Free Republic

Comment: The following review of the scientific literature on wearing surgical and other facemasks as a means of preventing the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and thus preventing contraction of 'Covid-19' was published a month ago. And absent some miraculous suspension of decades of hard science on the transmission of viruses, it's settled... face mask Abstract Masks and respirators do not work. There have been extensive randomized controlled trial (RCT) studies, and meta-analysis reviews of RCT studies, which all show that masks and respirators do not work to prevent respiratory influenza-like illnesses, or respiratory illnesses believed to be transmitted by droplets and...

What if we compared the mortality rate of influenza and coronavirus using only confirmed cases (no estimates)? People seem to like to use a ~0.1% mortality rate for seasonal flu when comparing it to coronavirus. This 0.1% figures includes all of the estimated influenza cases in the US, using modeling, which dramatically lowers the mortality rate. The same modeling/estimating is never applied to coronavirus. What happens when we only use confirmed cases for each and eliminate the models and estimates for total cases? Per the CDC the number of CONFIRMED seasonal flu cases this year in the US is 222,552...