BECAUSE THE CDC ISN’T IN THE SCIENCE BUSINESS. OR IN THE HEALTH BUSINESS. Why Can’t the CDC Admit There Is No Solid Evidence To Support ‘Universal Masking’ in Schools?

In an Atlantic article published this week, Margery Smelkinson, an infectious disease scientist who works for the National Institutes of Health, highlights the lack of evidence in favor of school mask mandates. “Two years into this pandemic, keeping unproven measures in place is no longer justifiable,” she and her co-authors write. “We reviewed a variety of studies—some conducted by the CDC itself, some cited by the CDC as evidence of masking effectiveness in a school setting, and others touted by media to the same end—to try to find evidence that would justify the CDC’s no-end-in-sight mask guidance for the very-low-risk pediatric population, particularly post-vaccination. We came up empty-handed.”

Vinay Prasad, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, makes the same point more emphatically in a recent Tablet article. Forcing students to wear face masks “isn’t a matter of protecting children, their teachers, or their grandparents,” he says. “It’s delusional and dangerous cultlike behavior.”

We’ve seen a lot of that lately.