CDC IS FULL OF SHIT
From Jeff Childers
The CDC should be ashamed, yet sadly it has no shame. A new May 25th study published in the Lancet debunking the CDC is titled “Revisiting Pediatric COVID-19 Cases in Counties With and Without School Mask Requirements—United States, July 1—October 20 2021.”
The study’s two researchers looked at a December 2021 CDC “study” that had crunched data from six schools during a short cherry-picked period of time and found, guess what, masks DO work, in the most amazing and compelling ways. The type of study the CDC did is called an “observational” study, and is considered much less reliable than the gold standard of randomized controlled trials.
Anyway, researchers Ambarish Chandra and Tracy Beth Høeg took the CDC’s data and they EXPANDED IT. They added lots more schools and looked at a much larger time bracket. I’ll give you one guess what they found. Their conclusion:
Replicating the CDC study shows similar results; however, incorporating a larger sample and longer period showed NO SIGNIFICANT RELATIONSHIP between mask mandates and case rates. … We failed to establish a relationship between school masking and pediatric cases using the same methods [with] a larger, more nationally diverse population over a longer interval.
I’ll stick the link below in case you’re in one of the unfortunate jurisdictions considering re-masking kids; here’s ANOTHER study to send them. But my favorite part was the final line in their conclusion: “Our study demonstrates that observational studies of interventions with small to moderate effect sizes are prone to bias caused by selection and omitted variables.”
Hahahahaha! They just said studies like the CDC’s are “prone to selection bias!” In other words, they’re accusing the CDC of cherry-picking the data to support the desired outcome, which is exactly what we all know is what happened, but we’ve all been forced to walk around pretending like the CDC is a legitimate source of scientific information instead of a political theater of the absurd.
The Lancet is one of the top journals in the world. Link: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4118566.
AND
Facts are hard to argue with, but corporate media is trying out a new narrative spin on masking. Yesterday, the New York Times ran a timely story headlined, “Why Masks Work, but Mandates Haven’t.” How about that? You CAN have your cake and eat it too.
The Times’ sub-headline asks the question as though it’s the first time anyone ever thought of this before: “Why haven’t Covid mask mandates made much difference?” Why?? So let’s see what the New York Times’ cherry-picked experts came up with.
Setting the table, the Times calls masks a PARADOX: “Dr. Shira Doron, an epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center, [said] ‘It is simultaneously true that masks work and mask mandates do not work.’” Got that? Got both conflicting ideas in your head at the same time? Paging George Orwell.
The article points to three examples of bad facts for masking:
1) In U.S. cities where mask use was common, Covid spread at a similar rate as in mask-resistant cities.
2) Mask mandates in schools seem to have done little to reduce the spread.
3) Hong Kong, despite almost universal mask-wearing, recently endured one of the world’s worst Covid outbreaks.
See? THEY KNOW.
Here’s what the paper came up with to resolve the paradox: “The Covid virus is so contagious that it can spread during brief times when people take off their masks, even when a mandate is in place.” In other words, it’s OUR fault, not masks, since humans need to remove the masks for gross biological functions like eating and drinking.
“Even though masks work, getting millions of people to wear them, and wear them consistently and properly, is a far greater challenge,” one of the Times’ handpicked experts complained.
But don’t worry, they’re not advocating for using even stricter mandates. At least, not yet. The Times admitted strict mask mandates are “not sustainable for years on end. Masks hinder communication, fog glasses and can be uncomfortable. There is a reason that children and airline passengers have broken out in applause when told they can take off their masks.”
Haha, “children and airline passengers.” See what they did there?
Anyway, the Times rued the fact that masking has become so politicized, dang it. “Democrats are more likely to wear masks than Republicans, and Democrats who identify as ‘very liberal’ are more likely to support mandates.” Because liberalism is about MAKING people do stuff. I’m not sure it started out that way, but conservatives always warned about slip-and-slide liberal paternalism gone wild. I guess this is what it looks like.
At the end of the day, the Times thinks people should wear masks if they want to: “Anybody who wants to wear a snug, high-quality mask can do so and will be less likely to contract covid. … ‘One-way masking is how we have always used them,’” another expert explained.
“One-way masking,” the remarkable new way to live forever.
? Notwithstanding all the science and facts showing mask mandates don’t work, to the point that even the New York Times agrees, CNN ran a story yesterday headlined, “CDC Defends Its Authority to Issue Transportation Mask Mandate in Brief Arguing for Reversal of Ruling That Blocked It.”
Setting aside for a moment the clever way CNN headlined it, the real story is that yesterday, the Biden Administration’s DOJ appealed the Florida judge’s stay of the CDC’s nearly-universally-hated airplane mask mandate. The brief relies heavily on the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the CMS mandate, arguing somewhat logically that if CMS can issue a vaccine mandate for healthcare workers, then the CDC should have authority to issue a mask mandate for travelers, too.
Getting back to the headline, CNN must have realized that the travel mask mandate is a dead loser, so it framed the CDC’s appeal as a defense of “its authority” rather than as an attempt to restore the mask mandate. It pointed out that the DOJ hasn’t asked for any kind of emergency stay on the Florida court’s ruling, which it could have. So you can relax, this is just about the CDC preserving its FUTURE ability to use mask mandates if it needs to.
You trust the CDC, don’t you? It’s the gold standard.
? Pediatric drug and alcohol-related deaths nearly doubled in 2020 and 2021. That’s kids under 17. Think about that. The experts did this.