Facebook Says Noting the CDC's Scientific Misrepresentations 'Could Mislead People'
The social media site slapped a warning on a column in which I criticized the CDC for exaggerating the evidence supporting mask mandates.
Facebook says my recent column about face masks is "missing context" and "could mislead people," based on an assessment by "independent fact checkers." That judgment and the analysis underlying it show how reflexive deference to government agencies distorts supposedly "independent" summaries of scientific evidence on controversial issues, especially issues related to COVID-19 control measures. When one of those agencies gets something wrong, criticism of its position is apt to be labeled "misleading" on social media platforms that strive to police COVID-19 "misinformation" at the government's behest, regardless of what the evidence actually shows.
My column summarized the results of January 30 Cochrane Library review that considered 18 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) aimed at measuring the effectiveness of surgical masks or N95 respirators at reducing the spread of respiratory viruses. Judging from those studies, the Cochrane review found, wearing a mask in public places "probably makes little or no difference" in the number of infections. The authors said that conclusion was based on "moderate-certainty evidence."
Does the Cochrane review prove that masks are worthless in protecting people from COVID-19? No. But it does show that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) misled the public about the strength of the evidence supporting mask mandates, which was the point I made in my column.
The authors of the Cochrane review suggest several possible explanations for their results, including "poor study design," weak statistical power "arising from low viral circulation in some studies," "lack of protection from eye exposure," inconsistent or improper mask use, "self-contamination of the mask by hands," "saturation of masks with saliva," and increased risk taking based on "an exaggerated sense of security." It is possible that some subjects in these studies did derive a benefit from wearing masks, but that effect was washed out by the behavior of other subjects who did not follow protocol, especially if those subjects took more risks than they otherwise would have because masks gave them "an exaggerated sense of security."
It is nevertheless fair to say that the Cochrane review is inconsistent with the CDC's statements about masks. After casting doubt on the value of general mask wearing early in the pandemic, the CDC decided the practice was so demonstrably effective that it should be legally mandated even for 2-year-olds. The CDC's mask advice initially did not distinguish between surgical masks or N95s and the commonly used cloth masks it eventually conceded were far less effective. Its message was that wearing a mask—any mask, apparently—"reduc[es] your chance of infection by more than 80 percent," a claim it said was supported by the best available evidence.
CDC Director Robert Redfield averred that masks were more effective than vaccines at protecting people from COVID-19. His successor, Rochelle Walensky, insisted that "the evidence is clear." But the evidence on which the CDC relied came from two sources with widely recognized drawbacks.
Laboratory experiments provide good reason to believe that masks, especially N95s, can reduce the risk that someone will be infected or infect other people. But those experiments are conducted in idealized conditions that may not resemble the real world, where people often choose low-quality cloth masks and do not necessarily wear masks properly or consistently.
Observational studies, which look at infection rates among voluntary mask wearers or people subject to mask mandates, can provide additional evidence that general mask wearing reduces infection. But such studies do not fully account for confounding variables.
If people who voluntarily wear masks or live in jurisdictions that require them to do so differ from the comparison groups in ways that independently affect disease transmission, the estimates derived from observational studies will be misleading. Those studies can also be subject to other pitfalls, such as skewed sampling and recall bias, that make it difficult to reach firm conclusions.
Despite those uncertainties, the CDC touted an observational study that supposedly proved "wearing a mask lowered the odds of testing positive" by as much as 83 percent. It said even cloth masks reduced infection risk by 56 percent, although that result was not statistically significant and the study's basic design, combined with grave methodological weaknesses, made it impossible to draw causal inferences.
RCTs aim to avoid these problems by comparing disease rates among subjects randomly assigned to wear masks in real-life situations with disease rates in a control group. That design makes the evidence produced by RCTs stronger than the evidence produced by laboratory experiments or observational studies. When they are conducted properly, RCTs support the inference that a difference in outcomes can be attributed to the intervention they test, because the treatment group and the control group are otherwise similar.
If wearing a mask had the dramatic impact that the CDC claimed, you would expect to see some evidence of that in RCTs. Yet the Cochrane review found essentially no relationship between mask wearing and disease rates, whether measured by reported symptoms or by laboratory tests. Nor did it confirm the expectation that N95s would prove superior to surgical masks in the field. The existing RCT evidence, the authors said, "demonstrates no differences in clinical effectiveness."
