Study: School masking of kids made ‘No Significant Difference’ in transmission
Study looked at both masked and unmasked students
Over a dozen researchers from universities and hospitals in Spain collaborated on a study analyzing the use of masks on school children with regard to COVID-19 transmission rates and age for schools in the Catalonia region.
The study is titled “Unravelling the Role of the Mandatory use of Face Covering Masks for the Control of SARS-CoV-2 in Schools: a Quasi-Experimental Study Nested in a Population-Based Cohort in Catalonia (Spain).” (PDF here)
The overall thrust of the study is that mask mandates for children attending school are “based on insufficient scientific evidence.”
The researchers say the “aim of our study was not to measure the individual effectiveness of FCM, but to evaluate the effectiveness of mask mandates in the real-world context of schools.”
The data used in the study pulls from 1,907 schools with a combined total of 599,314 students during the first half of the 2021-22 school year.
Throughout the study, the acronym FCM is used to refer to Face Covering Masks.
“The main findings of the study show no significant differences for children in the last grade of preschool (P5) and the first year of primary education in COVID-19 transmission indicators during the study period, despite their difference in FCM mandate and the strong age dependency of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in schools,” according to the study.
Importantly, the study looked at both kids who were forced to wear a mask and those who were not. This is a basic control group model, which was left out of a study that made the rounds in North Carolina - I’ll get back to that in the More To The Story portion.
Although COVID-19 variants like Omicron were not ongoing or particularly strong during the study, the study states it is “unlikely that the effectiveness of the mask mandate measure will increase with a more transmissible variant.”
Additionally, the researchers found that “With no mandatory use of FCM, the youngest children have significantly lower transmission indicators when compared with any other group.”
In its conclusion, the study states “FCM mandates in schools showed no significant differences in terms of transmission. Conversely, we found that age is a key component explaining transmission in children.”
More To The Story
Going back to the mask study in North Carolina, one might recall it involved only students in North Carolina and was conducted by Duke’s ABC Science Collaborative (ABC) in partnership with N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.
The ABC’s study (it was actually more of a report, if one is being honest) had no control group and was roundly criticized in a Wall Street Journal Op-ed.
The Op-ed dropped in July of 2021 and ripped ABC over the lack of a control group:
Despite all this, the report describes the state’s Covid strategy as “outstanding.” All schools showed low degrees of transmission, for which the report credited the only unstudied pillar, the masking policy. Because it applied everywhere in the state, there was no control group. But they could have compared transmission rates with school districts in other states and in Europe that didn’t mandate masks.
Rather than study all the key components of the Covid-19 school strategy, the researchers baselessly touted masks. The press release should have read, “Distancing efforts showed no effect in North Carolina Schools.” Instead, the email from the Duke Weekly summarized it as follows: “Safe, in-person schooling under COVID-19. In a word, masks.” - Tom Nicholson, Wall Street Journal, July 8, 2021.
It’s worth mentioning Nicholson is a former Duke researcher.
Nicholson, along with Jay Bhattacharya, dropped a second Op-ed in early January of 2022 calling ABC’s work “deceptive” when it came to examining “test to stay” policies. That article carried a subheadline that read “Duke researchers look at transmission in schools and end up reinforcing their prior assumptions.”
“An honest summary of the study might have said: “There is a low transmission rate of the virus among students, even when unmasked at lunch or during sports.” But a summary like that wouldn’t have reinforced the politically acceptable message of public-health authorities today, and so unfounded points had to be fashioned to fit the narrative,” wrote Nicholson and Bhattacharya.
Ouch.
Criticism of the ABC mask study wasn’t just in the newspapers, it also hit social media.
Following an opinion piece in the New York Times by ABC, independent journalist David Zweig called them out in a Twitter thread for cherry-picking data and for using another study out of Israel as a substitute for a control group.
Yet despite these valid criticisms, ABC’s mask report still became a go-to for school boards to justify continuing mask mandates on K-12 children.
Related Read: The Mask Studies You Should Know