The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to mislead Americans about the utility of masking schoolchildren. It recently released a study that was based on schools in Arkansas.
“Masks are effective at limiting transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, but the impact of policies requiring masks in school settings has not been widely evaluated (2–4),” the CDC claimed while providing weak evidence. “During fall 2021, some school districts in Arkansas implemented policies requiring masks for students in kindergarten through grade 12 (K–12).”
“Among 26 districts that switched from no mask policy to any policy (full or partial) during the investigation, COVID-19 incidences for student and staff members were higher than those in the community during the period with no mask policy,” the study claimed. “However, a week after implementation of a mask policy, the incidence among students and staff members decreased significantly… Although the incidence among community members decreased at the same time, there was a significantly higher rate of reduction in incidence among students and staff members compared with that in community members.”
The Washington Post heralded the ‘news’ to once again mislead readers on the purported effectiveness of school masking.
“Masks remain an important part of a multicomponent approach to preventing Covid-19 in K-12 settings, especially in communities with high Covid-19 community levels,” the study claimed.
Why Arkansas? Because the national data shows decisively that mask mandate policies failed to reduce spread in school systems.
Emily Burns and Joshua Stevenson used a national dataset to issue a study of their own — this one being an actual “large study.” Their findings debunk the sweeping claims being made by the CDC about mask efficacy in schools, while showing readers the data manipulation tricks that the CDC uses to lead less savvy readers to draw false conclusions.
“Since the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year, millions of students across the country have been attending school un-masked,” the authors state. “You’d think the CDC and others would be curious about the difference between masked districts and un-masked districts. Unfortunately, scientific curiosity is no longer a hallmark of the CDC—particularly as it pertains to children and masks.”
“But the data are there,” the authors note. “And as with so much in this pandemic, they tell a story different from the one the CDC is spinning.”
“Burbio.com has been tracking weekly mask status for the 500 largest school districts, comprising approximately 40% of the nations ~51 million public school students,” they continue.
“With these data in hand, the question is, ‘Is there a difference in the case rates between masked and un-masked districts?’”
“While we don’t have access to district level case rates, we can use the pediatric case rates at the county level as a reasonable proxy for the school case rates, as most children in a given county are in public schools, and most counties tend to be either masked or un-masked, not a mixture.”
“The result of that analysis is below,” they state. “As you can see, except for a slight edge in October, masked districts fare 2-4x worse than un-masked districts.”
Continue reading the full story [icon name=”arrow-right” prefix=”fas”] The CDC is Still Lying About Masking Kids in School: Its New ‘Study’ is Destroyed by National Data – Becker News