The CDC's Insistence on 'Universal Masking' in Schools Looks Less Scientific Every Day:

Townhall.com ^ | February 2, 2022 | Jacob Sullum

[Kaslin]

A recent NPR report quotes a Maryland mother who complains that you risk being tarred as "a psychotic, anti-vax right-winger" if you dare to question whether children should be forced to wear face masks in day care and K-12 schools. That attitude is based on the premise that rejecting mask requirements is tantamount to rejecting science.

The truth is closer to the opposite. Supporters of school mask mandates assume they are effective at reducing COVID-19 transmission, then desperately search for evidence to validate that conviction. That process bears little resemblance to science.

NPR says, "mask proponents ... point to the many studies associating mask mandates with lower COVID-19 rates in schools." But those studies are mostly imaginary.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began recommending "universal masking" in schools a year ago. At that point, there was no solid empirical basis for the CDC's advice, and that is still true.

Most of the studies cited by the CDC did not even compare schools with mask mandates to schools without them. One exception was a study of Georgia elementary schools published last May, which found that masking of teachers was associated with a statistically significant reduction in COVID-19 transmission, but masking of students was not.

A subsequent study, reported last September, found that "counties without school mask requirements experienced larger increases in pediatric COVID-19 case rates after the start of school compared with counties that had school mask requirements." But that study did not take into account vaccination rates or other COVID-19 safeguards, both of which are potentially important confounding variables. Since "this was an ecologic study," the researchers noted, "causation cannot be inferred."

Another study published the same day found that COVID-19 outbreaks were more common in Arizona schools that did not require masks. Again, that study did not control for vaccination rates or other mitigation measures, and critics pointed out various other weaknesses.

"You can't learn anything about the effects of school mask mandates from this study," Arizona State public health economist Jonathan Ketcham told science writer David Zweig. Noah Haber, a Stanford postdoctoral fellow who had co-authored a systematic review of research on COVID-19 mitigation measures, described the study as "so unreliable that it probably should not have been entered into the public discourse."

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky nevertheless repeatedly cited the Arizona study as proof that her agency's advice was well-grounded, and her slippery response to the criticism was revealing. During a Fox News appearance in December, she said "study after study" has "demonstrated that our layered prevention strategies, including masks in schools, are able to keep our schools safely open."

While those studies show that schools with mask mandates can operate "safely," they do not show that mask mandates are necessary to achieve that goal. Data from Florida, Tennessee, North Dakota, Texas, the U.K. and Spain suggest they are not.

Laboratory studies provide compelling evidence that masks -- especially N95 respirators -- can reduce virus transmission, assuming they are used properly. A randomized trial in Bangladesh found that surgical masks reduced COVID-19 cases by 11%, but cloth masks -- the kind most commonly used in schools -- did not have a statistically significant effect.

Uncertainty about the real-world impact of masking is compounded when mandates apply to children as young as 2, as the CDC recommends -- a stance that is extreme by international standards. And the theoretical, unsubstantiated benefits of school mask mandates have to be weighed against the burdens they impose, which include interference with communication, learning and social interaction as well as daylong discomfort.

That calculus should take into account the vanishingly low COVID-19 fatality rate among children (about 0.002%, according to the CDC); vaccines and treatments that dramatically reduce the risk of severe symptoms; and the availability of high-quality masks that immunocompromised children and adults can use to protect themselves from infection. In this context, the CDC's continued insistence on "universal masking" looks less scientific every day.

[mewzilla]

Tell it to NYS’s Gov. Hochul who wants to muzzle kids into perpetuity...

[LoveMyFreedom]

I say “Follow the Money”. How much are school districts getting from the Federal/State Governments!!!!

[mewzilla]

From 3 weeks ago...

https://gothamist.com/news/nys-health-department-recalls-250000-free-masks-given-teachers-and-libraries

The muzzles were KN95s. NYS knew they were inferior to N95s, but were handing them out anyway.

Until they got caught.

Continuing proof, as if it were needed, that CoupFlu has NEVER been about public health.

[mewzilla]

How much money is being laundered to the ChiComs...

