Does anyone else remember when "scientific" journals at least pretended to be scientific?
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medical advice from Harvard and the NEJM
The erosion of credibility of scientific magazines and journals — e.g., the journal Nature finding that assigning gender by the genitals one is born with “has no foundation in science” — continues apace. Just last year, the New England Journal of Medicine came out against harmful sex designations on birth certificates.
Now it’s 2022, and the New England Journal of Medicine has published a new study advocating for universal masking in schools. The authors of the study look at the incidence of COVID-19 among students and staff when universal masking requirements were lifted in the greater Boston area, which is fine. But the money quote is the line about mitigating structural racism in schools.
In the abstract, the authors write:
… Districts that chose to sustain masking requirements longer tended to have school buildings that were older and in worse condition and to have more students per classroom than districts that chose to lift masking requirements earlier. In addition, these districts had higher percentages of low-income students, students with disabilities, and students who were English-language learners, as well as higher percentages of Black and Latinx students and staff. Our results support universal masking as an important strategy for reducing Covid-19 incidence in schools and loss of in-person school days. As such, we believe that universal masking may be especially useful for mitigating effects of structural racism in schools, including potential deepening of educational inequities.
So if I can understand these Harvard experts, poor children in Boston’s schools (80% black) were forced to wear masks for the duration of the panic, while kids in better schools didn’t, so we should demand universal masking in suburban schools to reduce inner-city students’ exposure to COVID. Huh? Only in Cambridge could that be interpreted as logical.
By the way, what about the harmful effects of masking on students themselves? Not to worry, citing this very article itself (!) — footnote 47, and a 2021 article from a mass media magazine, “Healthy Children” — footnote 48, the authors say all is fine. We won’t mention the studies coming out post-panic that detail the severe, permanent harm masking caused, because the authors don’t.
Because universal masking policies in schools have been contentious, we anticipate several critiques. One such critique is that the benefits of universal masking in schools are outstripped by potential disruptions to teaching, learning, and social development. These effects warrant further rigorous evaluation; however, to date, there is no clear existing evidence that masking inhibits learning or harms development.47,48