[Gail zuwala]

Fun to read. Masks definitely work well for judgement and opinion. Two things that data (if not these forums) shows we humans are definitely good at.

Having spent most of my life in data science, my opinion is that there is no data whatsoever. Not even the tiniest, qualified, clean (unadulterated) dataset to qualify almost any opinion about COVID pandemic mitigation or almost anything else to do with it. (The exception is Coronavirus treatment which is panned universally for unknown reasons.) CNN nor CDC are datasets so don’t bother posting a link to more opinion and judgement unless it contains the source raw data reference to consume and reproduce. I know it’s unbelievable after 3 years, right? I thought we were smarter too. It isn’t there because even when data is acquired it’s unqualified or useless when compared to other data taken even in the same facility like a hospital often because standards do not exist for capturing information. Some examples (there are many); Fauci’s recent faux pas about child hospitalization and varying cause of death on certificates. Social judgement of waiters and conflicting opinions are the result of bad or lack of data. In fact apologies are happening almost daily for data or lack thereof.

Good data makes things happen. Take identifying Omicron in Africa very quickly as a good example. DNA databases are good data and an demonstrates that we have proficiency. Hard if not impossible to get judgement, politics, and opinion into the data map of a strand of DNA. For the record, that success really is science and not the kind we here as in “based on” lately.

So back to restaurant masks, is there a controlled study (data) that compares a masked waitstaff to unmasked? High level, I realize but lead me to data and I can figure it out. Which restaurants have had the most or least number of customer infections? How many nurses caught COVID in a hospital wearing PPE vs out at dinner? How many people actually have had covid? How many waitstaff versus the rest of the population? How many self identified via at home tests? How many were false positive or negative?

I’m not judging you for wearing a mask or not because I’m not even sure what it does for you or me. I’ve got nothing for data (yep, I’ve seen the “studies”) other than some great YouTube video showing potential sputum. It grosses me out even if we don’t have COVID to worry about. ������