I think mainly I just want to understand what it was that seemingly convinced all Smart People and 90% of normies that Masks Really Work, a Silver Bullet. I just see no logical way it can have been the actual data - like, the observed trajectory of the epidemic. So what, then?
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I’m sitting here looking at a policy that in some places is 10+ months old. During that time, most of the ‘curves’, in most places, look largely the same to me, and unaffected, and mainly appeared to follow something like seasonality. I see no role for ‘masks’ there. Am I dumb?
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The ‘best’ argument I think can be mustered is some complicated model-specification of dynamics and policy that, after bringing it to the data & performing some regression, finds, like, a minor effect. Is that what persuaded y’all? Is that what persuaded our aunts on FB? Really?
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From where I sit, if that’s what the pro-mask epistemology is based on, & 10 months of ‘welp, virus still here’ isn’t enough to dissuade anyone, I guess I just have a hard time seeing how they could ever be falsified. We’re stuck with them permanently. That’s our society now. No?
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Think of it in terms of Rt. As a mask-wearer myself, before any mandates, early on I myself had some hope/wishcasting that maybe widespread mask use could knock down Rt from (oh let’s say) 1.2 to 0.8, and therefore *decay the virus away*.
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But since then, what I have seen is: -Widespread mask use. -Virus not only not decayed-away, but came back with a roar in the winter I therefore have to reject the idea that they have some huge depressive effect on Rt. You don’t? How do you not??
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And of what I’m being told is ‘ok maybe they didn’t reduce Rt from 1.2 to 0.8, maybe they reduce it to 1.19’...ok, maybe!...but then what the hell are we doing. That’s not my idea of an effective policy.
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People don't understand that the key difference is Rt > 1 vs Rt < 1 because no part of their logical reasoning goes towards this - even epidemiologists.
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