School boards have it tough this fall. as do many other agencies serving the public.  They have bureaucratic health agencies, from the CDC on down to the local health department, pushing the idea that healthy children and adults need to wear masks in public places to stop the spread of the latest version of Covid.  Even if they understand that they are beholden to the public, they have a hard time going against these mask recommendations and mandates, even when the public actively confronts them actively, angrily, and in great numbers.

The Ludington School Board had a lot of pressure from the local health department to adopt a policy that mandated masks.  Dr. Jennifer Morse prepared for them a presentation (DHD#10 School Guidance).  Among this guidance was a universally shared compendium of data gathered and prepared by the CDC and distributed likely to all school board across the state and the country contained in The effectiveness of face masks to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission: A summary of literature.

The literature amounts to eleven studies and surveys that purport to show how mask wearing is very effective against stopping the spread of Covid-19, as shown in this table:

This amounts to the 'science' for getting school boards to enact mask mandates on their own, and it has proven to be fairly effective, getting local schools like Ludington, Scottville, and Manistee to adopt their own mask mandates.  But when you look closely at the science, you find the data, statistics, and experiments do not have a lot of rigor or scientific conclusions worthy of report.  I will show this by looking at their various reports, and explain briefly why they are not that convincing, nor are they strong with real science.  Feel free to argue in the comments as to why the analysis, disputes, and refutations offered by the Ludington Torch is disputable or refutable from your scientific analysis and perspective.  But I hope you can agree that, overall, the arguments for mask mandates are lacking. 

 

Hendrix Hair:  The study took place between May 12-19, 2020, shortly after the City of Springfield passed an ordinance on May 6, 2020 which restricted seating in waiting areas to 25% of normal capacity and recommended social distancing and use of face coverings for employees and clients when social distancing was not or could not be followed.  Two employees were symptomatic during that time before they both were tested and found to have Covid-19. 

The study relies heavily on results of contact tracing by the county health department, who offered testing to all clients contacted, more than half refused the free testing.  The study lists four limitations which may counteract the assumption that wearing masks was the reason their was no spread.  One also wonders how it may have spread between stylist A and B if they were masked at all times when at work.

Nothing is conclusive, nor should it be since the methods used are far from scientific and mostly anecdotal from clients who may have not told the truth.  This is why the study says, without any good proof:  "Broader implementation of face covering policies could mitigate the spread of infection in the general population." and "The citywide ordinance and company policy might have played a role in preventing spread." and "Both company and city policies were likely important factors in preventing the spread."  

Payne, USS Theodore Roosevelt:  In this 'study', a sample of 392 service members aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt found those who reported wearing face masks had a 56% infection rate compared to an 81% rate among those who did not wear them.  The report does not indicate whether the sampling was random or representative of the full population, nor describe why some of the ship's populations were wearing mask and some were not, or whether those wearing face coverings did so 24/7 in the confined spaces, which is extremely unlikely or only when they were on duty or in certain areas of the ship.   

We know that ventilation and other factors could also come into play on the ship, the report lists four other limitations, which leads to the modest conclusion:  "Use of face coverings and other preventive measures could mitigate transmission."

Wang, Beijing:  In this retrospective study, occurring in March 2020, secondary transmission was looked at of 335 people in 124 families with at least one laboratory confirmed COVID-19 case.  Multiple means of mitigation were looked at, with mask usage fairing just slightly better than the use of disinfectants, the transmission reduction was insignificant between those two methods (79% to 77%) in cases where the primary case was pre-symptomatic.  They found wearing a mask after illness onset of the primary case was not significantly protective.

The 'study' itself looks less than rigorous and appears to advocate for universal mask usage even in the home, when they admit that masks were very rarely employed in the home setting where most transmission occurred in families.    They concluded the study provides the first evidence of the effectiveness of mask use, disinfection and social distancing in preventing COVID-19-- though they could not specify exactly what worked or how it worked.  They found stronger evidence of faecal transmission, however, the CDC currently affirms that there has not been any confirmed report of the virus spreading from feces to a person.  The study ultimately is tainted by a variety of Covid-19 misinformation coming from China during this time.  

Gallaway, Arizona:  The study trumpets:  the number of COVID-19 cases in Arizona stabilized and then decreased after sustained implementation and enforcement of statewide and locally enhanced mask mandates on June 16, 2020, suggesting mask wearing can help prevent transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and decrease the numbers of COVID-19 cases due to this trend.  It presents a graph showing Arizona peaking in Covid cases two weeks after these mandates went into effect, then decreasing thereafter.  

Compelling, until you realize that many other states that invoked mask mandates did so after the peak of the epidemiology curve peaked (showing a natural ebbing consistent with such epidemic graphs happening before mask wearing), disproving that trend noticed in Arizona as universal.  More compelling is that mask mandates were still in effect when Arizona got hit much harder a few months later:

Wang, Boston:  This research letter looked at introducing increased interventions including mask-wearing policies for health care workers and patients in 12 Boston hospitals beginning in March 2020.  During the intervention period, a weighted mean decline of 0.49% per day occurred, more decline per day compared with the preintervention period.

Suggesting the minor decline of less than 1/2 of one percent of cases in a finite set of HCWs was due to interventions, or specifically one of those interventions (mask wearing) which was already happening to an extent, is fallacious reasoning.  There is no control group, there is no way to show which intervention(s) influenced the insignificant change in cases, there is no conclusion to be made about mask wearing.  The research letter doesn't claim any either.

