By Matthew Vadum
Protective-mask mandates aimed at combating the spread of the CCP virus that causes the disease COVID-19 appear to promote its spread, according to a report from RationalGround.com, a clearinghouse of COVID-19 data trends that’s run by a grassroots group of data analysts, computer scientists, and actuaries.
Researchers examined cases covering a 229-day period running from May 1 through Dec. 15 and compared the days in which state governments had imposed mask mandates and the days when they hadn’t.
In states with a mandate in effect, there were 9,605,256 confirmed COVID-19 cases, which works out to an average of 27 cases per 100,000 people per day. When states didn’t have a statewide order—including states that never had mandates, coupled with the period of time masking states didn’t have the mandate in place—there were 5,781,716 cases, averaging 17 cases per 100,000 people per day.
In other words, protective-mask mandates have a poor track record so far in fighting the coronavirus. States with mandates in place produced an average of 10 more reported infections per 100,000 people per day than states without mandates.
“The reverse correlation between periods of masking and non-masking is remarkable,” RationalGround.com co-founder Justin Hart tweeted on Dec. 20.
The 15 states that went without a statewide mask mandate for the duration of the analysis were Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Wyoming, Daniel Horowitz notes in an explainer at Conservative Review.
The analysts allowed the mandate states a 14-day grace period from the time of implementation in order to begin counting cases against mask efficacy in order to arrive at accurate results.
Supporters of the protective-mask mandates might say that the mandates were often imposed once cases already spread quickly, so there’s a negative bias of increased cases in those areas (or times) that had mandates in place, but there was “no evidence of any reduction in cases or even better outcomes many weeks later,” Horowitz writes.
RationalGround.com researcher Ian Miller discovered that three counties in Florida—Manatee, Martin, and Nassau—that let their mandates expire, had fewer cases per capita than those counties that kept the mandate.
Full story here: Source: Study: Mask Mandates Increase Rates of COVID Compared to States with No Mask Mandates – Vaccine Impact