From Wirepoints, reprinted with permission:
CDC squelched its own study showing masks ineffective for kids in schools. Answers needed. – Wirepoints Quickpoint
Friday’s column in New York Magazine is a must-read for those following the controversy over masks in K-12 schools.
In May, as the column says, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a large-scale study of COVID transmission in American schools.
It concluded that masking then-unvaccinated teachers and improving ventilation with more fresh air were associated with a lower incidence of the virus in schools. “The fact that they seem to work is reassuring but not surprising,” as the column says.
But it’s what the study found that the CDC didn’t tell us that’s important.
The CDC’s published summary of the study did not include its findings that certain other common mitigation measures in American schools don’t work.
- Distancing,
- hybrid models,
- classroom barriers,
- HEPA filters, and,
- most notably, requiring student masking
were each found to not have a statistically significant benefit.
“In other words, these measures could not be said to be effective,” as the New York Magazine column says.
Finding that masks on school kids don’t work should come as no surprise because that’s “not exactly controversial,” for reasons the column explains:
Many of America’s peer nations around the world — including the U.K., Ireland, all of Scandinavia, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Italy — have exempted kids, with varying age cutoffs, from wearing masks in classrooms.
Conspicuously, there’s no evidence of more outbreaks in schools in those countries relative to schools in the U.S., where the solid majority of kids wore masks for an entire academic year and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
These countries, along with the World Health Organization, whose child-masking guidance differs substantially from the CDC’s recommendations, have explicitly recognized that the decision to mask students carries with it potential academic and social harms for children and may lack a clear benefit.
Scientists the author spoke with believe that omitting the null effects of a student masking requirement amounted to “file drawering” — sticking what you don’t like in a drawer and forgetting about it.
The author challenged the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics to put up their evidence that masks on school kids work since they both recommend it.
Both struck out.
The CDC provided an evasive answer and the AAP didn’t respond at all.
What evidence could other scientists point to supporting the recommendation of masks in schools?
Nobody the author talked to was able to find a data set as robust as the CDC results, “that is, a large cohort study directly looking at the effects of a mask requirement.” It was indeed a major study, “both ambitious and groundbreaking,” says the column.
It covered more than 90,000 elementary-school students in 169 Georgia schools and was, according to the CDC, the first of its kind to compare COVID-19 incidence in schools with certain mitigation measures in place to other schools without those measures.
But CDC deep-sixed the key conclusions.
Read the whole New York Magazine column.
The CDC obviously has some explaining to do, but so do officials in states like Illinois that blindly follow CDC guidance. Maybe reporters here will start asking:
“What’s your ‘science’ behind masking kids in schools, and please don’t point to CDC guidance?”
COVID remains a deadly risk for certain groups, primarily the elderly and the obese, and case counts are rising. Is it too much to ask whether measures being taken actually work?
America is tired of being lied to.
-Mark Glennon
Advocates of masking children as young as 5 for 6 hours per day in school. Is that advocacy akin to child endangerment? Bad effects include more carbon dioxide in the blood, possible deformation of face and mouth with long term use, being denied seeing the facial expressions of teachers and other students in the learning of the communication process.
Okay, I won’t point to CDC guidance. A new study paints a different picture.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/new-study-paints-dire-picture-for-unmasked-unvaxxed-students-134456316.html
If a doctor told you there was even a chance that certain measures might help protect your child, wouldn’t you take those measures ?
What responsible adult would refuse to take such measures ?
The author is right — America is tired of being misled. The question is, who’s doing the misleading.
Innocent Primate, the study you site is a mathematical model created by researchers. As such, it is only as good as the assumptions that go into it. The above study is based on actual data from real people, and is therefore orders of magnitude more instructive.
Models have also unfortunately been heavily politicized in recent years, and researchers often optimize their assumptions to reach conclusions their funding sponsors want. We should be especially wary of COVID models given their absolutely horrendous track record since COVID emerged.
That said, this model needs to be validated with real world data. If it proves correct, I will change my tune, but until then it should only be given limited deference.
The maskerbators like IP just can’t help themselves, they live to abuse themselves.
Brian
That doesn’t really address the principal question.
If there is any scientific evidence that masks might protect the health and well-being of children, what would prudence dictate ?
The reason why COVID models have inconsistent track records is because scientific understanding is necessarily fluid, particularly with a disease that mutates.
As pointed out in the New York Times, the American populace is getting a crash course in scientific uncertainty as understanding of the virus (and its mutations) constantly changes.
And that’s why viewpoints and recommendations are constantly changing.
But that’s science.
What doesn’t change is what is a prudent course under such circumstances.
Would you deny your child that chance because the science isn’t 100% (a near scientific impossibility)?
I wouldn’t.
There is an old saying — better safe than sorry.
I would think that with the health and well-being of a child, such aphorism takes on added importance.
