New Study Further Shows CDC is a Dishonest Organization that Lied About Mask Efficacy
Using garbage research to 'prove' a useless intervention works.
In the ongoing debate about censorship, it’s worth remembering who the biggest purveyors of “misinformation” and “disinformation” really are:
Government and mainstream media.
Throughout the so-called 'pandemic' the industry-funded US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was a major source of fake news, issuing egregiously false claims about everything from masks to the toxic gene therapies being passed off as vaccines.
The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) is the CDC’s flagship scientific journal, and was frequently employed to give these false claims an air of scientific validity.
"Often called 'the voice of CDC,'" reads the blurb, "the MMWR series is the agency’s primary vehicle for scientific publication of timely, reliable, authoritative, accurate, objective, and useful public health information and recommendations."
They’re not wrong when they call MMWR the “voice of the CDC.” Most MMWR articles are written by the CDC and are peer-reviewed - not by independent third parties - but by the CDC itself. Despite this dubious arrangement, MMWR is an influential journal. Of the nearly 42,000 journals ranked by Scopus, MMWR sits in #53 spot. As a point of comparison, the widely read Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) sits at #72.
According to Scopus, MMWR articles were cited 45,551 times by other publications between 2019-2022. That's actually a higher citation rate than 4 of the top 10 journals.
So when the CDC uses MMWR to publish misinformation and disinformation, it matters. The MMWR helps CDC lies to spread far and wide.
A trio of researchers - Tracy Beth Høeg, MD, PhD, Alyson Haslam, PhD and Vinay Prasad, MD, MPH - recently analyzed MMWR articles related to masks. What they uncovered was a virtual swamp of mask BS.
The preprint is available here.
Their search for MMWR mask-related publications spanned the years 1978 to 2023, and retrieved 77 relevant studies, all published between 2020-2023.
Seventy of those studies (90.9%) had one or more authors affiliated with the CDC.
Not one of the studies was a randomized, controlled trial.
The most common study design was observational without a control or comparator group (22 of 77 studies, or 28.6%). These kinds of studies are wholly unsuited for claiming causality, as they can only detect statistical associations and are typically plagued by a myriad of potential confounders.
The authors noted that only 23 of these 77 (30%) questionable studies assessed the effectiveness of masks, with 14% returning statistically significant results.
However 58 of the 77 articles (75.3%) stated masks were effective.
Of these 58 studies, 41 (70.7%) used causal language and 40 (69%) used causal language inappropriately.
Eleven of 77 (14.3%) studies found a statistically significant inverse relationship between masking and cases.
Four of 77 (5.2%) had a numerically higher number of cases in the mask group than the comparator group - yet all four concluded masks were effective.
Of all publications included, none cited a randomized study or review of only randomized studies.
As the researchers noted, none of the studies possessed the appropriate methodology to assess mask effectiveness.
Of all 58 studies stating masks were effective, only one (1.7%), which mainly focused on influenza, mentioned conflicting data on mask effectiveness.
As I've discussed previously, no RCT has really demonstrated efficacy for masks. Even the farcical Bangladesh Mask Study, which was widely hailed as finally proving the efficacy of masks, in reality showed masks were about as useful as breasts on a Kenworth.
Given there has never been anything resembling quality, controlled evidence showing clinically significant efficacy for masks, it is clear the real agenda behind masks was to dehumanize wearers, to force conformity and compliance, and perpetuate fear.