Centers for Disease Control just published a shockingly inept COVID mask study

06 February 2022

I search for words, this is so grimly bad

Recently, I suggested that monkeys are running the developed world.

Evidently, they've taken over the Centers for Disease Control, as well.

In one of the most badly done medical studies that I have ever seen, the CDC makes the following claim:

Always using a face mask or respirator in indoor public settings was associated with lower adjusted odds of a positive test result compared with never wearing a face mask or respirator in these settings . . . adjusted odds ratio . . . = 0.44 . . . .

© 2022 Kristin L. Andrejko, Jake M. Pry, Jennifer F. Myers, Nozomi Fukui, Jennifer L. DeGuzman, John Openshaw, James P. Watt, Joseph A. Lewnard, Seema Jain and California COVID-19 Case-Control Study Team, Effectiveness of Face Mask or Respirator Use in Indoor Public Settings for Prevention of SARS-CoV-2 Infection — California, February–December 2021, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report [MMWR], Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (04 February 2022)

This purportedly 'scientific' conclusion is certainly in line with American public health propaganda.

How could any of us (among the scientifically minded population) object to the CDC's assertively supported claim?

Here is how . . .

The CDC's methodology in this study was atrociously bad, that its purported results have to be thrown out by those of us who use our non-monkey minds.

Their study, arguably legitimately, separated COVID-positive test (participant) group against COVID-negative test (control) group.

But then, things flew off the Bridge of Pure Speculation:

There was a huge numerical disparity between the participant and control groups with regard to their initial reason for COVID test — 77.9 percent of the case group had symptoms — only 16.7 percent of the control group did. See Table 1 of the study.

The purported 'study' was conducted by telephone.

It was not blinded. Interviewers knew the telephone interviewee's SARS-CoV-2 infection status before they made the call.

Proportionately almost no one among the California-selected population answered the call.

And among those who did answer, the study did not correct for the fact that more positive test people answered the call than negative test people — 13.4 percent to 8.9 percent.

Study then (questionably) threw out replies from participants who had had contact with a known COVID infectee, as well as those who said that they had not spent time indoors in public settings.

There was a noticeable difference between case group and control group, with regard to reliably wearing a mask — 60.3 percent of case (positive test) group wore mask all the time, versus 69.6 percent of the control (negative test) group.

Study also completely depended upon participants recall of their activities for the previous 14 days.

It further depended upon participants recollection of whether someone they met had been infected with COVID.

Last, noticeably more case-positive participants had been vaccinated than non-case participants — 78.4 percent of the infected people were unvaccinated and 57.5 percent of the supposed control group was.

Last, the study covered the period before Omicron — the much more contagious SARS-CoV-2 variant — was doing its stroll.

The study team implicitly admitted that its results are crap

From the report's second-to-last paragraph — coming just before the authors baselessly reassert their bogus claim of COVID mask effectiveness:

First, this study did not account for other preventive behaviors that could influence risk for acquiring infection, including adherence to physical distancing recommendations.

In addition, generalizability of this study is limited to persons seeking SARS-CoV-2 testing and who were willing to participate in a telephone interview, who might otherwise exercise other protective behaviors.

Second, this analysis relied on an aggregate estimate of self-reported face mask or respirator use across, for some participants, multiple indoor public locations.

However, the study was designed to minimize recall bias by enrolling both case- and control-participants within a 48-hour window of receiving a SARS-CoV-2 test result.

Third, small strata limited the ability to differentiate between types of cloth masks or participants who wore different types of face masks in differing settings, and also resulted in wider CIs [confidence intervals] and statistical nonsignificance for some estimates that were suggestive of a protective effect.

Fourth, estimates do not account for face mask or respirator fit or the correctness of face mask or respirator wearing; assessing the effectiveness of face mask or respirator use under real-world conditions is nonetheless important for developing policy.

Fifth, data collection occurred before the expansion of the SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.529 (Omicron) variant, which is more transmissible than earlier variants.

Sixth, face mask or respirator use was self-reported, which could introduce social desirability bias.

Seventh, small strata limited the ability to account for reasons for testing in the adjusted analysis, which may be correlated with face mask or respirator use.

Finally, this analysis does not account for potential differences in the intensity of exposures, which could vary by duration, ventilation system, and activity in each of the various indoor public settings visited.

My conclusion about all of this?

The CDC's case and control groups were so different — and so unreliably selected and interviewed — that no one of scientific mind can possibly claim that the supposed results of this 'study' mean anything.

The CDC foisted a closely similar (scientifically indefensible) stunt on us in September 2020.

Obviously, the CDC's Monkey Folk do not — or cannot — learn from scientifically valid critiques.

The moral? — The CDC is led by, and possibly even comprised of, unscientific idiots

This is a national embarrassment.

As well as being genuinely dangerous in a totalitarian political sense.

The Centers for Disease Control are, evidently:

making up facts

imposing pre-concocted delusions upon those

and then

implicitly forcing the American public to hang ourselves with the Centers' pretended data and implications.

Nineteen Eighty-Four, anyone?

PeteFree.com

Centers for Disease Control just published a shockingly inept COVID mask study