It's easy to act now as if masks are a thing of the past, that mask mandates are gone forever and the vast majority of people acknowledge that masks don't work. And more importantly, that they never did, regardless of the type or supposed "quality."

But that's conclusively and demonstrably false. There are many, many COVID extremists who remain determined to enforce their delusional worldview and conclusions on others. Who disregard facts, evidence and science in favor of ideological groupthink.

Hospital systems in the Bay Area enforced mask mandates for most of the past six months, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Not because of any rise in COVID or respiratory illnesses, but as a preventative measure. Ignoring, of course, that masks don't work against any respiratory viruses. 

That's bad enough. But even worse, there are more committed anti-science maskers dedicated to pushing for children to be forced into masks indefinitely. All because they can't just admit they were wrong.

Coulter Grove Intermediate School faculty and staff wear face masks and shields as they check the temperature of students arriving for the first day of school in Maryville on Friday, July 31, 2020. (© Brianna Paciorka/News Sentinel via Imagn Content Services, LLC)

New Study Claims School Mask Mandates Saved Lives

A brand-new study by writers from Michigan State University attempts to justify an ideological demand for control and pseudoscience by defending school mask mandates. As if that weren't bad enough, their appeals to "evidence" demonstrates how committed they are to ignoring the actual science and data.

In their introduction to studying school mask mandates, they claim there's "substantial evidence" supporting masks to stop COVID.

"Mask mandates were recommended by the CDC in 2021, and substantial evidence supports the use of masks to prevent the spread of disease. Abaluck et al., 2022; Howard et al., 2021…"

Except those references do not provide evidence that masks slow the spread of the disease. The Jason Abaluck study covered villages in Bangaldesh, was widely debunked due to using inconsistent statistical methodology, and made the absurd claim that masks were only effective for those over the age of 65. Even then, after torturing the data to reach a desired conclusion, the best that Abaluck could do was say the reduction amounted to roughly 10 percent. 

The Jeremy Howard study was written by a computer scientist, not an epidemiologist, and was an activist paper designed to promote mask usage, not a collection of scientific evidence. 

It's easy to tell that this study on schools was designed to reach a specific conclusion because instead of referring to the Cochrane Review, which was conducted by actual scientists and health experts, they used debunked social science activism instead. That Cochrane Review, as a reminder, was a gold-standard evidence review which found that there was no high-quality data to support masking anyone. Regardless of type, quality, or age.

Why didn't they reference it? Because it would have contradicted the message they want to sell. As always, it gets worse.

Their explanation of the methodology debunks their own conclusions, which is that 21,800 people died from COVID because of the end of school masking.

"We use event study and difference-in-differences models that exploit the removal of mask mandates in districts serving 50% of public school students in the U.S. surrounding the revocation of CDC guidance recommending school masking in February and early March of 2022. We estimate that going from 0% to 100% mandated masking in a county reduces COVID deaths by 0.57 per 100k people," it says. "We further estimate that the removal of mandates during this time contributed to 21800 COVID deaths through the rest of 2022, 9% of the U.S. total that year. Due to the fact that COVID deaths among students and, to a lesser extent, school staff were rare in the U.S. given school age profiles, we argue that the bulk of these deaths were from spillovers to residents in the wider community."

This study is already not worth reading, because it's based on an inaccurate conclusion. And of course, it's a model. These writers assumed that masks work, made up a completely unsupported level of effectiveness, then told a model to spit out data based on their nonsensical assumptions. There's an easy, oft-used term to describe this: garbage in, garbage out. Pseudoscience all the way down.

That's not an even opinion, they outright say that they just made it all up. 

"Here, we hypothesize that following the removal of a mask mandate, COVID would be more likely to spread in schools, and this would subsequently lead to increased COVID spread in communities," the study says. 

This is absurd. There is no evidence whatsoever that masks stop COVID, that mask mandates stop COVID, or that masks in schools are remotely effective. There is, in fact, evidence that mask mandates in schools do not stop COVID, and that lifting them has no impact whatsoever on case rates. 