[glennaro]

Anyone who still accepts at face value anything -- anything! -- that comes out of the CDC is a fool.

And anyone who still believes (or wishes with all their might) that wearing a mask will protect them from a respiratory virus is only fooling themselves.

[rlmorel]

There was never any “science” in it to begin with, and they all knew it.

Masking people unnecessarily for political purposes is one of the most egregiously damaging things they have done, most especially for young people who are still developing psychologically. We will not see the entirety of the corrosive effects of this for years.

One of the goals of the Left is to alienate people, cut them off from each other, which they have tried to do physically by quarantining, restricting movements, and making people fearful of being in the company of others.

This has a specific purpose, and that is to alienate people and disconnect them from society so they can be more easily manipulated and controlled.

The masking accomplishes this alienation by diminishing the way humans connect with each other when they are in the immediate vicinity of each other, using non-verbal communication. The eyes are important, but the mouth may be even more so.

Inhibiting the non-verbal communication by masking is intentional.

We will, as a society, someday reap what has been sown the last few years.

It isn’t normal to do this to people, especially young children.

And it isn’t human.

[rlmorel]

Yep. It is about the science of behavior control, not about the science of viral control.

[Sgt_Schultze]

We’re ANY of Fauci’s decrees accompanied by the “science” that supported those rules?

[MrRelevant]

Literally every bit of guidance we received from the CDC has proven to be nothing more than political theater and population control. Masks , lockdowns, vaccines.... nothing they told us would end the pandemic actually did. It prolonged the plague as planned.

[Lou L]

And it isn’t human.

Well said.

[rlmorel]

It breaks my heart for these kids.

And now, many of them are “conditioned”. You can see it in their eyes. They won’t go anywhere without their mask on, because that is how they have been brainwashed.

It fills me with incredible anger.

[backwoods-engineer]

Laboratory studies provide compelling evidence that masks -- especially N95 respirators -- can reduce virus transmission, assuming they are used properly. A randomized trial in Bangladesh found that surgical masks reduced COVID-19 cases by 11%, but cloth masks -- the kind most commonly used in schools -- did not have a statistically significant effect.

Also, they FAILED to distinguish between person-to-person viral transmission, and community transmission. If only ONE AIRBORNE VIRUS gets through your "Level 4 BioHazard" cloth mask, then that virus has the potential to infect. 11% reduction in cases is a JOKE. 11% is probably the error bar.

[EEGator]

Same.

[bk1000]

I am surprised that not a single school board member has been thrashed over this. You can only talk for so long to people who won’t listen.

[T.B. Yoits]

Less scientific? It was never scientific at all.

[GBA]

It’s taken long enough. It’s been scaredy cat Karen BS from the beginning.

Dust masks are helpful against dust and pollen, but not so much against a virus. It says so right on the box the masks come in. Doesn’t anyone read the label anymore?

Mask mandates to fight “COVID-19” are just another unhealthy, visual confirmation that we’re all afraid together and are all sheep together, because the mask doesn’t do what we are told it will do.

Not effective against a virus and not all that safe, either, especially not for kids stuck behind masks all day in school.

Mandated madness is what it really is and we got it bad.

The truth will set us free, but good luck finding that, Mother Hubbard. It’s nothing but bare, empty shelves as far as the eye can see.

[lightman]

It’s all about teaching COMPLIANCE….
...not “following the science”:

Masks are:

1) a sign of submission, subversion and subjugation
2) mandated in order to dehumanize
3) virtue signaling devices
4) meant to provide constant reinforcement of fear
5) used to destroy community, friends and family normal communication
6) implemented to create isolation, confusion, anxiety, destroy human connectivity, trust and interactions
7) mandated to exacerbate illness
8) intended to aid in the abandonment of the belief and reliance on our immune systems
9) intended to refute integrous science
10) signal to positions of power that you are willing to give up all of your rights and freedoms based on anything they say, even if it is a BIG FAT LIE!

[lightman]

ARTH ping.

[lightman]

The eyes are important, but the mouth may be even more so.

Lewinsky agrees.