That CDC Study on Masking Children in Schools Just Got Blown to Bits – Opinion

Remember that study the CDC commissioned and touted several months ago claiming to prove that masking in schools was highly effective and necessary to keep children “safe”? That study has now been blown to bits, and by none other than the “experts” themselves.

David Zweig said that the study was so poor it should not have been published.

EXPERTS: the CDC study on masks was “so unreliable that it probably should not have been entered into the public discourse”

Multi-month investigation of a flawed study and the lack of transparency by a public health agency.

The latest from me, @TheAtlantic https://t.co/1aK7ROOzIe

— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 16, 2021

This estimated effect of mask requirements—far bigger than others in the research literature—would become a crucial talking point in the weeks to come. Walensky mentioned the 3.5 multiplier at another White House briefing. tweetedIt was that afternoon. Walensky made the same statement in mid-October as the school year was well underway.

But the Arizona study at the center of the CDC’s back-to-school blitz turns out to have been profoundly misleading. “You can’t learn anything about the effects of school mask mandates from this study,” Jonathan Ketcham, a public-health economist at Arizona State University, told me. This view was shared by eight other researchers who reviewed the study and with whom I spoke to this article. Some experts suggested that masks might be able to stop the spread of COVID. They may also be needed in some cases. But the data being touted by the CDC—which showed a dramatic more-than-tripling of risk for unmasked students—ought to be excluded from this debate. The Arizona study’s lead authors stand by their work, and so does the CDC. The critics, however, were harsh in their criticisms. Noah Haber, an interdisciplinary scientist and a co-author of a systematic review of COVID-19 mitigation policies, called the research “so unreliable that it probably should not have been entered into the public discourse.”

It is hard to believe that anyone could have foreseen such a thing. For one, this is what I saw and could offer an alternative headline: Bonchie was Right.

After the publication of the study in September, my senses were immediately heightened by the contents. It seemed that much of what was asserted was deliberately crafted to make it appear misleading. Once I dove into the actual particulars of the study, I was less than shocked to learn that essentially everything the CDC was claiming wasn’t actually backed by the data.

So while the study’s lead author may “stand by their work,” that work provided no evidence for the CDC’s pronouncements about masks in schools.

Here’s what I wrote at the time to give you an idea of how flawed the study was.

In short, what we have is a “study” that didn’t even cover a period where children were in school — save for a week or so. The “study” is also based on a data set of counties that do not control for prior infection rates, testing capacity, etc. in order to conduct a valid comparison between areas that have school mask mandates and ones that don’t. They came up with an almost identical result in terms of the actual number of cases.

Lastly, just to put a fine point on all this, the CDC’s own study admits that it’s ecological and should not be used to assign causation in regards to masks and infection rates. They admit that there is not enough control over several other variables.

The CDC studied a time period that spanned months, but included only a few weeks when children were actually in school. It selected counties which had seen rises in their school attendance before the start of school. The actual differences in statistical infections rates were negligible, as they did not control for testing differences. The study admitted it was wrong to use the data to determine if mask-wearing is associated with higher infection rates.

Still, the CDC rushed the release of the study to social media and television interviews in order to prove that school masking was efficient and necessary. The White House used the claim to mock reporters for asking why schools needed masks. What can you trust in the Biden administration after this dishonest blitz? Particularly when it is about vaccines and face masks.

In the end, we didn’t need to wait around for over two months for the “experts” to chime in on this study. Anyone who did basic research could see that the study was complete garbage. However, anyone who said this at that time ran the chance of getting banned from social media. That perverse relationship between the supposed media gatekeepers and “the science” is incredibly damaging to public trust.