Last year in the U.S. broadly and Texas more specifically, some schools were mask-optional. Other schools forced or coerced children to wear them for hours each day, every day, often even outside during exercise.
Forced-mask schools had higher infection rates than mask-optional.
In U.S. schools, staff in forced-mask schools had higher COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) infection rates than those in mask-optional schools.
In real-world data, rather than wish-casting, hunches, or theoretical models, forced-mask schools had higher infection rates for both students and staff.
In Texas, student infection rates in forced-mask schools were higher than in mask-optional schools.
Forced-mask schools in Texas also had higher rates of infection for staff than mask-optional schools.
Texas students and staff alike had lower rates of infection in mask-optional schools.
Forced-mask schools had higher average two-week COVID-19 infection rates.
Students in forced-mask U.S. schools had higher COVID-19 case rates than students in mask-optional schools.
But communities with forced-mask schools also had higher case rates than communities with mask-optional schools.
Staff in forced-mask U.S. schools had higher COVID-19 case rates than staff in mask-optional schools.
Communities with forced-mask schools also had higher case rates than communities with mask-optional schools.
What does this mean?
School infections and cases are often filtered reflections of what's going on in the community, but the good news for all schools, forced-mask and mask-optional alike, is that students had substantially lower case rates than their communities last year.
Staff in all schools, forced-mask and mask-optional alike, had lower case rates than their communities last year, but mask-optional school staff had even more significantly lower case rates than their broader communities, compared to forced-mask schools.
If school cases are just a filtered reflection of what's going on in the community, then shouldn't we discount all of these numbers?
It's a chicken and egg game. Which came first, the masks or the cases?
Even controlling for lower case rates in communities with mask-optional schools, giving forced-mask schools a "bonus" reduction in cases, forced-mask schools still had higher case rates than mask-optional schools.
Students in forced-mask Texas schools had higher COVID-19 case rates than students in mask-optional schools.
But communities with forced-mask schools also had higher case rates than communities with mask-optional schools.
Staff in forced-mask Texas schools had higher COVID-19 case rates than staff in mask-optional schools.
Communities with forced-mask schools also had higher case rates than communities with mask-optional schools.
Doesn't this negate the mask-optional lower case advantage? No.
Even after giving forced-mask schools in Texas a generous "subtraction bonus" and removing a significant number of cases, forced-mask schools still had higher case rates than mask-optional schools.
If you'd like to see more data, including infection rates over time, there is a lot more to see (like this graphic) at a thread from several weeks ago now:
All of the data:
5,181 Schools
4,028,141 In-Person Students
1,346,331 In-Person Staff
...are from: covidschooldashboard.com, which had some serious heavy-hitter backers, including the Arnold, Templeton, and Walton Family Foundations, Brown University, and @AASAHQ.
Back on May 2, 2021, "el gato malo" took a stab at the numbers, when it became clear that the data were going to show these kinds of results.
The bad cat made some important points that still hold today (try to ignore the lack of capitalization): boriquagato.substack.com/p/your-childs-…
Like el gato malo, I also ran the numbers without remote-only schools or schools with sub-30% in-person attendance.
Frankly, the numbers are pretty similar to the others, so I just left them out of this thread and instead used "all schools" above, but here are a few of them:
Assuming data is even allowed to be collected this year, we are about to have yet another round of forced-mask schools dueling against mask-optional schools.
I claim: forced-mask schools will not perform better than mask-optional.
Anyone care to wager? about.burbio.com/school-mask-po…
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