Multiple journals reject major mask study amid hints that it shows masks don't stop COVID

Just the News ^ | October 23,2020 | By Daniel Payne

[Hojczyk]

Results will be published "as soon as a journal is brave enough," researcher says.

Danish study has reportedly been ready for months

In spite of their now-ubiquitous presence in most of the Western world today, relatively little evidence exists to support widespread use of face-masking to prevent the spread of respiratory disease. A 2019 World Health Organization review of pandemic mitigation measures, for instance, found "no evidence" that face coverings helped to stop the spread of influenza.

Whether or not studies on influenza transmission can apply to COVID-19 is unknown; the disease's relatively recent emergence means that scientific studies on it are in short supply. Studies can take many month to secure funding, develop methodologies, carry out experiments, interpret the findings, write a research paper and get it peer-reviewed and published.

To bridge that gap, a team of Danish scientists earlier this year sought to carry out a major randomized controlled trial study to determine how effective masks might be at stopping COVID transmission. The study, begun in April, involved around 6,000 Danish citizens, half of whom wore face coverings during "normal behavior" and the other half of whom went without them.

The study concluded in June. Yet the Copenhagen newspaper Berlingske reported this week that it has been rejected by at least three elite medical journals so far — the Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, and JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"They all said no," Christian Torp-Pederson, one of the study's researchers, told the Danish newspaper this week. He added that the study's scientists "cannot start discussing what [the journals] are dissatisfied with, because in that case we must also explain what the study showed, and we do not want to discuss that until it is published."

[crusty old prospector]

Well, bless your heart. I don’t need to contribute anything. The evidence is all around you. Take your phone with you the next time you squat to pee and you can read all about it.

[crusty old prospector]

The one thing this death virus has accomplished is to separate the wheat from the chaff. I have found that there are many people with whom I don’t want to be in a foxhole.

[calenel]

“I don’t need to contribute anything.”

You’ve taken that to heart, for sure. You’re simply not up to contributing anything but STDs, crusty.

You might want to contemplate how often you change your underwear.

A good course in basic physics and basic biology might help your understanding of how masks work. Well, might help someone with an IQ above room temperature. Try it, unlikely as it seems, it might work out.

And bless your heart right back at you, sitzpinkler.

[crusty old prospector]

You seem to be a real smart lad. Riddle me this, o wise sage. If you can smell your farts with your feminine hygiene mask draped across your pie hole, how is it going to protect you from the death virus? And I don’t want to hear anything about droplets. If you can smell garlic coming from the stove, it ain’t stopping a virus.