November 2020 was a busy month for published scientific research that could have undermined developing COVID-19 policies, if released a few months sooner.
That’s when the CDC divulged that Red Cross blood samples from the previous winter revealed that 2% of donors from the West Coast had COVID antibodies in mid-December 2019, raising the question of how “15 days to slow the spread” could work in March 2020.
The researchers behind a Danish randomized controlled trial (RCT) of mask-wearers that ended in June 2020 finally reported their findings — no effect on infection rates — five months later after struggling to find a major publisher.
The first update of mask meta-research in nine years, covering studies through January 2020, also finally came out 10 months later, likewise showing no effect on respiratory infections.
That review’s findings were reaffirmed in an update last week by the same group of specialists in charge of “acute respiratory infections” for Cochrane, an international research collaborative often deemed the “gold standard” of evidence-based medicine.
An ARI group member had harsh words for Cochrane in an interview Sunday with medical scientist-turned-journalist Maryanne Demasi, accusing the U.K.-based medical charity of stifling and undermining his group’s 2020 review to minimize its impact on developing COVID policies.
Hellbound and Down 