Another Scoop Of Bullshit, With Sprinkles On Top

 h/t Granite Grok

Apparently, unable to help themselves, and tickling the confirmation bias of every "masks don't work" retard on the planet, some Norwegian numbnuts' have burped out another pointless non-study "study", full of more holes than an entire warehouse of Jarlsberg cheese. 

If you're going to consume something, we recommend
this choice unhesitatingly over what's in the header pic.

Notable is their forthrightness in telling you, right in black-and-white, what a load of crap they've excreted.

For bonus points, they waited until 2022 to do this, after COVID had transmogrified worldwide to, at worst, a bad flu, and normally, a 2-3 day cold. Wherein people who actually had it couldn't even tell it was anything to worry about. Genius, right there.

The parts of the self-reported survey no one reads down to that matter:

Additionally, there may be other factors that could confound the relationship between face  mask use and study outcomes, such as participants in high-risk professions or with risk factors for severe COVID-19. Both groups may be more or less prone to wear face masks, while also  observing different social distancing practices than the average population. We also cannot  rule reverse causality, in which those testing positive for COVID-19 were more prone to wear  masks afterwards in order to protect others. Finally, there could be an association between the  inclination to test and the propensity to wear a face mask.

So many of their "frequent" users could have been health care workers in close proximity to active COVID patients. Which screws the pooch decisively, all by itself. They performed no control for this. Then they mention the other two obvious reasons what they think they found is hogwash, so their imaginary "correlation" is so much worthless bullshit. Which they even told people from the outset in their intro summary:

We believe the observed increased incidence of infection associated with wearing a face mask is likely due to unobservable and hence nonadjustable differences between those wearing and not wearing a mask. Observational studies reporting on the relationship between face mask use and risk of respiratory infections should be interpreted cautiously, and more randomized trials are needed.

Thus, any similarity between what they claim to have found, and actual truth, is as likely due to witchcraft, or heavy use of psychedelic drugs while correlating their so-called "data". Monkeys throwing darts at a board would be more reliable. 

Well-played, weasel-word maestros.

And how many participants reported wearing a face mask all the time?

Of the participants, 852 (26.6%) reported using a face mask at least 75% of the time when near others outside their home, 861 (26.8%) reported using a face mask between 25% and 75% of the time, and 1,495 (46.6%) reported using a face mask less than 25% of the time.

So the answer to the question of who wore a face mask all the time is 0%.

They even told people this openly:

Owing to few responses for some of the categories, in our analysis we combined the response categories into: Always/Almost always; Often / Sometimes; and Almost never/Never. This was prespecified in the protocol.

Therefore, they combined that 0% with the 26.6% who wore a mask maybe 75% of the time when near others outside their home.

That's like combining steak and bullshit in equal proportions to make a meatloaf. Consume at your own risk.

Not studied: how many of them had close contact inside their home with friends and family who had COVID, and would likely have transmitted it to them, when nobody in the equation was wearing anything.

The greater point, as usual, is how many of those wearing masks were in proximity to those wearing none, when the whole point of any masking policy involving simple masks is that other people wear them to protect you, not the other way around.

They knew this too, yet continue to test seatbelts to see if they prevent car accidents, and test parachutes to see if they prevent plane crashes, in true anti-scientific jackhole bassackwards fashion.

With two university professors, a master's graduate, and a Ph.D. conducting this "research". Which is as reliable as a mall survey. And you wonder why college, worldwide, is simply shit?

They conclude by summarizing yet again all the ways their "research" is full of shit:

Our findings may be explained by several factors. A major limitation of our study is the non- randomized, cross-sectional study design. It may be that mask wearers were more prone to wear masks to protect others from their own infection. This reverse causality may explain the positive association between risk of infection and mask usage, and could be supported by the finding that participants reporting to wear masks also were more likely to test themselves for COVID-19. Furthermore, there may be other behavioral differences related to perception of  risk [26] or occupation that we did not observe, that are linked to the likelihood of wearing masks [27] or to the likelihood of being tested for COVID-19 when symptomatic. There is also the possibility that mask wearers feel somewhat protected and thus change their behaviors to not observe social distancing, so that any benefit of masking is offset by increased exposure. Lastly, our main outcome was based on self-report, which is also a possible source of bias.

Therefore, any similarity between what they published, and useful information is purely coincidental. Which makes you wonder WhyTF they even bothered to do it, other than to justify their rent checks, and to not be prosecuted for grant fraud, let alone skin-wasting and oxygen theft.

These witless wonders couldn't find their own asses with both hands, a map, and a rear-view mirror. But grant money was at stake, so more shit chowder for the Bubbas is once again on the menu.

And at the end, this pearl:

Recommendations to wear face masks in the community are largely informed by low certainty evidence from observational studies.

No shit, Sherlock.

IOW, TPTB, being even stupider than these educated idiots, made foolish decisions to implement jackassical policies which had no scientific basis, and no possibility of working, because 

a) they wanted to be seen "doing something", even if it was bag-of-hammers-stupid, with a 0% chance of success, like we told you from the outset, and

b) because the sort of people who become TPTB self-abuse themselves to fantasies of telling everyone else what to do, for their own good, no matter how stupid, pointless, and ill-informed those instructions are.

Short answer: in any crisis, ignore any so-called leaders who have no actual bona fides qualifications, any alleged "experts" they call on, and damned near anything they tell you to do that sounds even remotely suspect. And whenever possible, kill both categories before they can breed, for the good of the species.

Total number of "studies" that actually studied mask-wearing efficacy, since about EVER: still only one, AFAIK.

More grant money set on fire, and then flushed down the toilet.

Universities should pay professors to not inflict this sort of bullshit on the people, and dock them salary commensurate with any grant stipends they receive which plop this kind of pure bullshit in public. It's the only way they'll learn to stop doing it, short of kicking them in the dick 100 times a day for a week.

For the record, I'm in favor of that too.

But little steps, right?