Media spin: articles starting to appear trying to tear Biden down: Accessories edition

Auron_ said:
I believe you should be using the headline from the news article you cited for the title, else the thread may be closed.

It was obvious they'd be overtly critical of the administration from day 1. Nothing unexpected.

cipheron said:

Mask mandates have worked, for example in Melbourne Australia where they got it down from 500+ new cases per day to zero cases, currently. But it takes time to kick in. Cases kept going up for a couple of weeks after the masks started, then leveled off and gradually fell to zero. That took a couple of months, and remember that's with a law requiring everyone to wear masks.

So Murdoch's press is simultaneously saying Biden isn't promising to beat Covid *fast enough* yet they're also throwing anti-masker stuff out into the open against the perfectly reasonable 'masks on federal property' requirement. Yes, Biden could beat the virus quicker with a universal mask mandate, but then the same journalists would be upset about him doing *too much*.

Biden saying that it'll take months to see results isn't reneging on an election promise since he *never* promised that. He just promised to do everything *he* can. And it certainly doesn't mean he somehow admitted or claimed masks won't do anything.

Biden's error here: making factual and informative statements about the future instead of the grandstanding about victory Trump would have been doing at this point.

traed said:
@Zanbaka
Mask mandates often are in place too late. Once it's already out there there will be more cases a couple weeks after mandate because they were already infected before it was in place but asymptomatic. Also even if there was an increase beyond that time that doesnt mean masks don't work it just means they got infected by direct contact or indirect contact with other people. Also a lot of people dont wear their masks right where it doesnt even cover their nose.

xxXSaloFan69Xxx said:
Eh, same thing happened with Trump and Obama. MSM thrives on the saltmine.

Zanbaka said:

The "the masks came too late" argument (just like the "the lockdowns came too late") is nothing more than a desperate attempt of stretching the goal posts after it has been missed.

In last post I already mentioned the randomized controlled trial that showed no significant difference in infection rates. Earlier RCTs with influenza also found no significant difference either https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article

On top of that, while obviously being lower quality evidence, there is no pattern to be seen whatsoever when you look at the graphs. So overall, the benefits of masks are horribly overrated and are miniscule at best.

--ALEX-- said:
You know what?

I don’t fucking cares who lives and dies outside my little group anymore.

I’m soooo goddamn tired of all of this.

I’m tired of the people who don’t take it serious, I’m tired of anti-science retards, I’m tired of the conspiracy theories...all of it!

SaberHotMikasa said:
Who cares what Pedo Biden got to say lol

traed said:

Congratulations you have demonstrated you have no idea what you're talking about. That CDC link is talking about influenza a completely different virus.

What is the second image even from? I cant zoom in to see what the bottom text says if anything

cipheron said:
@traed, glad that was a quote, I thought you were an anti-masker for a minute.

Anyone can just look at Melbourne Australia. Zero cases now, because of mandatory masks. Down from 500 new cases a day and growing. And Melbourne is a big city - 4.5 million people. We had the virus here, but now we don't, because of masks.

As for the graph showing the "mask required vs no mask required" places having more infections in the "mask required" places. That can be explained pretty easily - places that are seeing more growth in the virus are much more likely to implement a mask requirement than those not seeing many cases. A mask mandate is also going to take a couple of months to see the real results.

The fact that the virus amount is *flat* after the masks are introduced in many places is actually a sign it had an effect. Normally, viruses spread exponentially. The problem is that after a while people often stop following the mask advice, become complacent. The big second spikes in the virus were the Northern hemisphere winter. And very few places even have a national mask mandate. France for example you can look that up and it was only a local mandate in Paris, so pointing out that the big spike in French cases after "masks required" is a load of nonsense. Paris only makes up 2 million people out of 60 million French. Whereas Melbourne is 25% of Australia's population. The mask laws in Australia thus covered a far higher proportion of the population than France. The issue is that patchwork or half-hearted mask wearing doesn't eliminate the virus, you need to have everyone consistently wearing masks for a few months, then everyone can stop wearing them. Hardly anyone bothers with masks now in Melbourne, I only wear one when inside the supermarket.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53934952

--ALEX-- said:
You know what?

I don’t fucking cares who lives and dies outside my little group anymore.

I’m soooo goddamn tired of all of this.

I’m tired of the people who don’t take it serious, I’m tired of anti-science retards, I’m tired of the conspiracy theories...all of it!