Mitze, Germany:  This discussion paper introduces control groups, sort of.  They introduce a synthetic control group (SCG) to show that Jena, Germany would have had a lot more Covid cases (40% more) by artificially figuring out how many cases it would have had without that policy.  If that seems questionable, this 2021 paper describes the inherent design flaws of the synthetic control method and how using these types of groups often lead to faulty conclusions when real control groups can be used. 

The Mitze paper admits that the SCG method used outside of Jena, in other parts of Germany, was not very reliable, and that's because the SCG method is ultimately based on assumptions that may not be accurate, nor serve a purpose, if the object of your study is to prove your own bias, as this appears.  The author boasts that the paper is the first analysis that provides field research in showing mask wearing mitigates Covid spread-- but only if you accept the SCG assumptions.

This paper reminds one that early models used by an English epidemiologist suggested unrealistic and quick spread of the virus, which was used by Governor Whitmer to suggest over 70% of Michigan would catch the disease in 2020, a vast overestimate.  

Van Dyke, Kansas:  The graphic associated with this trend report below looks compelling:

Until you look at the actual statistics.  Kansas passed a mask mandate on July 3, 2020, but allowed for counties to opt out.  24 of 105 counties did not opt out, 81 did, and thus the report shows trends in the numbers between the two sets of counties going different ways.  The percentages above are correct, but deceptive for consider:

"By August 17–23, 2020, the 7-day rolling average COVID-19 incidence had decreased by 6% to 16 cases per 100,000 among mandated counties and increased by 100% to 12 per 100,000 among non-mandated counties.

Non-mandated counties had more than twice the amount of metropolitan areas as mandated counties, but their rate, even though it had climbed by 100% rather than decreased by 6%, was still smaller than the mandated counties (12, rather than 16 per 100,000).  Seven months after masks were mandated, case rates were still significantly higher in counties that had to wear masks.  

The trends merely suggest that mandated counties were collectively further along the curve than the non-mandated counties were.  The report fails to look at that aspect or its other limitations, since it was only made to look at trends.

Lyu, 15 states:  This research article claims that requiring face mask use in public could help in mitigating the spread of COVID-19.  The research lumps 15 states and DC together, the earliest ones to mandate face masks between April 8 and May 15, 2020, and looks at what happened following that move.  They noticed a a decline in the daily COVID-19 growth rate by 0.9, 1.1, 1.4, 1.7, and 2.0 percentage points in 1–5, 6–10, 11–15, 16–20, and 21 or more days after state face mask orders were signed, respectively.

The immediate decrease in days 1-5 (before the mandate would have any effect on covid cases) shows that in these states, collectively, that the epidemic was likely past its peak on the epidemic curve, and should be naturally decreasing.  This would also explain why other states may have had lesser decreases during this period, since they were likely not experiencing Covid spread enough to enact their own mandates.  

Many mask mandates in states were enacted after the worst of the epidemic had passed.  This means that the successive days should be naturally decreasing.  It should also be noted for each of these reports that mask mandates typically have a negative effect on interactions within the community, as most people are less likely to go places if they are forced to mask up when they do.

You will notice that I left three of the 'studies' out and only disputed eight of them.  The three remaining have issues similar to the others, such as the last Canadian study has its own version of a synthetic control group, using counterfactual policy simulations to anticipate what might have happened if mask mandates weren't implemented.  Simulations and models are hampered by the presumptions made and prone to bias, especially when they utilize other inconclusive reports and studies as gospel.  

As you can see, the 'science' used to promote the wearing of masks lack the rigor that many of us expect from science, often using statistical games to obscure the fact that the results are far from conclusive, and staying clear from any real kind of control group or other strong scientific analysis.  Do not be fooled, the science before 2020 clearly argued against community mask wearing by healthy people by showing no significant benefit, the strongest science since 2020 have come to the same conclusion, but those studies have been downplayed or ignored, despite their rigor.  Data among states and countries show the same.  

If masks cannot be shown through rigorous science to be beneficial in preventing Covid-19 spread, no recognizable benefits, why do politicians and bureaucrats continue to urge and implement mask mandates, when most people, especially schoolchildren, have negative effects from masks?

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Thank you for your research X. In my opinion all of theses studies do not concentrate on the most important aspect of the Covid outbreak and that is the mask themselves. I've found some studies done on masks and I find fault with most of the studies because they fail to show a relationship between how effective masks are in comparison to how they negatively impact the health of the user. A mask cannot and does not prevent moisture particles in a person's breath from escaping into the environment. On average people expel from 10ml per hour to 80ml per hour depending on the type of activity. That is a lot of moisture that we exhale and it has to go somewhere. A mask cannot and will not hold all of that material so guess where it goes. Yes, out into the environment for all to breath. The following video shows just how much leakage there is when it comes to stopping moisture particles from entering the space we occupy. The last test shows the test dummy blowing out forcefully. The only thing a mask does is keep the particles closer to the subject but as in any building the ventilation system will carry those particles throughout the conditioned area.

You won't find multivariable studies among these looking at benefit-risk comparisons of mandating masks, because the results wouldn't prolong their narrative.  When I'm able to catch their meetings, like I am tonight with a special school board meeting at 6 PM to choose an interim superintendent, I will be pointing out the limitations of DHD#10's science, and real stats and science that show schoolchildren wearing masks is just dumb-- unless you're trying to harm the children's healthy development. 

Don't be surprised if that's why they want masks in schools, so your children will eat up all of their other junk science and swallow every social control they place on their young minds.  

  Well there might be a method to their madness. You do know they have schools just for slow learner kids. If the mask really have a detrimental effect on children , they'll just put them in special ed. Schools get more MONEY for Special ED kids, so do the teachers. Duh!!!!!

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