THREAD

The UNT report cited in this article has been frequently referenced by other reporters and Gov. Abbot. Its validity has seemingly been taken without question, but there seems to be some potential problems that make it unreliable. https://twitter.com/GregAbbott_TX/status/1287552228102778880

To be clear, this isn’t a judgment on the validity of masks itself—more research still needs to be done on it.

I haven't looked into the other studies mentioned in the article above, which may do a better job at showing the usefulness of masks in certain situations.

The first thing that struck me odd when I first saw the report was its format. I expected something akin to a research paper from an academic journal. Instead, it’s in the format of a powerpoint presentation: https://www.unthsc.edu/newsroom/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/COVID-19-report-July-20-updated.pdf

I emailed Dr. Rajesh Nandy, who wrote the report, to make sure I had the right link. He quickly replied and said that I did. He told me that he expected the report “to be published in a peer reviewed journal, but the process takes some time.”

Knowing that I wasn’t missing something important, I had some other concerns about the data presented. Namely, it didn’t appear to take into consideration the number of people in a given region who have already been infected with COVID-19.

For example, it examines the effectiveness of statewide mandates by comparing states that had a mandate before June and those that didn’t, but most of the latter (e.g. Texas, California, and Florida) hadn't seen drastic spikes at that point yet, while the former had.

While there are still many uncertainties about the virus, it seems odd to not acknowledge that most states with the mandate in May had already seen a substantial number of cases while most others had only seen a fraction of that.

For example, on May 31, New York had 370,770 cases per Bloomberg—that’s 1.91 % of the state’s population.

Texas had 64,287—0.22% of the population.

Similarly, it criticized Collin County for not enforcing the mask mandate, comparing projections to Denton, Dallas, and Tarrant.

As of the date the report was published, 0.52% of Collin’s pop. had been infected, compared to 0.55 of Denton, 1.51 of Dallas, and 1.01 of Tarrant.

I sent a follow-up email to Dr. Nandy last week and asked if these variables or any others not mentioned in the study were taken into consideration. I have not received a reply yet.

To the question of: “Has the mask mandate been effective locally?” the report stated, “The answer is a resounding ‘Yes.’”

Regardless of any explanation to my questions, this is a bold assertion to make, especially for someone in academics.

Resounding judgments about causation when there are many unknown factors at play should be taken with a giant grain of salt.

Masks may be helping, or the virus may be slowing just as it would if they were not mandated.

But better, more thorough research will need to be conducted before that conclusion can be reached—from an “expert” the media cites or anyone else.