Taiwan's Amazing Control and f---ing Masks.

Donnie and I have been chatting about Taiwan's remarkable control of Covid. Taiwan has as many people as Australia and has only 700 Covid cases with 7 deaths. Donnie asked me why. I have no idea. Taiwan was very pro-active and very disciplined, but so was Singapore and they got hit pretty hard. Perhaps, Taiwan has better infection control policies, but it's not clear what they did so differently. They haven't worn masks for a while there, although they may be reimplementing mask use now.

Donnie wrote this to me about masks -

"I’m engineer and I own a software company in Czechia. We’ve been there 26 years. We have 110+ software developers. I can say during the spring the Czech were very aggressive with mask ($1,000 fines if caught on the streets without one) and shut downs and they barely had any cases and very few deaths. Then they got lazy and got rid of mask in the late summer and the number of cases exploded. We had our engineer back into the office by the end of May and then had to send them back home in late Sept when the cases exploded. The only difference was mask and I’ve read your information and I know you know a lot more about this stuff than I. Just from an Engineer and business owner it appeared (maybe falsely) the mask did work in Czechia. thx Donnie"

Here is my reply -

Hello Donnie,

Your mask story is just that. The studies that have been done have not shown a reduction in Covid or in flu (done in the past). In Jersey, for instance, masks have been required for several months and we are now seeing a surge, despite the use of masks. The buy-in rate or percent of people who use masks in Jersey is very, very high. Further, what does "use a mask" mean? People use different types of masks differently. Most people have no idea how to use a mask. The recent Danish mask study showed masks didn't protect people; the CDC similarly showed that masks didn't protect people. So, people change the MOA and say "masks reduce spread from those infected and don't know it". Again, there is absolutely no proof that masks reduce infection, when asymptomatic infected people wear them. Mechanistically, that theory makes no sense, since surgical masks do not filter anything out; surgical masks just re-direct exhaled breath. It's not clear that surgical masks, when surgeons use aseptic technique and pre-operative abx, reduce post-operative infections.

So, we know masks don't protect people from Covid.

And we know there is no reason to even think that masks will reduce viral excretion of those asymptomatically infected.

But that's just the data and science.

It's 2020, so those things aren't important any more.

As for your story, I am confident that Czechs didn't simply stop wearing masks. I am certain they changed other behaviors as well.

And for the 7th time, I am not anti-mask; I am anti-misrepresentation of the existing data. People view data through very colored glasses. No matter that data, many people, depending on their a priori opinion, find a reason to fit those data into their opinion. In other words, if the data don't support their opinion, they find a way to inappropriately criticize them and if the data, even poor quality data, support their opinion, well, then the data are from the best study ever done by humans.

Of course, I wish masks worked But I have talked to all my new Covid pts and we have several dozen. Each reports wearing masks and each reports working or living in environments where others wore masks. So, if masks works, they sure as hell don't work very well.

But the VACCINES ARE COMING!

SMS