According to Facebook, making these points "could mislead people." But in fact, it was the CDC that misled people by insisting that the case was closed on masks and mask mandates while citing impressive but empirically shaky estimates of their effectiveness.
The "independent fact checkers" on whom Facebook relies, who work for an organization called Health Feedback, give the game away by contradicting themselves. "Multiple studies show that face masks reduce the spread of COVID-19," their headline claims, echoing the CDC. Health Feedback's "key take away" modifies that claim, saying "evidence suggests that widespread mask usage can reduce community transmission of SARS-CoV-2, especially when combined with other interventions like frequent handwashing and physical distancing" (emphasis added).
Already we have moved from a confident assertion about what "multiple studies show" regarding the effectiveness of masks in particular to a qualified statement about what "evidence suggests" regarding the effectiveness of multiple precautions taken in conjunction with each other. But the whole point of RCTs is to isolate the impact of a specific intervention—in this case, face masks.
According to Health Feedback's conclusion, "a growing body of evidence from RCTs and observational studies suggests that consistent mask-wearing can effectively reduce the spread of respiratory viruses like SARS-CoV-2 in both healthcare and community settings" (emphasis added). Health Feedback's fact checkers concede that "the extent to which community mask-wearing contributes to limiting the spread of different respiratory viruses and in different circumstances is still unclear" (emphasis added). They note potential weaknesses in the RCTs covered by the Cochrane review and say more research is needed to definitively settle the question of how effective masks are.
Contrast that gloss with the position taken by the CDC, which says "the evidence is clear" that wearing a mask "reduc[es] your chance of infection by more than 80 percent." Walensky said that remarkable reduction applies to "the flu," "the coronavirus," and "even just the common cold." The CDC also thinks the evidence is clear that mask mandates work in schools and other settings, despite the methodological problems with the observational studies it cites.
Health Feedback's analysis ostensibly addresses the claim that the Cochrane review "demonstrates" face masks "are ineffective at reducing the spread of COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases." I did not make that claim. But the fact check, which cites two publications of my column (on this website and in the Chicago Sun-Times), also objects to my statement that "the CDC grossly exaggerated the evidence supporting mask mandates." Health Feedback not only fails to show that assessment is wrong; it reinforces the point that the CDC distorted the science to support a predetermined conclusion.
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Any public health official that supported masking should be called out for that.
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They lied.
Deliberately.
Repeatedly.
Politically.
On both sides.
#defundCDC
https://twitter.com/SpartaJustice/status/1626317570784501760?t=WwqJNlrdE7dYgwfgEBMwQg&s=19
GOVERNMENT CRIMES: They paid doctors and nurses to murder innocent patients. They faked Covid cases and deaths to instill fear in the population. They denied safe early treatments murdering millions of innocent people. They forced ineffective toxic Covid vaccines on the world.
They Censored anyone sharing life saving early treatment information and anyone who warned about the dangers of the Covd vaccines. The Governments willfully committed crimes against humanity.
THE CRIMINAL CARTEL: The Pandemic was created and orchestrated fraudulently by a Global Criminal Cartel led by Governments, Gates, Fauci, Tedros, Drosten, Schwab, Rothschilds, BlackRock, Rockefeller to control and to inject the world with Covid Vaccines.
CRIMINAL INDICTMENTS: The U.S. Department of Defense along with Fauci, Gates, Tedros, Moderna, Pfizer, FDA, CDC, WEF, CIA and others willfully and criminally engaged in racketeering, illegal advertising, fraud and mass premeditated murder of millions of innocent people worldwide.
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That’s what you get when you abdicate all control over the discernment of truth.
Private AND public interests lying and coercing people without any responsibility to prove their claims.
Criminalize lying, demand discernment of truth with correctly applied logic and science and hold EVERY citizen equally accountable for what they say.
Before you shit yourself unable to fathom an existence without lying, consider all the politicians, lawyers, policemen and judges who will lose their jobs with a criminal record after being proven lying..
Not to mention, you’d never get out of jail, Nazi sscum.
Prove it Kol Nidre boy.
As long as these social media and tech companies are staffed and run by millennial toddlers this insanity is going nowhere. There are no adults.
(anti)social media companies lie. Independent fact checkers are not independent, they are democrat shills. (and don’t give a damn abut fact)
The CDC defines unreliable.
