It’s been a crazy busy week, so I took the night off to watch Bluey with my girls. I’ll be back Monday with a State of Affairs. (I think we are already starting to see the impact of Thanksgiving.) I also promised people a long COVID update. It’s coming.
This week my brilliant PhD student successfully defended her dissertation!! Also, I spoke at INFORMED: Conversations on Democracy in the Digital Age, where I opened my notes on a stage and was surprisingly greeted by my 2 and 3 year old. On. Every. Single. Page. Couldn’t read a thing. But worth it.
I’ll leave you with this quick 15-minute presentation followed by a rich Q&A with Dr. Bob Wachter. We covered variants, boosters, masks, "triple-demic," long Covid, YLE, and scientific communication. This was hosted by the University of California San Fransisco, Department of Medicine Grand Rounds. (For those unfamiliar, Grand Rounds are typically held at teaching hospitals to help healthcare professionals keep up to date in evolving areas which may be outside of their expertise.)
Have a wonderful weekend, YLE
“Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE)” is written by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, MPH PhD—an epidemiologist, data scientist, wife, and mom of two little girls. During the day she works at a nonpartisan health policy think tank and is a senior scientific consultant to a number of organizations, including the CDC. At night she writes this newsletter. Her main goal is to “translate” the ever-evolving public health science so that people will be well equipped to make evidence-based decisions. This newsletter is free thanks to the generous support of fellow YLE community members. To support this effort, subscribe below:
Good conversation, a few notes:
1) Nice to see you explore viral interference, would like a longer post/dive into that after you wrap up your upcoming Long Covid post. I think if you dispassionately explore the evidence, flu disappeared in places without masks just masked places in 2020 so I hope you reevaluate your hypothesis. It's not like Flu surged in Sweden, Florida, and South Dakota while remained at bay in California, South Korea, or Germany. Additionally, almost everyone at that time in 2020 was using homemade cloth masks, occasionally surgical masks, few if any n95 - we now know the efficacy of those are very poor so I don't see how to conclude that masking impacted flu in 2020. Open to evidence of course.
2) Around 33 minute mark you comment: "I keep thinking of 'why does my surgeon wear a mask when I am in surgery' you know, it must do something, it has to work".
Surgeons don't wear masks to prevent spreading viruses. You can verify this easily by realizing that your surgeon was not wearing his/her mask during consultation, preop, postop, or follow-ups when rounding.
They wear masks to reduce chance of bacterial infection at the surgical site, as after the risk of the surgery itself and anesthesia, post operative infections are the biggest threat and why prior to the adoption of aseptic principles and antibiotics surgery was often a death sentence.
Prior to Covid, several studies were done to assess if the surgical mask reduced bacterial infections, and it turned out they did not [1][2][3]. Out of a combination of tradition- like the business man who wears a tie even though it offers no function - it conveys seriousness, and, the fact surgeons are regularly getting sprayed with blood and bodily fluid, the mask was worn, but it was never about stopping the surgeon from giving the flu to the patient. That is a post-hoc story invented in 2020 which has no basis in reality.
For example, here is my wife, a vascular surgeon, grinning ear to ear with a patient who finally got discharged following a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm he suffered over the previous Thanksgiving (and if you are familiar with the morbidity of the AAA, it is absolutely amazing she was able to save him). Since this was pre-March 2020, neither were wearing masks outside of the OR, but you can be damn sure she had one on while blood spewed everywhere in her desperate attempt to save him. Had to throw out that pair of scrubs and shoes! :)
https://imgur.io/a/X2ePJIR
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[1] Postoperative wound infections and surgical face masks: A controlled study
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01658736
"It has never been shown that wearing surgical face masks decreases postoperative wound infections. On the contrary, a 50% decrease has been reported after omitting face masks. The present study was designed to reveal any 30% or greater difference in general surgery wound infection rates by using face masks or not"
"Masks may be used to protect the operating team from drops of infected blood and from airborne infections, but have not been proven to protect the patient operated by a healthy operating team"
[2] Unmasking the surgeons: the evidence base behind the use of facemasks in surgery
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC4480558/
"In the modern era, there has also been a scarcity of experimental evidence to support the effectiveness of facemasks in the prevention of surgical site infections. The earliest retrospective studies7 failed to demonstrate any statistically significant improvement in surgical site infection rates following the use of masks. "
[3] Disposable surgical face masks for preventing surgical wound infection in clean surgery
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24532167/
"Three trials were included, involving a total of 2113 participants. There was no statistically significant difference in infection rates between the masked and unmasked group in any of the trials."
I am sorry that your work and your blog to help us through our concerns with COVID have caused harassment and threats. I do not understand the mindset of people any more. This should not be happening. If someone is not interested in the information, just do not read it, not harass people who are helping many of us.