NYT Writer Exposes Sham Duke ‘Universal Masking Works’ Study Being Abused to Justify School Mask Mandates

RALEIGH – Currently, more than 50 school districts in North Carolina have elected to require the masking of K-12 public school students and staff, some of them reversing earlier decisions to make masks optional. The trend is fueled by a narrative that universal masking works to suppress COVID transmission in schools, a conclusion reached and propagated by authors of a Duke/ABC Collaborative study based upon…nothing.

The study in question didn’t actually study masks versus non-masks, at all. It did effectively demonstrate the massive waste of space and resources social distancing mandates have been, but, in keeping with the narrative, the authors and the giddy media are ignoring the actual implications of the study to advance the call for mask mandates in school. At this point it’s make believe, and this New York Times writer is calling them out on the blatant disregard for anything resembling scientific truth.

THREAD

I corresponded with the authors of the Duke study behind this opinion piece weeks ago… https://t.co/KtwivD9cwX

— David Zweig (@davidzweig) August 10, 2021

A topline finding of the Duke/ABC Science Collaborative report, and what they claim here, is that masks in schools help lower transmission. Except all their schools were under a mask mandate. I asked the authors how they could make a claim on masks when there was no control …

— David Zweig (@davidzweig) August 10, 2021

In order to claim an effect you must compare one group with an intervention to a different group *without* the intervention, which they didn’t do. Instead, the authors replied with the Israeli study, saying that showed masks in schools work. Except…

— David Zweig (@davidzweig) August 10, 2021

1)You cannot use another study as evidence for a claimed finding in your study
2)The Israel study was of grades 7-12; windows were closed; and all schools were exempt from masks. If anything, the fact that there was only one outbreak suggests the lack of effectiveness of masks

— David Zweig (@davidzweig) August 10, 2021

pic.twitter.com/vwt5QLqPbf

— David Zweig (@davidzweig) August 10, 2021

The authors do the same thing in this Opinion piece, citing some districts that had mask mandates and low transmission as evidence of their effectiveness, and cherry picking some places that didn’t to suggest the opposite…

— David Zweig (@davidzweig) August 10, 2021

Yet schools in Florida, and more so throughout many parts of Europe did not and do not have mask mandates for kids, with varying age cutoffs, and there is no correlated explosion of cases originated in those schools

— David Zweig (@davidzweig) August 10, 2021

Sadly, they buried the lede from their report, which is that distancing of more than 3 feet or less than 3 feet made no difference in transmission rates

— David Zweig (@davidzweig) August 10, 2021

When I raised the points about the Israeli study the authors stopped responding to me

END

— David Zweig (@davidzweig) August 10, 2021

This is what it’s come to; campaigns to ‘Trust the Science’ advanced by ignoring, twisting, and making up ‘science.’