Actual qualified researchers studied the impact of school mask mandates in two neighboring school districts in the Fargo, North Dakota area, and found that the district with mask mandates actually performed worse. And that lifting mandates had no impact on case rates whatsoever. 

This is real data. Not a model, not a hypothesis or a random guess. Actual data. And it found that districts with mask mandates performed worse, with no difference whatsoever in COVID spread in schools.

The garbage model put out by these activists? It simply assumed that lifting mask mandates would increase spread in schools and therefore the communities. Based on quite literally nothing but their own beliefs.

Not to mention that the conclusion is hopelessly confounded. Even assuming that their model has some validity, which is conclusively does not, it's attempting to parse community COVID deaths from school masking. Without accounting for any of the millions of other factors that could lead to an increase in COVID spread, such as seasonality or natural immunity among a given population.

Their conclusion is absurd, and indefensible.

"This paper contributes the first causal evidence that removing mask mandates in schools increased COVID deaths in the surrounding communities. Using event studies, difference-indifferences models, and instrumental variables models, we find that counties with districts that removed mask mandates in the weeks surrounding the removal of school masking guidance by the CDC in February of 2022 saw COVID deaths increase by 0.39 deaths per 100k of population. Using this shock as an instrument for having a mask mandate, we estimate that mask mandates reduced weekly COVID deaths by 0.57 per 100k. Our findings imply that had mask mandates been maintained through the end of the calendar year, approximately 21,800 lives would have been saved, equivalent to 9% of all U.S. COVID deaths in 2022," it says.

There is no causal evidence here! It's. A. Model. It's assumptions upon assumptions, based on nothing. Confounded estimates through an inaccurate political lens. They assume masks work, assume masks stopped the spread of COVID in schools. Assume that children would transmit the virus to older adults, then simply took their inaccurate conclusion and applied it to the total number of COVID deaths across the United States in 2022. 

Beyond the other catastrophic issues, did they even attempt to parse how many deaths were actually caused by COVID? Of course not. Did they attempt to calculate the importance of natural immunity and how those with previous infections were less likely to transmit the virus? Of course not. 

Did they acknowledge the large evidence base showing that masks don't work, including a study specifically on school mask mandates, that directly contradicted their assumptions? Of course not. 

They just…made it up. 

"We consider the casual impact of removing mask mandates on COVID deaths to be the effect of spillovers to the broader population." 

There is no evidence to support this. And they don't even try to provide any. It's just nonsense. Part of their model included Democrat Party vote share. Literally. 

This is bad enough. What's worse is that this ridiculous nonsense was covered by none other than The Los Angeles Times. Our good friend Michael Hiltzik, who once wrote that we should mock the deaths of "anti-vaxxers," and who is the most reliable spreader of COVID misinformation, eagerly shared the study as if it were proof of mask mandate efficacy.

Yet as one commentator pointed out, it's post hoc reasoning at its finest. I watched television, then 100 miles away, someone I don't know fell off a train. Therefore, my television watching caused the person to fall off a train.

And of course, the lead author was a student with no epidemiological or public health training. The typical "we must listen exclusively to the experts" until we don't line of reasoning from extremists like Hiltzik.

This type of junk "science" isn't just applicable to COVID; modeling has been and continues to be weaponized by those looking to suit their politics. One of the more recent examples being the line, repeated by Bono and Sonny Hostin on "The View" no less, that Elon Musk was responsible for the deaths of 300,000 children because he cut government programs. 

It's not data, it's not reality, it's an estimate based on the assumptions of the model's creator, but susceptible simpletons like Bono and Hostin repeat it as such. 

This same phenomenon applies to climate change modeling too. Yet the media repeats it, endlessly, because it confirms its biases. 

This model could be used by activist school administrators to justify the return of masks at the next sign of public panic over a variant or rise in cases. It's already being weaponized by the media. Who knows how many kids could get hurt by masks down the road because a student decided to make up a model to justify his faith in pseudoscience?