Water is suspected, in some studies, of possibly being wet.
Just shut up and wear the mask, Jacob. Otherwise people might think you are a Republican.
Those of us who noted the scientific evidence that masks were useless back in July of 2020 don’t want to hear it anymore. The science was never going to be allowed to interfere with the narrative.
Yeah, he can’t admit that masks have no health utility, and continues to clutch at straws–and pearls.
It’s almost like wanting to be a libertarian, but afraid of giving up on big government (and offending important people).
You know who else couldn’t abide being called out for scientific misrepresentations?
Greta Thunberg?
Still would.
Oh..Is there a potential Nordic theme here? Gosh, that hadn’t occurred to me.
Isn’t it good, Norwegian would?
Trofim Lysenko?
Thomas Dolby?
To be honest, he was just blinded by science.
He was also Hyperactive as hell!
Adherents of the Georg Ernst Stahl school of phlogiston theory?
You should have just raised your hand.
Jeffy is suspiciously absent. Oh, and where’s JFree to tell us Sullum is wrong here?
Duh, Fauci. What do I win?
A free booster shot.
Chiropractors?
The Church of Scientology?
*SIGH* 8 hours later and no one guessed Elena Ceausescu!
To be fair, it is Facebook where the average user can be easily confused by the assertion that both 2 + 2 and 1 + 3 equal 4 and therefore any factual statement can be labelled ‘misleading’.
And did we learn anything from this episode, Jacob?
All I can do is laugh at Sullum.
The useful idiots always think going along with the statists will surely work out for them, and they certainly wont use that power you helped them get against you the second you speak a word out of step with the official narrative.
Maybe allowing these people to run rampant in the name of ‘public health’ for years because they had ‘good intentions’ was a terrible fucking idea and commenters here told you this in early 2020.
“Allowing”? Whom does Facebook belong to?
He was talking about the medical deep state dipshit.
Some part private some part government.
Yes, we learned you stick your head above the parapet after The Atlantic asks for amnesty.
“…reflexive deference to government agencies distorts”
How the hell did we get to this point, you ask?
Because it is far more important to gang up and oppose your perceived enemies than it is to get anything right. Win, lose, no draw.
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You mean Facebook does not have expertise on what is quality information on medical and scientific subjects, nor do these appointed so-called fact checkers?
What about Trump though?
It thought the walls were closing in. He had nuclear secrets, remember? Classified information that he totally was trying to steal and share with the Russians.
What happened with that?
Do you think maybe he’s running for office again as a last ditch attempt to keep the DOJ off his back?
Watching the bitching in the comments slowly percolate up to Reason headlines is a fun pastime.
They are just “special” libertarians that take a while to notice the bad things.
Are you under the impression the Reason staff looks at the comments?
ENB does.
Of course, @MikeLaursen2 already knew that. He replied to @ENBrown in that Twitter thread.
Be he still didn’t get a sandwich.
He probably made a sammich for ENB.
https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1627724200839348246?t=6zOjio-KK_9DaPPmLz2AUQ&s=19
BREAKING: James O’Keefe REMOVED as CEO of Project Veritas
To be replaced by John Podesta or someone from Hamilton68?
Hunter Biden actually.
PENIS!
the enemies from without burrowed within and conducted the coup.
Classic marxist playbook
I look forward to the future Veritas pieces exposing everything ELSE except vaccine liars and corrupt libs. Those are now protected.
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Facebook says my recent column about face masks is “missing context” and “could mislead people,” based on an assessment by “independent fact checkers.” That judgment and the analysis underlying it show how reflexive deference to government agencies distorts supposedly “independent” summaries of scientific evidence on controversial issues, especially issues related to COVID-19 control measures.
Had you written this article in 2020, 2021, or most of 2022, you probably would have been banned from the platform.
And Facebook the platform has placed editorial comments on your article. What does that make Facebook?
Crappy at moderation of misinformation.
Not purveyors of misinformation?
No enemies in the establishment, right Mike? As long as they keep it corporatist.
Good old fascism, here again at the hands of cosmopolitans. Not that it was ever unfashionable, it just changed rhetoric.
That word sure gets thrown around a lot these days.
Facebook having crappy moderation is “fascism” now.
Facebook censoring it’s users to please a government agency is…what?
Mikes dream.
