Sciency Isn't Science

h/t WRSA

You're getting this because CA at WRSA posted the link: Nurse Claire's List Of Totally Irrelevant Mask Studies, or some such codswallop. We've been over this ground before with another list, years back, but with Covidiocy preparing to spike, we decided to fisk the following list of "studies" (for some value of that word). 

CA: We changed our mind about waiting until tomorrow. But as you'll see, we've got blog-fodder for another week, at least.

Caveatum:

1. All masking policies are beyond fucktardedly stupid and pointless, because people are idiots, and won't comply with any number of common sense rules (cf. drinking and driving, playing with loaded weapons, etc.), which dooms any idea, no matter how smart or stupid, but requiring 100% compliance, to abject and total failure, by any possible measure which could be imagined or concocted. No one gives a flying fuck about anyone's Good Intentions. People are morons.

2. TPTB, at all levels, demanding the use of a policy that 90% of them were too stupid to know wouldn't work, and 10% of them knew, but demanded anyways, was alternately grossly retarded, or manifestly evil. The latter should be dug out, hunted down, and executed by flamethrower, in front of live audiences. The Merely Stupid should only be head-shaved with hedge clippers, stripped, hot-tarred and feathered, and run out of town on a rail.

3. Just because someone has degrees or credentials after their name, it doesn't make them right. Just because people in white coats, using clipboards, and working in a lab say they found something, it doesn't make it science. Just sciency. Case in point:

Which is why we're not claiming we're right because credentials, or any other fallacious and bare appeal to authority; we're taking the time to show you simply and specifically where these studies (every one of them, we suspect in advance of looking at them) are exactly the load of triceratops squeeze shown at the header. We promise you, it isn't hard to find, or see, and you don't need five minutes of college time to spot it.

4. The way you test a theory is to eliminate variables (which create uncertainty, potentially to the point of uselessness of the entire study), so that you're only testing the exact thing at issue. Ideally, you eliminate all but one. And to actually test what you think you're testing. If you don't do that, or nearly so, a) you're a moron; b) your "study" is amalgamated horseshit; c) any "peers" that reviewed it and passed it along are dumber than you are, and can't recognize shit from Shinola.

Under those ground rules, let the games begin.

1) Measuring the quantity of harmful chemicals inhaled through masks

Aesop summary: "We tested 14 different types of mask. All but a few produced negligible amounts of anything harmful. When that didn't work, for the worst offenders, we heated the masks, starting at 30° C(104° F., a point at which infants may have febrile seizures), and kept going until we got some action." Most of the masks, especially the reuseable cotton ones, showed no VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) to speak of at any temperature. The plastic-based disposable ones, especially once heated beyond body temperature, in a few instances, had some outgassing of VOCs." 

Money quote: "the concentration levels of the hazardous chemicals (VOCs) detected were very low, nearly 100-1000 times less than the recommended exposure limits set by NIOSH".

Damn. That'll leave a mark. The survey authors just shot themselves in the head, right there in front of you.

Conclusion: This tells you nothing about mask safety, let alone the contention that they do not work to stop the spread of aerosolized viruses - which was only Nurse Claire's entire point - except that disposable masks should be disposed of, and you probably shouldn't wear them a lot if you're in a desert - like the Sahara - on a sunny day.

One idiotic study down, 50 more to go. Get a cold beverage, and order takeout. We'll be at this all day week.

2) The operating room environment as affected by people and the surgical face mask

Actual Abstract:

The microbiological counts were determined in an operating room suite of 8 rooms and a hallway. The bacterial counts in an empty operating room jumped statistically from 13 CFU/ft2/hr (+/- 31) to 24.8 (+/- 58.8) when the doors were left open (people in the hallways) and 447.3 (+/- 186.7) when 5 people were introduced. The wearing of a surgical face mask had no effect upon the overall operating room environmental contamination and probably work only to redirect the projectile effect of talking and breathing. People are the major source of environmental contamination in the operating room.

Aesop summary: "48 years ago, we did a study in one OR. We didn't even look at viruses, only bacterial counts. People bring germs. We didn't try the environment with and without surgical masks, because if we'd tried doing surgery without face masks in 1975 we'd have been burned at the stake for mental retardation and patient harm, so we have no wild idea whether masks help, or make no difference. So we're going with them making no difference, because we could pull that out of our asses without getting called on it by anyone smart enough to catch it. Also, we didn't look at patient outcomes; bacterial counts were arrived at by swabbing surfaces, which no one gives a flying fuck about contaminating, because they're not. the. patient!"

