Saturday Stories: Air And Masks
Why are we still only talking about these things? Where is the doing?
So two stories to share this week.
The first is on air. Indoor air. The kind that we absolutely have the technology to measure and clean. It’s dirty. We should clean it. And as with pretty much everything, not doing so disproportionately impacts low-income and marginalized communities. To read more, here’s Nature’s editorial Indoor air pollution kills and science needs to step up.
The second is on masks, or more specifically on the new Cochrane review on masks which as Gid MK points out, makes conclusions about mask use during COVID on the basis of non-COVID mask studies
C. Raina MacIntyre, Abrar Ahmad Chughtai, David Fisman, and Trisha Greenlaugh wrote a piece in The Conversation covering some of the methodological issues they saw in the Cochrane review with their basic conclusion being Yes, masks reduce the risk of spreading COVID, despite a review saying they don’t
Not covered in their piece are the conflicts of interest of some of the Cochrane review authors which are detailed in part in this tweet by Deepti Gurdasani and its replies (if you click through)
The mask debate is especially frustrating, though it’s not challenging to understand. On the one hand, physics is a real thing and masks absolutely work to decrease viral transmission and risk (this is a great video explaining how)
On the other hand, doing anything to try to reduce the transmission of a disease that the world seems hellbent to pretend is over has become deeply politicized and masks are the most visible non-pharmaceutical intervention we’ve got.
It would be easier for me to consider the anti-maskers’ position if its proponents were pushing as hard for standardized, measured, and monitored, ventilation and filtration improvements as they are against masks. That they’re not tells us all we need to know about them and the seriousness of their positions.
Have a great weekend!
Really enjoying these weekly posts Yoni :)