Zanbaka said:

This whole post is a prime example of cherry picking and goal post stretching. If the curve is flat after mask mandates as it was during summer, you ascribe it to mask wearing (even though there's a lot of other more plausible factors like the weather and some other measures), but when the curve goes up exponentially short after mask mandate, you ascribe it to the weather....Yep, that's some 5head logic right there.

Face masks can be made mandatory in a densely populated city provided that there are multiple areas with a high risk of COVID-19 contamination, France's high court said on Sunday.
...
But, they continued, the areas should be "limited -- and justified -- by the existence of multiple zones at high risk of contamination".
...
The decision came after lower courts in both cities said that the mask mandates had to be limited to streets and hours of the day when the cities were most crowded.

Zanbaka said:
We can discuss and interpret this ecological data all we want, but if we instead look at a higher quality evidence coming from the Danmask-19 study, we again see no significant effect of masking. When looking at the study participants who adhered better to the study protocol, this effect was even less pronounced. So in other words, the protective effect (if there is any) is miniscule at best.

Zanbaka said:
This whole post is a prime example of cherry picking and goal post stretching. If the curve is flat after mask mandates as it was during summer, you ascribe it to mask wearing (even though there's a lot of other more plausible factors like the weather and some other measures), but when the curve goes up exponentially short after mask mandate, you ascribe it to the weather....Yep, that's some 5head logic right there.

katsucats said:
I have gone through dozens of studies that show the effectiveness of masks, so I won't waste the time posting them to MAL again. The main problem here is the anti-maskers' scientific illiteracy. Take the Danmask-19 study for example, which was wrought with problems.

First, the null hypothesis was that there was a 2% infection rate in the population, but the variance was large enough that there was 95% confidence that masks reduced infections by 50% to it increasing infections by 20%. In other words, sample size was not large enough and was not controlled enough.

Second, the participants were not blind randomized, meaning the participants could not be considered an accurate sample of the overall population. (selection bias)

Third, only 46% of the participants recommended to wear a mask self-reported that they always wore a mask. There is no information on how many of the participants that were not given a recommendation wore a mask.

Fourth, the primary reason of wearing a mask is to protect others, and the study did not capture how much cross-infection occurred within the participants given the recommendation versus the ones that were not. Presumably, the same background population of mask wearers existed for both populations, which might explain the similar infection rates.

Fifth, the participants were only followed for one month, which means as much as half the infections escaped notice, since Covid has up to a 14 day incubation period.

The authors admitted all this in the study and also admitted that the study is inconclusive for determining whether there should be a mask recommendation, yet you claim "we again see no significant effect of masking", and "the protective effect ... is minuscule (sic) at best". That is NOT what the authors of the study observed.

There have been other studies that have PROVEN that masks

• Reduce the respiratory droplets that pass through it.
  
• Reduce the distance those droplets travel.
  
• Reduce cross-infection in a population.
  
• Reduce the Covid load a person is exposed to.
  

Of course, masks are just one facet of the recommendation, which includes the social distancing and avoiding public places where people gather, such as bars, restaurants, or grocery stores, as much as possible.

I think at this point it is safe to say anti-maskers find themselves among the kooks of anti-science conspiracy theorists that pick out and misrepresent needles in haystacks of studies that prove their effectiveness. They're exactly the same as anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers, and QAnons, especially when they go around disrupting businesses and handing out illegal flyers in the name of fake governmental entities.

It would be like finding that one study that says the world might be a simulation because of X, Y, Z, ignoring that X, Y, Z, and then presenting it as evidence for your boss not existing and you should be able to do whatever you want in the work place. This isn't hyperbole. That's practically what you're doing -- finding that one study and interpreting it in ways that author literally says not to. Every anti-masker I have ever encountered on the internet has a list of studies saved in a folder that he misrepresents.

P.S. Every scientist working on Covid had projected way in advance that there would be a sharp uptick of Covid in the winter due to people staying indoors and congregating for holidays (same reason this is flu season). This has nothing to do with whether people are wearing masks, although masks certainly would reduce the slope of that incline.

katsucats said:
You're conflating

• Correlation with causation
  
• People complying to mask mandates with the existence of mask mandates
  
• Local mask mandates with state-wide mask mandates
  
• Enforceable mask mandates with mandates that local police refuse to even enforce (e.g. in North TX and FL)
  

You're also using inaccurate information that you can't even cite. For example, California never instituted state-wide mask mandates until very late into the game. Much of the earlier Covid spread was in places where mask mandates were not well enforced, such as in conservative-leaning Orange County. I can't even see the dates on your graphs, nor what the vertical axis represents, but I know, seeing the shape of those graphs, they are very out of date and wrong.