"There have been a number of high-quality randomized controlled trials (RCTs) demonstrating that personal protective measures such as hand hygiene and face masks have, at best, a small effect on influenza transmission, although higher compliance in a severe pandemic might improve effectiveness."
The problem with the old, pre-Covid RCTs is compliance. You can give masks to kids in a dorm, but they are unlikely to wear them if the risk is small (e.g. seasonal flu) and there is no culture of mask wearing.
But when compliance is high, evidence suggests they are effective. One of the referenced studies:
In 154 households in which interventions were implemented within 36 hours of symptom onset in the index patient, transmission of RT-PCR-confirmed infection seemed reduced, an effect attributable to fewer infections among participants using facemasks plus hand hygiene (adjusted odds ratio, 0.33 [95% CI, 0.13 to 0.87]).
There is also the possibility that, on top of lower transmission, the severity of disease transfer is less because of lower viral loads. There are some data and conceptual reasons behind this hypothesis.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2026913Another data point is the fact that frontline healthcare workers working in high risk areas (concentrated active cases shedding virus and high-risk procedures for droplets and aerosols) and equipped with appropriate for risk equipment did not, at least on a large scale, develop disease as a result of nosocomial transmission.
Anybody tracking mRNA's vaccine trial enrollment rates? I am pretty upset that they used to enroll 4-5k patients per week but has been super slow since mid September. It is down to 2k a week and then 1k a week.
https://www.modernatx.com/cove-study
With nearly 3 million volunteers signed up for COVID vaccine trials, I don't understand why this is the case except for intentional delays.
i assume your thesis is that there is some kind of conspiracy going on to avoid meeting certain deadlines?
A few observations:
-Moderna is very highly motivated (too much?) to meet deadlines
-Moderna was looking for 30k 'volunteers' by September and adjusted their protocol of selection to better reflect the underlying population
-Without going into controversial issues, there are understandable reasons why certain communities may not volunteer as much because of a deficit in trust
-----
For those interested, concerning the vaccines, health disparities and especially excess mortality, JAMA has recently released (especially the October 12 issues) many interesting and impactful studies and commentaries.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/newonline
