One of the most prominent lessons of the pro-mask during the COVID crisis was its misleading failure

One of the lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and our disastrous response to it is a decline in trust in public health professionals and their advice.

The media has repeatedly warned of the danger of “doing your research” or blindly following whatever the experts say. Despite a long list of examples of those same scientists who may have deliberately misled the public – for example, Anthony Fauci and his efforts to undermine the involvement of the US government in beneficial research under his leadership – or get major policy decisions completely wrong, the assumption has long been that the health researchers of the story are not wrong.

When you revisit some of the most important and influential studies of major policies like mask mandates, it’s easy to see why those institutions no longer deserve the respect their media partners have so enthusiastically given them.

One such study came within the first few months of the pandemic, and was used to inform and create masking policy for years to come. However, a closer look at their methodology and results shows how inaccurate and misleading this research has proven to be.

ZERO BS. JUST DAKICH. TAKE DOD’S DON’T @ ME PODCAST ON THE ROAD. DOWNLOAD NOW!

This study, published in June 2020, was actually used by the CDC to inform public policy and coverage recommendations. It included the assumed effects of the mask mandate on the rate of growth of COVID cases in the period after the mandate at the beginning of the epidemic. The Association of American Medical Colleges referenced it in their document “Consensus Guidance on Face Covering”. Several other research papers written by pro-mask advocates referred to it as “evidence” that masks were effective. And it’s totally wrong.

Basically, these two authors tried to find some kind of evidence to justify the policy they support. However, they failed. Yet the CDC supported it anyway, using absurd and unwarranted conclusions to enthusiastically promote masking.

The first mistake in this study? How they chose to calculate the data.

“The reference period for measuring the results of the face cover mandate was 1-5 days before signing the order. We examined how the results change in five periods after the event: 1–5, 6–10, 11–15, 16–20, and 21 days or more,” they explain.

This is a crude way of calculating the impact of policy on outcomes.

You may remember during the pandemic that we were repeatedly told that the effect of a policy or mandate would not be seen until several weeks later. Remember the “wait two weeks” mantra?

So why can the post-event period be 1-5 days, 6-10 days, or even 11-15 days later? What are the possible reasons for using those date windows, when there is no reasonable way to put any trends in policy that cannot yet see results, due to the long incubation period? Data from the 1-5 or 6-10 day window will show people who got sick with COVID before the order was signed.

This can be the first part of data inefficiency. There is much more.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH ONE OF THE GAMES ON FOXNEWS.COM

Indeed, researchers who aimed to prove that masks work were able to manipulate data to show what they wanted to be seen by the public.

“State policies mandating the public or public use of masks or coverings to reduce the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are highly contested,” they wrote. “This study provides evidence from a naturalistic evaluation of the effects of state government mandates for the use of face masks in public issued by fifteen states and Washington, DC, between April 8 and May 15, 2020. The study design is an event study that examines changes in daily estimates of the prevalence of COVID-19 between March 31 and May 22, 2020.

“Mandating the use of face masks in the community is associated with a decrease in the daily incidence of COVID-19 by 0.9, 1.1, 1.4, 1.7, and 2.0 percent at 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20, and 21 or more days after the signing of federal face mask orders, respectively. of 200,000 cases of COVID-19 averted as of May 22, 2020. The findings suggest that requiring the use of face masks in public may help reduce the spread of COVID-19.”

A decrease in the daily growth rate of COVID-19 over a period of 1-5 or 6-10 days indicates that the spread of COVID-19 may have decreased prior to the signing of the authorization. They are also hopelessly confused by other policy changes that have occurred in that window. The authors even acknowledge that limitation, accidentally.

“The initial decline in the daily growth rate within five days after the signing of the order is very consistent with the timing of the effects of other social disruption measures such as business closures,” they said.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testifies during the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on Jan. 11, 2022. (Shawn Thew-Pool/Getty Images)

Then there is another problem. That many of the major districts under the maskandi’s jurisdiction say they have examined already have such policies in place before the nationwide expansion. They used regional-level trends to estimate the effect size, based on national mandates. It doesn’t make sense.

Therefore, if other policies were made at the same time, it takes two weeks to respond to major policy changes, the data is confused, there are seasonal effects that were not taken into account, and they could not account for the importance of district-level orders, what is the value of this study? The answer is, yes, there isn’t.

But there is more.

“We were unable to measure the use of face coverings in the community (ie, compliance with the obligation),” they admitted. “Therefore, the estimates represent the therapeutic intent effects of these guidelines—that is, their effects as passed and not the individual-level effect of wearing a face mask in public when a person is at risk of COVID-19. Relatedly, we did not measure the enforcement of the mandate, which may affect compliance.

In fact, they agree that almost every important factor has been overlooked or underestimated. Most of these early states were concentrated in the Northeast, where the spread of the virus began to decline due to normal seasonal patterns.

For example, in New York state, the mask mandate on April 15 came after the number of COVID-19 cases began to decline.

New York State mask authorization policies during the COVID-19 pandemic, as of early 2020. (Ian Miller)

The decline in growth rate does not show any impact on the policy if the decline in growth rate had started before the mandate came into effect.

Not to mention that this collective effect was seen in states that did not have mask mandates. And it hasn’t always been consistent over time.

Data from mask mandate states versus states without mandates throughout the pandemic (Ian Miller)

None of the states, concentrated in the South, initially had low rates of COVID, then saw more outbreaks in the summer, patterns that have remained consistent over several years. In the spring of 2021, for example, northern states with mask mandates did worse than southern states without the mandate. As they did in the spring of 2020, despite having high levels of natural immunity due to previous hard hits.

And the overall rates throughout the epidemic were remarkably similar.

While Hawaii is included in the “early authorization,” in April 2020, it is located on an island that has been made for very different effects of COVID than the rest of the country. Still, those early states averaged 327,000 cases per million during the pandemic. States that have never had mandates account for about 335,000 cases per million.

Removing Hawaii, a significant outlier, compresses the data even more.

The first authority says in that set it equals 335,000 cases per million. About the same number in unsanctioned states. And it increased with a high death rate.

FILE – The campus of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is seen in Atlanta, Wednesday, June 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)

Even when focusing on 2020 in particular, while early states enjoyed seasonal gains throughout the summer, by December, they had once again surpassed states that had never had mandates in daily population estimates.

Not to mention that their estimate of 200,000 prevented cases is false, considering that COVID is a pandemic virus that infects everyone.

So, to sum it up, this “study” was woefully misleading. It misrepresented the results of mask approval without considering other relevant factors and cherry-picked dates. There was no supporting data afterwards to back up their results, and none of the states mandated that they acted in the same way throughout the pandemic.

OUTKICK IS NOW ON THE FOX APP: CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

That’s one of the research sources the CDC uses to justify some of the masking. And that’s why, despite the media’s best efforts, public health trust is at an all-time low.

Because it should be.