In fact, recruitment to this study was done via the social media post shown below.
The long-term burden of COVID infections is... 1/4
an important scientific question.
We are not making progress on this question by overemphasizing the role of anecdotes
There is no technical reason why this cannot be answered using a scientific approach. A random sample of past COVID+ patients should be surveyed... 2/4
and examined at 3 months, 6 months, etc, and proper comparisons should be made (e.g., to other respiratory infections).
We are 9 months into the pandemic.
The importance we place on this problem should be reflected in the seriousness with which we approach it. 3/4
Inaccurate information in itself incurs health costs.
Before amplifying anecdotes, I would ask scientists to imagine an experiment in which we randomize people receiving COVID test results to read "long COVID" stories.
Would we expect no negative effects on health and QOL? 4/4
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The Bangladesh trial was a big lift and to date the only cluster randomized trial of masks to generate any publicly available data. Another pre-registered trial in Bangladesh by the same authors was suspended, and a pre-registered trial in Guinnea-Bissau never reported.
2/4
This unfortunately leaves us reading the tea leaves in this one completed study.
The ONS survey tracks reinfections through surveillance testing among its random sample of participants. Even though the recent Omicron waves, the observed reinfection rate has been 1 per thousand or so days.
As a growing number of people criticize continued restrictions on children and young people, the responses hurdled back are not defenses of still concealing faces from weeks-old infants or making 6 year olds eat lunch silently and wear masks while they learn to read, but this: 1/
Some are pure-style assertions that "these people are bad, dying is bad, COVID is not over, I am on the other team".
Others have gone full-blown connect-the-dots conspiracy, trying to uncover the mystery of why people care about young people's day-to-day experiences.
2/6
What I have not seen from many in the past months is a full-throated defense of the specific policies that children (and babies) are being been subjected to.
Who's for it!? Anyone? Or are we all against it, but sure that some of us are bad people against it in the wrong way?
3/6
1) The new phase of the trial still doesn't have any placebo intervention (like, say, education only).
One of the things our re-analysis of their previous study showed is that staff and participants were subject to big differences in study behavior. 2/8 arxiv.org/abs/2112.01296
The study found much larger effects on physical distancing than on COVID; in general, it seems likely that intervention villages are considerably more "COVID aware".
If we really care whether masks are actually helping, comparing, masks+education to education would make sense!
/
In the pandemic's 1st year, failing to focus resources and attention on the oldest+most vulnerable in society meant young people faced excessive restrictions that were senseless from a public health perspective.
In the 2nd year, it meant inordinate levels of preventable death.
As it discusses, the trials for a 2 dose vaccine in 6 mos-5 year olds failed. But now the FDA seems keen to just grant emergency use authorization anyways, while data from trials of a 3-dose regimen are still a ways out.
The next thing to watch for will be mandates for under 5's, for a vaccine under emergency use authorization in a low risk population whose only trial failed.
Meanwhile the US has some of the lowest vaccination and booster rates among the most vulnerable populations.
2/
I think it's a mistake to miss the connection between these.
We have confused people about risk, needlessly politicized our response, and tried to distract from crucial policy failures among high risk groups with policies aimed at children and young people.
3/