On September 24, 2021 the CDC released its staple report on school mask policies stating that “…the odds of a school-associated COVID-19 outbreak in schools without a mask requirement were 3.5 times higher than those in schools with an early mask requirement…”
The point of this article is to analyze this study to determine if it was conducted fairly and without bias, using comparable groups, to determine the effectiveness of universal masking in schools.
All information provided is taken directly from the link provided above.
This portion of the study below shows that the unmasked schools sampled were in zip codes of much greater community spread (more than double) than the unmasked schools sampled.
This portion of the study below shows the obvious discrepancy in school sizes sampled.
50% of masked schools were 850 students or less per school, while 87% of unmasked schools had 850 students or more (66% of those unmasked schools had 1200 or more students per school)
This study does not utilize comparable samples for making fair analytical comparisons
A fair study would have compared schools within the same community rate of spread as well as schools with the same approximate student density/population.
Questions:
- Does all-day in-school masking actually prevent spread?
- In order to recommend all-day in-school masking, shouldn’t it be proven that there are no short, medium, or long-term adverse health effects to any of the developing bodily health systems of students via short, medium, and long-term phase studies?
- How could the CDC back the use of such a biased study to promulgate the effectiveness of all-day in-school masking?