IP
You keep wearing your mask.
Please stay in your parents basement too.
A couple years from now they will find out that the masks caused a build e of plaque and gum disease.
Leading to a rise in heart disease and other completions.
Your body has a natural defence system that has evolved.
It knows what to do with viruses.
Unfortunately just as there are weak animals in the wild there are weak humans.
Darwin is right.
So if your body was supposed to have an extra air filter for your lungs we would have been born with it.
Funny how all the masks studies, before covid-19 was used as a political tool, reported that masks did nothing to prevent viral infection.
But some how after Jan 2020 some-how masks could stop anything.
I choose to live free.
And you choose to live how you want to.
But don’t force your beliefs and choices on me.
As I won’t do it to you.
(You can wear a masks for the rest of your life)
Innocent Primate, are you a pedophile?
Innocent primate, stuff it already.
Posting partisan after partisan study and following your heart shows your faith is strong.
You will be in Covidian Heaven.
Your mask and vaccine sins have been forgiven.
Your a blind follower trying to hold on to your Covidian Religion.
Now for Some reality, I get you bought into this hook line and sinker, it’s ok to admit you were mislead and wrong, that’s what mature non partisan adults do.
Please wake up.
Or just keep isolating and let the adults manage the world, you can watch from the safety of your home. Btw get a booster.
It’s due.
Amphenol
You go online and question whether I’m a pedophile merely because of a difference of opinion ? You’re treading a fine line.
I stand by my viewpoint. Medical science is rarely 100% and those who refuse to believe medical science merely because it fails to achieve the nearly impossible exhibit a lack of understanding science. For every study and model that concludes masks work there is a countervailing study and model that they don’t. But because of the nature of the beast neither position will likely ever be proven to a certainty. But such certainty is neither the goal nor the point.
In such a debate, I’ll pitch my tent with the Mayo Clinic. (“Mayo Clinic researchers recently published a study that shows the proper use of masks reduces the spread of respiratory droplets. The findings strongly support the protective value and effectiveness of widespread mask use and maintaining physical distance in reducing the spread of COVID-19.”)
https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-minute-study-shows-masks-can-prevent-covid-19/
I don’t believe the Mayo Clinic is partisan.
Moreover, as I’ve said on several occasions, the point is what is prudent under the circumstances. Prudence would dictate taking every measure possible to safeguard the health and well-being of children. If that isn’t enough to convince you of the advisability of utilizing masks, then there’s nothing I or anyone or medical science could ever say that might change your mind.
I think that we’ve already determined that Complicit Lizard is a pervy creep and also doesn’t have children.
They just enjoy making someone else’s children suffer.
Complicit Lizard also pretends to be protecting your children with shaming tactics about how it’s appealing that you don’t agree with baseless and endlessness changing covid “science” and new made-up rules about germ theory.
(appalling)
Amphenol, Cosentyx, all the same people.
Some people, should go back to the jungle!
A child could get pneumonia at any time, so by following the ‘wouldn’t it be prudent’ logic, everyone should be wearing masks 24/7.
The undisputed science tells us that COVID is just not dangerous to children.
I believe that teaching them to be fearful of some invisible Boogeymen requiring them to use masks as talismans to ward it off is extremely dangerous to their development and mental health.
As an old Marine, I couldn’t care less about the Taliban recreating the image of Iwo Jima.
How hard was that to do?
No, I’m disgusted that we spent trillions of dollars in a 20-year effort that was hopeless from the very start, with thousands of young Americans killed or maimed for yet another war benefitting Israel.
I’m equally disgusted that we left billions of dollars in equipment in Afghanistan and that we fly the gay flag around the world.
And I hate how we ‘must’ accept 300,000+ Afghans to further wreck our country.
The old America is gone.
It exists only in the minds of those of us old enough to remember what it used to be.
Here’s where you will find photos of such pathetic creeps as Alabama Shake, Mike Tauler (self acknowledged Antifa ‘chieftain’ for McHenry County), innocent Primate, etc.
https://www.returnofkings.com/165452/36-soy-boy-pictures-that-reveal-an-epidemic-of-feminized-men
Hi Amphenol – thanks for thinking about me again.
Sorry to disappoint you, but you won’t be able to use any of those pictures at that link to further think about me.
AND Denise is BACK. Pretending to doxx others. 😳
Who needs fake pictures of Dave when the real ones are online and are just as amusing:
http://mchenrycountyblog.com/2020/03/21/lining-up-to-buy-guns-in-marengo/
Funny pictures, McConchie is in there.
Amphenol,
Hilarious, in exchange here is an ACTUAL pic of you… https://imageshare.best/image.php?id=F2LFA6.png
Pics like this are a outstanding example of why we NEED 30+ round magazines
I’ve got some rounds for communists like you at Tauler.
Why are you on the dole?