Thread by @kylamb8

Nikki Fried is pushing a baseless conspiracy theory and shamelessly cherry picking data to push her mask agenda. She wants to force kids into masks even though much of the world has realized that is a pointless exercise.

I will destroy her narratives and her agenda.

https://twitter.com/NikkiFried/status/1446121081329254402

First, there was NO statistically significant difference in case rates in the 2020-21 school year in Florida between the 40 county districts with mandatory masking and the 27 who did not have a mask policy and no statistical difference in community rates.

medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

In real world data, where cases were adjusted to end of year enrollment, there was a difference in masking districts to unmasked difference of only a few children per 1,000 kids enrolled in-person.

This year, the story has been similar. To be sure, the actual case rates of the 13 districts forcing mandates (and breaking the law by not allowing opt-outs) are lower in community transmission and case rates than districts with no policies or opt-outs. But...

...the school year started that way. So you can't compare case rates right now without adjusting for community transmission or trends.

The week ending Aug. 19, the 13 masking counties averaged 19.6% positivity. The other 54 counties averaged 27.5%.

Now, the 13 counties have decreased from 19.6% to 6.5 as of Sep. 30 (67% drop) while the other 54 have decreased from 27.5% to 9.7 (65% drop).

Community transmission rates have decreased almost identically.

The same trend has been seen with cases of ages 5-17 in those counties. Districts with forced masking and no opt-outs have decreased in cases 76.5% from Sep. 1 to Sep. 28. The other districts decreased 79.4%.

Masking has not shown any additional impact on pediatric cases.

To be upfront, the 5-17 cases are countywide and do not necessarily align perfectly with districts. They include some private schools that might have different policies and may not capture a few 18 year olds. Meanwhile, Nikki is using available school data...

Nikki says 33 districts have data available. However, her own data link shows 30 of the 67 with weekly data (not 33).

7 of the 13 with no opt-outs had weekly data
7 of 9 with parental opt-outs had it
16 of 45 with no mask policies had data available

Furthermore, in addition to over half of the counties not having data, we do not know how reliable the school surveillance is in some of these districts. The state does not require any case surveillance for schools specifically. So some districts may have unreliable data.

In several instances, Nikki cherry-picked the best districts that had mask requirements and pitted them against the worst districts without. She also plucked a few random examples from different time periods for comparison. She ignores community transmission.

Worse yet, she literally cites "peak" case dates for non-masking districts. Her own data shows that EVERY SINGLE ONE of the 15 counties had peak case dates in the 1st, 2nd or 3rd week of school. Infections have a ~5-10 day incubation period and a lag in catching cases...

This means that every district in Florida peaked in case surveillance within 1-3 weeks of school starting. Anyone with a shred of common sense knows this has ZERO to do with school masking policies. Anyone citing this as evidence is clueless or dishonest.

Bottom line is there is no evidence that masks have made any difference in Florida schools. Not last year. Not this year. Certainly not shown in Nikki's 'evidence.'

This is a total farce.

^This should read every single one of the 16 counties without mask policies