A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that mask mandates did little to nothing to curb the spread of COVID-19. The latest research further undermines the controversial policy.
A new study analyzing a pair of schools in Fargo, North Dakota—one which had a mask mandate in place in the fall of the 2021-2022 academic year and one that did not—provides more evidence that mask mandates are ineffective public policy.
“Our findings contribute to a growing body of literature which suggests school-based mask mandates have limited to no impact on the case rates of COVID-19 among K-12 students,” researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Davis concluded.
The findings, which have not yet been peer-reviewed, were published on July 1 in a preprint paper on Research Square.
‘It Should Have Been Included in the Summary’
Supporters of mask mandates will say one preprint study is hardly conclusive proof that mask mandates have been ineffective during the pandemic, and they’d be right.
Unfortunately, the latest research represents just one spoke in the wheel (to borrow an expression from a farmer I know). An abundance of research shows mask mandates in schools have been ineffective policy, including a robust Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study from 2020 analyzing some 90,000 students in 169 Georgia elementary schools in November and December.
“The 21% lower incidence in schools that required mask use among students was not statistically significant compared with schools where mask use was optional,” the CDC admitted in the report.
If you hadn’t heard that the CDC’s own research showed no statistically significant difference in schools that had mask mandates in place and those that did not, you can be forgiven. The CDC buried the finding, choosing not to include it in the summary of the report, a practice scientists describe as “file drawering.”
“That a masking requirement of students failed to show independent benefit is a finding of consequence and great interest,” Vinay Prasad, an associate professor in University of California, San Francisco’s Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, told The New Yorker last year. “It should have been included in the summary.”
The CDC never explained why it opted to not include the finding in its summary, but one obvious theory is that the CDC simply didn’t wish to highlight the fact that its own scientific research found its controversial policy was ineffective.
Despite its best efforts, however, evidence continues to mount suggesting that mask mandates are not effective at reducing the spread of COVID.
Writing in The New York Times on May 31, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer David Leonhardt said that copious amounts of evidence show mask mandates appear to have little to no correlation with the spread of COVID.
In U.S. cities where mask use has been more common, Covid has spread at a similar rate as in mask-resistant cities. Mask mandates in schools also seem to have done little to reduce the spread. Hong Kong, despite almost universal mask-wearing, recently endured one of the world’s worst Covid outbreaks.
Advocates of mandates sometimes argue that they do have a big effect even if it is not evident in populationwide data, because of how many other factors are at play. But this argument seems unpersuasive.
Perhaps the masks people wear are of low quality. Perhaps the masks are being worn improperly. Maybe people in mandated settings remove facial coverings frequently. Perhaps the studies suggesting masks are effective at virus control are flawed or incomplete.
Whatever the reason, there’s an emerging scientific consensus that mask mandates have not been effective in curbing the spread of COVID.
A Different Theory on Why Mandates Failed
Decades from now, scientists will likely still be exploring why mask mandates were so ineffective during the Great Coronavirus Pandemic. Theories we can’t even imagine today will be offered, discussed, and debated.
One thesis that will likely not be explored is the idea that the means were all wrong.
The great economist Ludwig von Mises once observed that the state is fundamentally an organ of coercion, of force.
“The worship of the state is the worship of force,” Mises said. Force, we often forget, isn’t just an immoral way to organize society. It’s often ineffective. In his 1969 book Let Freedom Reign, FEE’s founder Leonard Read argued the means we choose matter much more than the ends we seek.
Ends, goals, aims are but the hope for things to come…not…reality… from which may safely be taken the standards for right conduct…Many of the most monstrous deeds in human history have been perpetrated in the name of doing good—in pursuit of some ‘noble’ goal. They illustrate the fallacy that the end justifies the means.
Examine carefully the means employed, judging them in terms of right and wrong, and the end will take care of itself.
The ends planners sought—less community spread—were noble. The means they used to achieve those ends—government force—were not. (If you do not believe mask mandates constitute force, review the videos of the Alabama woman body-slammed by a police officer and the New York mother thrown to the ground by NYPD officers. Both conflicts began over violations of mask protocols.)
