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As the fall and winter seasons are getting into full gear, we are seeing a return to normal regarding the illnesses that appear this time of year, namely influenza and RSV. Despite this return to normal, our public health elite are turning to an intervention that has been all the rage for the past two years: the facial covering and the mask.
Despite the overwhelming evidence that masks throughout history, especially when dealing with influenza, offer no benefit and more recent evidence that masking school-aged children had considerable emotional, developmental, and academic consequences, public health experts are spilling their last ounce of credibility to advocate for the return.
The day after the election, a paper in the NEJM dropped titled: Lifting Universal Masking in Schools — Covid-19 Incidence among Students and Staff. I won’t go into the specifics, but this study published on November 9th, one day after the election, is an embarrassment for NEJM. A good review by Tracy Hoeg, MD, Ph.D., is at https://sensiblemed.substack.com/p/nejms-disappointing-decision-to-publish. Interestingly, her analysis was censored by LinkedIn (owned by Microsoft). Given the whole mask, the issue has been political; it is no surprise that ideology seems to be at play in the timing and distribution of this paper.
If our public health leaders were truly interested in the observation of phenomena (aka science), they would be looking at another factor at play in this rapid increase in RSV/URI cases across the pediatric population. Something they stressed at the FDA’s VRBPAC meeting they would continue post-authorization of these vaccines:
Continued post-authorization safety surveillance, particularly for myocarditis/pericarditis and certain respiratory infections (RSV and pneumonia) in the youngest age group, for which imbalances of uncertain clinical significance were observed in the clinical trial. (https://www.fda.gov/media/159611/download) Page 5.
A mass vaccination program that alerts a ‘signal of uncertain clinical significance’ at the time of the trial in a public that now has an unseasonal increase in cases of the infection that produced the signal?
Transparency is needed from the FDA and CDC on that front, and in reality: ALL FRONTS!
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