Conclusion: Another pointless "study" - from when Marcus Welby was still a doctor on TV! - that tells you Jack and Shit about the efficacy of masks to work to stop the spread of aerosolized viruses, and which, in fact, didn't even study viral transmission in any way, shape, or form, nor pretend to. Is Nurse Claire retarded, or just too fucking lazy to read her own "sources"? One can but wonder. You decide.

We may take up drinking if we have to do 50 more of these. As Nurse Claire evidently did before she PubMed-trolled them out of her underpants.

Post your over/under guesses in Comments about how many more  of these idiotic non-applicable "studies" we'll wade through before we get a single one with relevant information, sound methodology, real-world validity, or even street-corner common sense on the topic they're supposed to all be addressing. Nurse Claire is batting 0.000 so far.

My heart says this is a shut-out, but my head is keeping an open mind.

3) The efficacy of standard surgical face masks: an investigation using "tracer" particles 

Abstract:

To examine the efficacy of currently used synthetic-fiber disposable face masks in protecting wounds from contamination, human albumin microspheres were employed as "tracer particles," and applied to the interior of the fact mask during 20 operations. At the termination of each operation, wound irrigates were examined under the microscope. Particle contamination of the wound was demonstrated in all experients. Since the microspheres were not identified on the exterior of these face masks, they must have escaped around the mask edges and found their way into the wound. The wearing of the mask beneath the headgear curtails this route of contamination.

Aesop summary: "Forty-three years ago, we took a look at neither bacteria nor viral penetration of surgical masks, but rather applied human albumin, which is a pure liquid. We observed no penetration of the mask membrane by this whatsoever, but "somehow"(! - Magic? Unicorns pooping fairy dust? The Flying Spaghetti Monster? The Underpants Gnome? Stay tuned...), all wounds in all surgeries were contaminated. Except when full-face shields were worn outside the masks, which number we do not state, and did not specify, so when we said "all surgeries" showed contaminated, we really meant only SOME surgeries showed contamination, none of which we specify. So this is all crap, mathematically.

In a setting where surgeon's face and open wound were inches apart, 1'-2' at most, rather than the 6' during Covidiocy. And we studied exactly zero applicability of this with regard to viruses, spit, or any other thing related to COVID. Sorry about that."

Study showing mask efficacy to work to slow the spread of aerosolized viruses? O for three.

Look, I have nothing personally, for or against Nurse Claire. And I didn't lie. I'm going to slog through every last one of these pointless exercises in "has nothing to do with the topic", unless and until Nurse Claire comes on here in comments, and says "Uncle! I give up. I didn't read any-fucking-one of these studies, I just dredged them up from PubMed out of sheer laziness." Or words to that effect.

(If you did read them, and posted them anyways, you have our earnest recommendation that you go back to your school of nursing, and slap the living shit out of your instructors, particularly the ones who taught nursing research, and demand a refund of tuition. Word to your mother.)

But foisting them on our own readership here in one go borders on crimes against humanity. That, we refuse. (FFS, just looking at the first three of them is kicking my ass at the moment. But it's been a long day.)

And, what the hell, this is only the first 3 of 51 such butt-nuggets. Barely over 5% off the final score! This could turn around, it really could. There's got to be a pony under this horseshit somewhere!

We expect to explore entire new frontiers of the multitudinous ways in which so much can go wrong in so many ways with these inane "studies", without advancing the thesis one millimeter forward, or advancing the realms of medical knowledge to the tune of so little as one wet fart.

Which is why 90% of all studies are non-reproduceable (that means they're total bullshit), and why most conclusions found in them always support the party or side that funded them.

So at this rate, we'll be doing 16 more posts like this, probably one or two a day, until this horse is well and truly beaten to death, and flogged into molecules.

All masking policy has been absolutely stupid.

The only thing stupider remains the exact people running around like headless chickens, clucking "Masks Don't Work! Because SCIENCE! Buck-awk!"

Polly wants a bitch-slap? Wish: Granted. Achievement Unlocked.

But wait! There's more!