Careful. That's a major over simplification of what happened in S Korea.
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Replying to @jeremyphoward @GidMK
I don't disagree with your assessment of the paper, but showing that some places did well without masks doesn't provide any evidence against the paper's findings.
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Replying to @jeremyphoward @GidMK
And S Korea had a major gov intervention in late Feb to ensure everyone had masks.
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Replying to @jeremyphoward
Sure, but my point is that if all you're looking at is a simplistic question of masks/no masks it's trivial to find counterexamples. I agree that all of these comparisons are ridiculous oversimplifications- that's the point!
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Replying to @GidMK
Note the paper claims that masks are effective, and maybe even *sufficient* to stop transmission. It doesn't claim they're *necessary*. A counter-example only works to show a claim of necessity is incorrect. The claims of the paper may be correct and still have counter-examples
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Replying to @jeremyphoward
I'm not sure I agree - the paper explicitly argues that other NPIs are insufficient to "protect the public". I'm not sure you can interpret this in any other way tbhpic.twitter.com/ekit7hv5CI
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Replying to @GidMK
It's talking about the current NPIs in the *US* - it says that explicitly. And we can clearly see the truth of the claim in the US data. (Australia's approach of early border closures and lots of testing would have been great in the US, but too late to rely on that now.)
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Replying to @jeremyphoward
I mean, the paper looks at a worldwide view. Semantics aside, I think it's pretty clear that they're saying that masks are the key NPI and that others are only useful as an adjunct
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Replying to @GidMK
I agree the sentence after the one you highlighted does imply that. For the key audience of folks in countries that failed to control the epidemic, it might well be true, but it also doesn't give sufficient credit to the Aus and NZ success so far.
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Replying to @jeremyphoward @GidMK
One key thing they missed in that conclusion is how well social distancing and masks work together. Masks reduce the radius of the germ cloud, making social distancing more useful. He was wrong to fail to note the important of distancing here, IMO.
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I think generally it reads like a paper constructed to find a specific conclusion - that masks are the One And Only Intervention - than an investigative study designed to see what the best bang for your buck would be with different intervention mixes
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