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Side Note: We are no longer accepting PayPal donations. They have changed their terms of service and stated they would fine PayPal users for spreading "misinformation" and "hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory". PayPal did not provide definitions for some of these vague terms. Woke corporate policies regarding "misinformation" could result in an automatic fine of $2,500 which would have been removed directly from the customer’s PayPal account. PayPal did backdown from some of their policies but quietly implemented portions of them in later terms of service. A financial institute has no right to monitor social media accounts or speech. This is unacceptable and I'll no longer do business with PayPal.

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Lewis Conner
IF you fart and smell it with your mask on the mask you are wearing is good for nothing except maybe a dust storm

Side Note: We are no longer accepting PayPal donations. They have changed their terms of service and stated they would fine PayPal users for spreading "misinformation" and "hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory". PayPal did not provide definitions for some of these vague terms. Woke corporate policies regarding "misinformation" could result in an automatic fine of $2,500 which would have been removed directly from the customer’s PayPal account. PayPal did backdown from some of their policies but quietly implemented portions of them in later terms of service. A financial institute has no right to monitor social media accounts or speech. This is unacceptable and I'll no longer do business with PayPal.

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TripleAlphaProcess
I think there is certainly some debate around the effectiveness of facemasks for COVID-19 but maybe I can share some reason as to why this paper doesn't have a lot of traction. It was actually picked up by major news outlets and then quickly discarded as opinion and hypothesis generating but not credible.

1. Its not actually a study, it an opinion paper. Its a summary of literature that could be correlated to the wearing of facemasks. Many of his sources are circumstantial and not directly related to the reduction in transmissions. He actually cites several meta-analyses that do conclude they are effective. His arguments on the adverse health affects have some merit but again he's applying general theory of pulmonology and O2 reductions to the wearing of face masks. He cites that the measured O2 saturation while wearing a mask is well above the acceptable limits. His argument on the long term affects is based on people wearing then contiguously for weeks which does not happen in the real world. I think his argument on the psychological affects is loose but valid given that data he provided.

2. Stanford did not conduct the study. He simply works for the Palo Alto VA which has a loose association with Stanford and he's publishing his opinion. Stanford actually acknowledged they did not support his opinion.

3. The article was a single author article that was based on other papers but was not a comprehensive review of the literature and only contained a portion of data out there on the subject. Typically you have several authors on a paper to ensure the subject is fully covered and to keep people accountable. Also, although it's technically peer reviewed the only other person that reviewed the article was the editor of the publication. For the same reasons I stated this is considered less scientifically reliable due to lack of completeness and oversight.

4. The journal itself is Med Hypothesis which is essentially the "enquirer" of scientific journals. It is so bad that that it was actually delisted from PubMed for quite some time because of fraud and lack of peer review. Basically anyone could write whatever they wanted without review and oversight and they passed it off as scientifically valid. The impact factor of the journal is 1.322. In comparison the JAMA article I cited in the other thread has an impact factor of 45.540. This means on average the the articles in JAMA are cited as credible scientific evidence in other articles 45x more per year as compared to Med Hypothesis. While I don't believe that impact factor is everything it is a very good gauge of how important and credible the journal is.

5. The author himself. If you don't know who he is a quick google search is all you need to understand he's had his share of issues with scientific credibility. Although, he has been published in other very credible journals.

I think there a reasonable debate about the use of facemasks but this article lacks several basic scientific aspects to make it credible which often times gets reasonable theory buried.

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for heath
Well, Dr. Jeff, what do you think the mainline media has been doing for the past 40 years - not just since Feb. 2020, Brian ?
They have been and are still 1 sided opinion staters, promoting lying propaganda and trashing whoever stands in their way.
This mask article likely has more truth in it than what you hear daily with the mainline 'so-called news' outlets.

The art of journalism - presenting facts of pros & cons, so the reader / listener can make an informed decision - has been lost in recent decades.
It is very hard to believe almost anyone anymore, as one quickly refutes another one.
Trying to find reputable, credible sources today, about anything remotely related politically, is a job in itself.

At least Jake's efforts to find and link the mask article has, at least, provided food for thought.

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