Whether the lackluster results of mask mandates stem from their rotten means is debatable, of course.
But one person, at least, would not have been surprised by the sterile results: Leonard Read. Read understood that means matter more than ends, “the bloom pre-exists in the seed.”
This is why Americans would do well to remember that force is a dangerous foundation for a society, even if one’s ends are pure—and that it’s not too late to reimagine a world based on voluntary action.
—
This article is republished with permission from Foundation for Economic Education.
Image Credit: Flickr-Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the State of New York, CC BY 2.0
2 comments
2 Comments
Tionico
July 12, 2022, 3:52 amWhat a ridiculous waste of OUR tax money. They should have asked ME about how effective those masks are.
For five decades I have worked with my hands, and various types of tools/machines, buildng making repairing restoring things madeof wood, metal, plastics. That includes sanding and prepping wood and metal, grinding off rust and old paint/body filler on cars, sndblasing metal parts, etc. I always wore the N 95 masks to try and protect my lungs and sinuses. After, say, grinding down old paint and filler to repair a body panel, with metal, rust, old bondo, multipel layers of paint, I had to take a break about every half hour or so, to get my breath back, and to clear out my sinuses of the gunk stuck in there. SInuses? I thought you were wearing the virus protectioin mask?? Yes, that’s exactly what I was wearing. In half an hour of such work the mask would be plugged so I had a hard time getting enough air.AND enough had gotten through the "good masks" to plug my nose, get way down my windpipe and into my lungs, my face under the mask was thickly coated with the fine particles from the work. Break wash face, blow junk out of my hostrils, cough up gunk,take a breather from that nasty work, then get out a NEW mask and carry on. Lather rinse repeat until ready for primer and paint. Oh forgot an important detail… since I could no longer get enough air thougth my nostrils, I would take to breathing through my mouth (I have the same issue with new N 95 maks just walking about in a store for more than fifteen miutes.I go hypoxic just breathing through CLEAN NEW N 95 mask. that is well fitted (I learned HOW. How many of YOU have learned how?)
So, the grit would be inside my mough, it woiuld be like fine grit on my teeth, which I could FEEL, and crunch between my teeth.
Now somone find the guts to stand up and tell me that NEW well fitting N 95 mask that constalntly let all THAT gunk through the "good mask" will prevent a VIRAL PARTICLE whicih is perhaps one millionth the size of those chunks of paint, bondo, metal, that got THROUGH my new N 95 mask?
Come ONNNNN you "professionals"!! How stupid do you think we ARE "out here"? It is well known the range of diameter of the WooFlew virus. It has also been well documented the size of the openings, holes, passages, conduits, built in to the fibres that comprise the N 95 mask. And those "openings" are thousands of times bigger than the largest WooFlew viral particles.
I’d like to conduct a demonstration. Take all these "experts" and pontificators who are conivinced the virus is getting filtered out by the N 95 masks so come round for a visit to my workshop. I will fit the N 95 masks properly for them, and when all are "safe" fire up that big angle grinder and set to on an old body panel, scouring off the paint before beating it straight again. They must stand within three feet of ME, (but they’ll be "safe" because they have masks on, right? And I will too….. Let’s hang out there while I make noise for half an hout. THEN we go off to the big wash sink, each one removes their own mask, looks in the mirror to see their new coloured mask where the N 95 used to cover….. now check yuor nostrils, and see how much"fun stuff" is up there. Wipe your eyes well, as there WILL be plenty of grit in them. Now move your tungue over your teeth and fell the grit there. Small slosh of water, well, spit it out into a clear cup and see what’s in there that got past the new "good mask" that WILL prevent the virus from passing through, which is oneten thousandth the size of the grit you just saw and felt.
Masks stop a virus? Yeah and I gots me a pet chikkin can fly to the moon and back in two weeks, all by herself!!!!
It doesn’t take a room full of useless "scientists" in the government take to prove the stupid masks are worse than useless against a virus.
REPLYMADS, the Condition Ravaging America - Intellectual Takeout
July 12, 2022, 1:57 pm[…] More Evidence That School Mask Mandates Are Not Effective […]
REPLY