The link seems to be a summary of this reporter being extremely pro-mask.  I don’t take issue with anyone who wishes to wear a mask. But the CDC’s own study showed the ineffectiveness of wearing masks. So why devote an entire article to something that is extremely questionable in its efficacy?

[Link: xlcountry.com]

Keep in mind that it is an official CDC study.

It is good for people to wear masks when they feel it will help them. But you understand the pushback. The entire population doesn’t wish to be forced into this when the science does not support it.

see that is where you and I differ. You say they took a massive hit, I say they work.

Either because of mistake or other reasons studies can have something wrong with them. With peer reviews (like the two you pointed out), they can be removed as meaningless (which let me point out those where pre-release and not post release which these days might not make a difference.)

It is like when I used to work in IT my job was to build programs, others had to run quality control after and approve the changes to make sure what I did worked exactly as intended, since as the programmer (and any other programmer on the planet) tends to have programming blindness. Too focused on A that I was trying to fix and I missed B (a new issue).


But that is the difference between Peer reviewed journals and not Can you show me where New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet are still pretending those articles are still good?

Anthony, in the states those are the most respected journals in all of medicine.  They are not some private yahoo publishing outfit routinely publishing material by rogue actors. Peer reviewed means it gets intense scrutiny from all their peers before publication, and crap does not pass through.

To say “it works” is the kindest way in the world I can think of to let them off the hook for what is now fully acknowledged to be an orchestrated political statement void of facts.

To put it in another frame, it would be like 25 doctor$ producing a paper that indicates aspirin is dangerous and ineffective for headaches.  In each case, we have indicated a safe, over the counter drug that has been around for DECADES is somehow now a risk to all who would consider taking it.

Meanwhile, here are $ome new drug$ that have not gone through the normal proce$$ of a 5-10 year te$t, only available becau$e of an emergency u$e authorization, and there i$ FULL immunity for the companie$ that produce them, $o they can never be $ued for negligence.

You really should li$ten to $ome Robert Kennedy jr. interview$.  He cannot be accu$ed of being a right wing conspiracy guy.  His evidence is beyond damning.

$orry for all the$e typo$.

In the old days how it worked (with my experience in Mathematics as an author and evaluator)

1) someone submits a synopsis,
2) synopsis is evaluated by the editing board and it either is rejected (ends there- but a new synopsis can be re-submitted if the author wants...) or accepted
3) if accepted the article is asked for and reviewed by the editing board where it can be rejected, asked for some additions/changes or move to the next step
4) a few copies are made and some experts on the exact matter are chosen and sent a copy (this step was known as pre-release)
5) the peers reviewing can accept as is ask for some modifications/clarifications or accept as is
6) it got published in the journal if it passed all of the above.


These days things have changed a bit the publication no longer (as it had to be done once upon a time) have someone type out a copy for each reviewer. Most do what is called pre-publishing, they make the article available for peers to review on the net and so it ends up with more eyes on it. Unfortunately with our and the medias constant need to be on top of things (especially on Covid back in the day) that pre-publishing ends up being taken as perr reviewed what that stage has not happened yet.

But even if something is peer reviewed there is still room for there being mistakes, deception over drawn conclusions that are not actually supported by the author that are not picked up by the peers doing the review and they are only pick-up later..... and so when that is found out by reputable publications they add an erratum so people know that there was something wrong with it (no matter how minor or major) that error is.

The point is the reason you can point that the one (out of many) research studies/papers that show it has no effect was flawed was because those publications pointed it out after the pre-publishing went mainstream and posted erratum about it

but that is the issue with normal  web sites, they do not. For example you linked to [Link: xlcountry.com]

and they were nice enough to link to the CDC. I did not and don't feel like getting into it but did you click on the CDC link?

it reads at the top of the article

Please note: This report has been corrected. An erratum has been published.

I don't blame the radio station or the guy that wrote it, when he wrote the article the error was not noticed and not corrected yet by the CDC, and like anything else  the author is not constantly re-visiting to make sure what was written in October 2020 still stands as he posted it and find the new article that is corrected.

[Link: dailykos.com]