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Loretta Torrago Profile picture
Loretta Torrago
@Loretta_Torrago
I liked the world I thought I was in a lot better than the one I found myself in. @Loretta_Torrago@kolektiva.social Philosophy PhD Cornell
6 subscribers
Dec 30, 2023 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
.@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
🧵
Universal masking initially was adopted to target 2 potential risks. The first was transmission by asymptomatic but infectious persons. Killingley and colleagues (3) recently found minimal presymptomatic shedding after closely monitoring the trajectory of early infection among immune-naive human volunteers who were directly inoculated with SARS-CoV-2. Tayyar and colleagues (4) found that among asymptomatic hospitalized patients with positive results for SARS-CoV-2 on polymerase chain reaction testing, only 9% had potentially infectious virus. The second risk was mitigating poor health outco... 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. Image
Jul 28, 2023 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
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. 🧵 Hoeg Tweet announcing her new preprint. Here’s the title page with a table of contents. CONFOUNDERS: A MATTER OF CONVENIENCE! A Pseudoscience Textbook by @TracyBethHoeg CHAPTER I: HOW TO PROTEST PRO-MASK STUDIES USING CONFOUNDERS CHAPTER 2: HOW TO TURN A PRO-MASK STUDY INTO AN ANTI-MASK STUDY USING CONFOUNDERS
Jul 20, 2023 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
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…
May 27, 2023 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
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. 🧵 Using June to end September (to account for reporting delays), here is how FL's summer of 2020 ranks in terms of the 10 oldest states. 💀 Florida is 2nd highest behi...
May 26, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
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… or air quality issues.
Apr 22, 2023 • 16 tweets • 6 min read
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. 🧵 Title: "Universal Mask... In making the case that masks harm, the authors use three sources. Lee E, Cormier K, Sharma A...
Apr 20, 2023 • 19 tweets • 7 min read
Why say masks "*MAY* marginally reduce" transmission when, ACTUALLY, the reduction isn't marginal? Why restrict consideration of the benefits of masks to just COVID when other diseases, also interrupted by masks, mean the benefit is cumulative? I have questions.🧵 Screenshot of article with ... The "may" in masks "may MARGINALLY reduce" is meaningless: masks *may* also MASSIVELY reduce. The range of what *may* happen is wide, but narrowed by what actually happens. So, what actually happens? The authors don't say but I will. Text with boxes around cita...
Mar 17, 2023 • 65 tweets • 19 min read
Controls that mask ≈ mask arms.
Effects diluted by concomitant mitigations.
Masking that begins:
*after infectiousness,
*where the case is, not where the infected air is.
Would you believe what Cochrane really shows is:
As masking increases, infection decreases? 🧵 Screenshot of article title: "Cochrane Library: Physical Interventions to Interrupt or Reduce the Spread of Respiratory Viruses." The Cochrane Review included 18 RCTs “focused on masks:” List of studies as provided in Cochrane. https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub6/references
Feb 21, 2023 • 22 tweets • 7 min read
In tributes to his compassion & calls for action, today's @peste honors Paul Farmer's legacy. In contrast, in yesterday's newsletter, Emily Oster wondered why more of us aren't indifferent & why people are still afraid given the protection of all-the-things-we-haven’t-done. 🧵 Photo of Emily Oster alongside an altered heading that has b Oster begins her newsletter with the inconsistencies that let us know she’s lying. Having positioned herself in the “COVID is over” camp, she quickly realizes she’s writing about it which, to the astute reader, indicates it’s not. Screenshot of headline of Oster's newsletter. It reads, &quo
Feb 10, 2023 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Oh, look! The GBD has spawned "The Norfolk Group":
consisting of Jay Bhattacharya, Leslie Bienen, Ram Duriseti, Tracy Beth Høeg, Marty Makary, Martin Kulldorff, Margery Smelkinson and Steven Templeton.
So, what does this group do? 🧵 Photographs of the members of The Norfolk Group as listed. They ask questions of course. Now, you might have a favorite question, but don't overlook what these questions have in common: They are challenging things that never happened! My favorite thing that never happened? List of questions that can be found in the link.
Jan 21, 2023 • 15 tweets • 6 min read
To make her case that COVID deaths are overcounted, Leana Wen leaned on Shira Doron, MD. But Doron denies Wen's most controversial claims: that incidental COVID is added to death certificates & that 2) “the total death toll” is an overcount. This makes Wen's claims baseless. 🧵 Screenshot of Wen's WaPo articles' headlines. The first is: As Doron explains, COVID deaths can include deaths within 30 days of a + test. “That’s how the incidentals get in there” she says. Get in where though? Screenshot of Shira Doron’s Tweet. It reads, “I agree wi
Jan 8, 2023 • 20 tweets • 6 min read
Urgency of Normal has partnered with "Restore Childhood" aka "Iamanatimasker" whose videos document real life testimonials on the negative impact of masks. I watched, so you don't have to. 🧵iamanantimasker.com/stories First up is antimask Audra, mom of kids with food allergies. Masking them, Audra tells us, prevents "a teacher or a caregiver from seeing any type of allergic reaction." What types? Audra explains: "Full body hives, From video, Audra with the ...
