A study suggesting no clear benefit from school mask mandates has many experts questioning the policy
Photo: Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag At the end of May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a notable, yet mostly ignored, large-scale study of COVID transmission in American schools. A few major news outlets covered its release by briefly reiterating the study’s summary: that masking then-unvaccinated teachers and improving ventilation with more fresh air were associated with a lower incidence of the virus in schools.
The study published by the CDC was both ambitious and groundbreaking. It covered more than 90,000 elementary-school students in 169 Georgia schools from November 16 to December 11 and was, according to the CDC, the first of its kind to compare COVID-19 incidence in schools with certain mitigation measures in place to other schools without those measures.
This question of “relevant science” is what makes the Georgia study worth careful consideration. Over and over, studies and reports on children in schools with low transmission rates claim in their summaries that masking students helped keep transmission down. But looking at the underlying data in these studies, masks were always required or widely worn, and implemented in concert with a variety of other interventions, such as increased ventilation.
Many people may surmise that even if there’s not conclusive evidence, it’s still likely that masking kids in schools helps. But not all masks are created equal. A list of public-health notables, including Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist and former COVID-19 adviser to Joe Biden, and Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the FDA, have publicly noted the limited effectiveness of cloth masks.
One troubling aspect of the CDC and AAP’s guidance for masking children in school, nearly every expert I interviewed said, is that it has no endpoint or specific metrics. When asked when kids can remove masks in school, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said, “If our children are vaccinated, we have full vaccination in schools, we have full vaccination in teachers, we have disease rates that are low — I think then we can start thinking about how we can loosen up.
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