Originally Posted by
AntiPeter
That’s an interesting article with a lot of editorializing. It says, I think, we need to move beyond a “gold standard”, because there isn’t one yet. Why not?
From the article:
Denmark was one of the last nations to mandate face masks — requiring their use on public transport from 22 August. It has maintained generally good control of the virus through early stay-at-home orders, testing and contact tracing. It is also at the forefront of COVID-19 face-mask research, in the form of two large, randomly controlled trials. A research group in Denmark enrolled some 6,000 participants, asking half to use surgical face masks when going to a workplace. Although the study is completed, Thomas Benfield, a clinical researcher at the University of Copenhagen and one of the principal investigators on the trial, says that his team is not ready to share any results.
I wonder what Galileo felt like when he discovered the Earth was round?
What sets science apart from other ways of thought is it uses empirical data to test ideas and formulate new ones, if needed. When scientists refuse to release the only “gold standard” study on the subject I wouldn’t trust scientists any longer as they are behaving like politicians and religious leaders at that point.
In other news I was reading today the state German epidemiologist said “it’s time to prepare the public to accept an imperfect vaccine”. Those trials must not be going as well as many had hoped.
Eh, study complete and results analyzed and written up are presumably two different points in time. Unclear from the article whether they just haven’t made it to the point they’re ready to share data and conclusions or if they’re purposely hiding something. I suppose if you’re biased towards one answer over the other that’ll be your baseline scenario.
Also, FDA has said they’d approve a vaccine that was 50% effective (on par with most flu vaccines year to year), and Moderna and AstraZeneca are aiming for 60% and hoping for more. So it was always gonna be less than perfect in this first round unless someone hit home run on the first pitch swinging...not that it got sold that way in the media or by many in government.