Instead of actually addressing how the CDC reacted to changing information, you are more concerned about a publication date and not knowing what the CDC did. Well, that's one way to not address what I said.
I'm not sure what the confusion is here - I'm saying that efficacy data was irrelevant as to the appropriate next steps of manufacture and distribution. There was good reason to believe the science would eventually show they would be effective so the right answer was to spend essentially unlimited sums of money on them even before that evidence was available. The risk/reward balance was so asymmetric as to justify basically any amount of money.
So, throwing money wouldn't have addressed the infection count at all but who gives a shit? Again, public health policy vs. science. Good science to wait to see if they work but catastrophically bad public policy that probably lead to the deaths of tens of thousands of people. And just like with the J&J pause this was 100% predictable ahead of time.
No this was a discussion regarding the timing of how long the efficacy studies would take. You kept repeating that there was: "
Basic safety of the vaccines was (to the best of my knowledge) established by the end of summer 2020. At this time there was also very promising data on efficacy." It simply didn't exist at that time nor would money have been the simple solution, unless you really want to have inoculated a million people for the initial study. Maybe would have been nice, but clinical trials of that size... it doesn't happen overnight or in months. Something the system can build towards the future, I really hope for.
Regarding manufacturing, I already said "Yeah, so your concern is at the policy level, not the science level."
No one has ever argued for discounting the potential for negative outcomes, ever. Why would you say that? What the FDA failed to do is the same thing the CDC failed to do, which was appropriately account for the risk/reward ratio of their guidance. They went minimum risk from medical intervention when good public health policy was screaming to do the opposite. See how my point about making your best guess applies here? We didn't know for sure but I made a guess based on the available evidence and I was right while the FDA waited for more certainty and probably indirectly led to the deaths of large numbers of people.
Interesting enough, I have posted about your discounting numerous times the negative outcomes regarding
masking,
vaccines, and
vaccine safety. In masking, I've already spoken to the issue regarding concerns of self-inoculation of contaminated masks and the potential of potentiation of infection by masking. These are real aspects the policy makers considered, but you are more than willing to disregard them on your quest to show how surgical masking was of value back in March 2020. Just because those negative possibilities didn't occur, they were important variables in the calculus of the time. And point repeatedly is that you have to consider these potential outcomes.
While you made a clear error here in accusing me of something that even a cursory search would have shown was inaccurate I'm not going to keep rubbing your face in it. I respect you and so I've made a point of being civil and it would be nice if you would return the favor. There's no need to talk shit to me here and it's okay if we just don't agree on the proper risk/reward profile. I think you're clearly wrong, but you're not crazy.
LOL! What did I claim? You can still Monday Morning Quaterback a decision even if you predicted a particular outcome, especially when a critical piece of information was an unknown. You and me neither had information about the extent of the number of blood clots in the world regarding the J&J vaccine. That was the point of the pause, to address that very question. I'm glad it really stayed a one in a million event as you predicted. But I also acknowledge the very real possibility it could have been something greater. Did you? On what basis? As I already mentioned, I didn't like the J&J pause .
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