Dec 2, 2022 • 19 tweets • 5 min read
Emily Oster's Substack has reached a150K subscribers. To honor her milestone (!) nothing's more appropriate than a 🧵of things happening to kids that Oster has yet to bother herself with. First up, a Tweet from a Pediatric EM Physician announcing: No inpatient beds! Tweet from Emily Oster anno... Pediatric Covid deaths near the 2K mark.
Nov 7, 2022 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
In her 2007 Ted talk, Emily Oster claimed sexual behavior didn't change in Africa despite AIDS because Africans knew they'd die young anyway. Her talk combined two of her trademarks: bad data & the view that people don't change their own behavior just to avoid killing others. 🧵 This chart, from her Ted talk, is how Oster justifies her claim that sexual behavior in Africa was unchanged despite HIV. That, in turn, is how she justifies her claim that Africans don't care whether they live or die (or infect others). Notice anything? Bar graphs of the sexual be...
Nov 4, 2022 • 17 tweets • 6 min read
Plotting score declines against school openness revealed the same thing over and over: how much time a state's students spent in remote had mostly NO relationship to that state's decline in average test scores from 2019 to 2022. A story in 9 graphs. 🧵 Logo of The Nation's Report Card First, real quick: I got scores for each state's openness from Burbio. I got the score declines from the NAEP website. I made scatter plots for different categories including 8th/4th grade math/reading.


about.burbio.com/school-opening…
nationsreportcard.gov/reading/states…
nationsreportcard.gov/mathematics/st…

Burbio's bar graph of the states in descending order of openness. Wyoming is most open, California least open.
List of states with their openness scores (out of 100) in descending order. Wyoming and Arkansas are most open at 100 and 97 respectively and Maryland, Oregon and California, all with the score of 20, are least open.
Oct 29, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
NAEP scores for 8th grade math go up as deaths go down. The correlation between scores and deaths/100K is stronger for 8th graders than it is for 4th graders. This makes sense: 8th graders are likely more aware of the grim toll of the pandemic than 4th graders. 🧵 Scatter plot showing the relationship between NAEP 8th grade Here is the plot for 4th grade math scores and deaths/100K. As for 8th grade, as deaths go down, scores go up, but the correlation is less strong for 4th graders than it is for 8th graders. Scatter plot showing the relationship between 4th grade math
Oct 14, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Fresh off a WH visit in a room equipped with *3* HEPA filters & where *testing was required*, @J_g_allen happily tells employees to ask their companies to make "the clean air" pledge. But, back in September, when teachers' unions wanted better air for *children* Allen was irate. Two Joseph Allen Tweets. The first, from yesterday, October Let's face it: it's not "scrutiny" Allen was hoping to inspire calls for. Rather, Allen's goal was to incite public outrage over teachers demanding, on behalf of *the children they serve*, adequate classroom ventilation.
Oct 13, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
"Today’s recollections regarding remote learning & school closures make sense only by minimizing ... the virus then & by all but completely ignoring the concerns of Black and brown parents."
It's worse, though, than minimizing & ignoring.🧵
newyorker.com/news/essay/who… When ignoring didn't get Black families into unsafe schools, "Black parents [were] infantilized as ignorant or depicted as irrational." To that end, a pathology, school hesitancy, was invented & defined in terms of Black parents ignoring (mostly) Emily Oster's concocted data. Photo of Emily Oster alongside a banner that reads, "Co
Oct 11, 2022 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
Why are kids subjected to anything less than what the WH & guests avail themselves of? In the room: 3 HEPA filters, tests beforehand & what you hear from @j_g_allen is: kids don't need masks. Of course they do, at least until they have available to them the same "tools" you have. Unmasked Joseph Allen at WH... For leading by example, thank you to @CorsIAQ. Masked Richard Corsi at WM ...
Oct 5, 2022 • 10 tweets • 6 min read
While @TheAtlantic's guest writers pen indulgent essays that insist a better pandemic is possible if only we gave up caring in exchange for unburdened frolicking, @edyong, the adult in the room, calls out entitled indifference for its murderous impact. 🧵
theatlantic.com/health/archive… Despite a safety net w/holes drilled by racism & underfunding, @drlucymcbride, @ProfEmilyOster, @DrleanaWen & @MSmelkinsonPhD advocate abandoning mitigations to return to a pre-pandemic normal in which the US lost "~626,000 people more than expected [for] its size & resources." Photos of Lucy McBride, Emily Oster, Leana Wen and Margery S
Aug 28, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The spectacular backfiring of "The Urgency of Normal". "The U.S. needs people to take this vaccine because it has nothing else. But its residents are unlikely to take it, because they’re not doing anything else." 🧵theatlantic.com/health/archive… As @asosin says, there’s an “increasing incoherence in our response”. Some of it is, as she puts it, our “Field of Dreams” approach in which "we have the tools” but no money for implementation.