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Tracy Høeg, MD, PhD Profile picture
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21 Oct, 8 tweets, 4 min read
Yes👇. @FLSurgeonGen is spot on & has been asking me & certainly many others to send data on masking kids in schools- he wants the truth. We don't have good data showing they prevent COVID spread & certainly have downsides for kids. 🧵
( And OMG @GovRonDeSantis mentioned me?😯)
What downsides?
Ask the kids. Outstanding radio journalism here by @NPR highlighting how *they* feel about masks.

They describe: "suffocating", can't see when their glasses fog, can't see other kids smile. And "I don't want to get my parents sick" 😢npr.org/2021/10/20/104…
I've talked about the lack of data for masking kids in school before. We have existing data showing child mask mandates don't do much if anything in terms of prevention of COVID spread

And it's possible masking kids provides a tiny benefit for preventing covid, but enough to justify this ?👉 "Students are being asked to CHEW WITH THEIR MASKS ON".
Are there no limits to this madness? Why are more physicians not speaking up against this?
I wish other physicians would join us in questioning endless masking of kids without evidence that benefits outweigh the harms. Reminder: WE ARE ASKING KIDS TO MASK WHILE RUNNING OUTDOORS AT RECESS!
Please don't say I am Republican or right wing. My views are complex & I stay away from discussing American bipartisan politics - no healthy democracy can only have 2 sides. Accusing me of being on one "side" is nothing more than a strawman argument when one can't argue with data
Here are my discussions of the limitations of the CDC's recently published studies about masking kids in schools
#1
#2
Also, re downsides of masking children, see this report from France about the detrimental impacts on language, mood and activity participation lesprosdelapetiteenfance.fr/vie-profession…

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More from @TracyBethHoeg

Tracy Høeg, MD, PhD Profile picture
14 Oct
Nice to hear @drsanjaygupta & @joerogan debate & respectfully disagree about multiple topics. They spent a fair bit of time discussing our pre-print (medrxiv.org/content/10.110…) on post-vaccination myocarditis in boys. I want to clarify a few things cnn.com/2021/10/13/hea…
First, Joe does say it correctly once, but our study compared the risk we identified via VAERS of post-vaccination myocarditis (1/6200 in 12-15 yo boys and 1/10,600 in 16-17 yo boys) to the risk of hospitalization over the next *4 months* and *not overall* from COVID-19.
We did find that, even at times of high disease prevalence, that boys 12-17 without medical comorbidities were more likely to have post vax myocarditis after dose 2 than be hospitalized for COVID (over a 120-day period)
Read 11 tweets
Tracy Høeg, MD, PhD Profile picture
12 Oct
The Nordic data on the frequency of myocarditis after dose 2 of Moderna (Spikevax) in 18-29 year old men have been released: 1/4,800.
For Pfizer, it's 1/25,000.
fhi.no/nyheter/2021/m…
>5x difference, but see data from Ontario below (1/5)
Ontario rate is now 1/5600 (mostly Pfizer) in boys 12-17
My ?: Is some of the increase in frequency simply due to awareness of condition? (in addition to increased Moderna use?) 2/5
- Israel rate from NEJM 1/6600 for 16-19 yo (Pfizer) nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…
(For ref our VAERS pre-print: 1/6200 in 12-15 yo males, 1/10,600 in 16-17 yo (Pfizer))

Reports taken together point to ⬆️ rate in younger boys & after Moderna & ⬆️ awareness of this condition 3/5
Read 5 tweets
Tracy Høeg, MD, PhD Profile picture
7 Oct
The Israeli @nejm study published today that stratified for myocarditis rates post vax dose 2 in males age 16-19 found a rate of 1/6600 for Pfizer. Our preprint found a *lower* rate of 1/10,600 for 16-17 yo males. For 12-15 yo males we found 1/6200 nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…
I'm really grateful for this NEJM study⬆️ & glad to see our VAERS-based study didn't provide an overestimate in 16-17 yo males. This was as expected with VAERS typically underreporting. I hope more studies are published with 12-15 year old estimated rates. medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
From second NEJM study "Most cases of myocarditis were of mild or intermediate severity" "1 patient had cardiogenic shock, & 1 patient w/preexisting cardiac disease died of an unknown cause after.. discharge Left ventricular dysfunction in 29% of patients" nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…
Read 6 tweets
Tracy Høeg, MD, PhD Profile picture
25 Sep
MMWR AZ 🌵 mask study #1 limitation:
-Not adjusting for community cases in Maricopa Co (R) rising more during the study (see Figures)
-They adjusted for pre-study case rates, but that was not enough
-remember ~ 95% of school cases come from the community!
cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/7… Image
Maricopa also had a lower vaccination rates: 47.6% vs 59.2% in Pima.

Likely the entire story here is more school cases in schools w/o mask mandates (mostly in Maricopa) due to higher comm. case rates related to lower vax rates. How did this become a mask story?🤔
Since I am literally sitting on the side of a soccer field in Stockton, for further info, I want to refer you to @VPrasadMDMPH 's discussion of these two MMWR studies & why we unfortunately can't learn about the effectiveness of masks from them. vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/two-new-cdc-…
Read 4 tweets
Tracy Høeg, MD, PhD Profile picture
12 Sep
I want to answer 2 questions we are frequently receiving about our study (which are excellent questions!):
1. Why did you use 120-day COVID hospitalization risk rather than overall COVID hospitalization risk?
2. But isn't post COVID myo *more* common than post-vax myo? 1/
2/ The US infection-hospitalization risk in the peds population is too uncertain bc we don't have reliable seroprevalence numbers. Based on a v recent analysis of UK data there is about a 1/750 chance for a child to be hospitalized/infection. TY @apsmunro
3/ We used 120-day hospitalization/population (just as the CDC did in their analysis) because there was less uncertainty about its accuracy. It also allowed us to include multiple rates in our model & incl. recent delta rates, as shown below from COVID-NET gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet…
Read 12 tweets
Tracy Høeg, MD, PhD Profile picture
10 Sep
It's important to note, it's the CDC's estimates of myocarditis in boys & young men that have been the outliers. Israel & Canada reporting similar rates of post-vax myo to the 1/6,000 from our study. TY @_lewisy for the Israeli data ⬇️ medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
And rates from Moderna may be significantly higher:

And those Moderna rates are predicted to be even higher in the 12-17 year old boys:

Read 4 tweets

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