This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/30/opinion/masks-pandemic.html
The article has changed 7 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 5 | Version 6 |
|---|---|
| How Well Does Masking Work? And Other Pandemic Questions We Need to Answer. | How Well Does Masking Work? And Other Pandemic Questions We Need to Answer. |
| (about 3 hours later) | |
| When the coronavirus took off in 2020, the unknowns were immense, as was the urgency. It was clear that the virus was novel, that it was spreading widely and that it was killing many of the people it infected. And there was no vaccine or proven drug treatment. This was the context in which states first mandated masks, issued stay-at-home orders and closed schools, among other measures — an emergency. | When the coronavirus took off in 2020, the unknowns were immense, as was the urgency. It was clear that the virus was novel, that it was spreading widely and that it was killing many of the people it infected. And there was no vaccine or proven drug treatment. This was the context in which states first mandated masks, issued stay-at-home orders and closed schools, among other measures — an emergency. |
| But now we should have more data from this pandemic to guide our decisions. We don’t send rockets into space without collecting data to monitor their progress and detect if they are veering off course. And yet we witnessed more than one million Covid-19 deaths in the United States without a clear plan to assess whether we were doing all we could to prevent more. | But now we should have more data from this pandemic to guide our decisions. We don’t send rockets into space without collecting data to monitor their progress and detect if they are veering off course. And yet we witnessed more than one million Covid-19 deaths in the United States without a clear plan to assess whether we were doing all we could to prevent more. |
| We should be systematically studying pandemic mitigation efforts in order to learn which interventions are effective and how best to employ them. Just as important: We should do so with the understanding that the absence of evidence of effectiveness is not the same as having evidence of ineffectiveness. | We should be systematically studying pandemic mitigation efforts in order to learn which interventions are effective and how best to employ them. Just as important: We should do so with the understanding that the absence of evidence of effectiveness is not the same as having evidence of ineffectiveness. |
| Questions about masking, for example, were recently revived by a Cochrane study reporting that masking (with surgical ones or respirators like N95) makes “little or no difference” in reducing infection at the population level, such as among health care workers or in communities. Some mask opponents claim this validates their assertions that masks don’t work. Some mask supporters are raising questions about the study’s authors and attempting to discredit their conclusions. Which side is right? | Questions about masking, for example, were recently revived by a Cochrane study reporting that masking (with surgical ones or respirators like N95) makes “little or no difference” in reducing infection at the population level, such as among health care workers or in communities. Some mask opponents claim this validates their assertions that masks don’t work. Some mask supporters are raising questions about the study’s authors and attempting to discredit their conclusions. Which side is right? |