A truly laughable attempt by @TracyBethHoeg to pretend the divisions this Nature article points to aren't between her and every other expert quoted. 🧵
Hoeg is first quoted saying the rates in schools aren't higher than rates in the communities a point the article is quick to distinguish from what actually matters: whether transmission is occurring in schools.
In a familiar move, Hoeg goes on to pretend the 2 *confirmed* transmission cases reported in a soon-to-be-published study, represent all of the cases that occurred in the schools. The article again is quick to call her bluff by bringing up the importance of surveillence testing.
Hoeg's bold claim that "American media" is perpetuating the falsehood that "Covid is dangerous", is quickly shot down by an entire paragraph devoted to Covid's dangers including how many kids it has killed, the possibility of MIS-C and Long Covid.
When Hoeg brings up her WaPo Op-Ed co-authored with @MonicaGandhi9, the article is quick to introduce us to an epidemiologist at the University of Texas "who found the op-ed unconvincing" because it "doesn’t give the full story”.
Even when the article does find someone for Hoeg to agree with, unsurprisingly @MonicaGandhi9, the article is nonetheless quick to point out the possibility that they are both wrong given the evidence out of the UK.
It would be nice to think Hoeg recognizes this "very well done article" is well done because it doesn't just point out Hoeg's cherry-picking, but demonstrates how not to do that: by presenting both the limitations of the data Hoeg relies on as well as the full body of evidence.
.@ShiraDoronMD et al argue against universal masking in healthcare based on 2 claims: 1) transmission risk from HCWs w/out symptoms is low 2) vaccination is sufficienly protective against hospital-acquired infection.
These claims are both knowably, provably wrong.
@AnnalsofIM
🧵
To establish their first claim, that the risk of transmission from HCWs without symptoms is low, the authors cite two sources: a) Killingley and b) Tayyar.
But a) Killingley does NOT show presymptomatic transmission risk is small. What Killingley actually shows is that, what the authors pass off as "minimal presymptomatic shedding," is consistent with **44% of transmission occuring presymptomatically**.
In honor of @TracyBethHoeg’s new anti-mask propaganda/preprint, I compiled her Tweets on mask studies into a textbook I’m calling, “Confounders: A Matter of Convenience.” It’s an expose of Hoeg’s bad faith hypocrisy. 🧵
Here’s the title page with a table of contents.
CHAPTER I:
HOW TO PROTEST PRO-MASK STUDIES
It's easy! Just complain the conclusion doesn’t hold because the data is confounded! 1. Eg. The Boston Mask Study
The moral panic over school closures has left us with problems more intractable than they were pre-pandemic because now, to solve those problems, we first have to dispel lies. That school is a preventative to suicide is a reprehensible distortion, but it is not the only one. 🧵
There is the hysteria over how closures hurt minorities the most which obscures that, for minorities, school is the source of a problem: the school-to-prison pipeline. nytimes.com/2020/10/28/opi…
There is the hysteria that closures are causing obesity which obscures the problem of fatty, nutritionally bankrupt cafeteria food. nypost.com/2019/11/16/the…
Following a lead in @mehdirhasan's receipt-riddled expose, I looked into FL's deadly summers but in terms of excess deaths (Hasan uses C0VID deaths) in the 10 US states with the highest percentage of seniors. Tl;dr: DeSantis won't be using these stats on the campaign trail. 🧵
The long list of concerns downplayers coopted for the sake of opening schools and then quickly abandoned: learning loss that didn't carry over to C0VID related cognitive declines, newsinfo.inquirer.net/1639956/omicro…
Shenoy et al urge abandoning universal masking on the grounds masks have little benefit & some harm. Yesterday I showed they're wrong about benefits. Today I show they're wrong about harms. Their strongest evidence favors masks. The rest has little relation to their ambitions. 🧵
In making the case that masks harm, the authors use three sources.
In Cormier et al patients & providers rate their masked & unmasked encounters in terms of communication difficulties. Using scales from 1-5 (patients) or from 1-6 (providers) participants are asked about eg. listening effort, ability to connect, understand & recall.