Ya know ….. one could get pedantic and say that only Mussolini’s party was fascist; it was not racial or anti-semite, just pro-Italy.
One could say that Hitler was a race-based collectivist and Communism is class-based collectivism.
In the end, they are all collectivists who dream of stealing from disfavored people to give to the favored people, and that redistribution requires force.
I like to illustrate the difference by saying that individualism can simulate collectivism with contracts, but collectivism cannot even tolerate individualism, let alone simulate it.
Where in Sullum’s story above does it say that a government agency was involved?
Perhaps you think government is so kind and gentle that they told only Twitter what to do, not Facebook or Google or MicroSoft or Apple or anyone else.
If you ignore that Mark Zuckerberg interview on Rogan when he mentioned the FBI agents walking in and warning him about things he needed to watch out for and censor.
That’s pretty ironclad proof that the FBI coerced Facebook into tagging Sullum’s post, and it couldn’t have been Facebook’s own decision.
After losing on a generality, Mike moves the goalposts to a specific instance.
You do realize you’re trying to handwave undeniable government censorship on a purportedly libertarian site, right Mike?
But don’t dare call him a Democratic Party tribalist folks.
If anyone is curious what Zuck actually said to Joe Rogan, ATM’s retelling is not accurate:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62688532
How is it not accurate? Despite the weasely article tone and lying about Rogan the BBC recounting is the same as ATF’s.
“Zuckerberg told Rogan: “The background here is that the FBI came to us – some folks on our team – and was like ‘hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, we have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump that’s similar to that’.”
Anyway, I’m pretty sure that you cherrypicked that article Mike, because 1. it still tries desperately to throw shade on the laptops provenance, and 2. doesn’t mention all of Zuckerberg’s remarks on the subject.
Here’s what you wanted to leave out:
“We just kind of thought hey look, if the FBI, which I still view is a legitimate institution in this country, it’s a very professional law enforcement- they come to us and tell us that we need to be on guard about something then I want to take that seriously.”
Video clip: https://twitter.com/minds/status/1562927481945980928
Dee is really a terrible person.
Holy fuck, you are stupid–or really poor at this comment shit.
Yet in the other thread he claims everybody already knew government was talking to Twitter.
Maybe Mike is Sullum’s sock.
How does Sullum feel about ENB?
It’s hilarious how you give everyone but conservatives/right leaning libertarians the benefit of the doubt.
“The social media site slapped a warning on a column in which I criticized the CDC for exaggerating the evidence supporting mask mandates.”
Here’s one worse.
The social media site slapped a warning and then removed the fucking British Medical Journal for spreading “Misinformation”.
The BMJ is the world’s oldest and most prestigious medical journal. It’s reading is a mandatory part of every doctors professional development.
But Facebook’s idiot factchecker’s called it a “blog” and published their analysis under the banner of “hoax-alert”.
What was the BMJ’s crime? They published an article on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial.
Incidentally, Jeff of course supported the “fact”checkers here at the time.
Give Jeff a break. As a fat fuck he needs extra government-approved propaganda comfort.
A bunch of blue-haired marxist non-binary millennials with Harry potter tattoos sitting around fact-checking “the science” is how you get trust and integrity with a platform, doncha know?
The federalist is going to get banned again, for pretending an arrest is actual news.
https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/20/california-democrat-arrested-charged-with-mail-in-ballot-fraud/
Just looked and it isn’t banned. And the story is there.
Haha.
Reading comprehension isn’t White Mike’s superpower.
https://twitter.com/LoganLancing/status/1627740618658091017?t=DntLpHm4JnipYmZ_YvHBEg&s=19
“The government would never switch you to all electric, all internet connected everything so they can shut you down in a heartbeat. That’s a conspiracy theory.”
[Link]
Of course if masks actually did reduce infection they would simply create a bigger problem. If you are not exposed to infection you cannot develop natural immunity. Considering the fact that Covid 19 is not life threatening to over 99% of the population one could surmise that some of the remaining fraction of 1% would still be alive had we developed herd immunity earlier. Even the CDC now admits that natural immunity provides better protection than their “vaccines”. These people don’t just have blood on their hands. They’re drenched in it.
Shackford cringes.
https://twitter.com/SethDillon/status/1627667349804396545
Jeff would have an aneurism.
An anatomy of the dying of the third largest city in the country.
https://johnkassnews.com/anatomy-of-my-departure/
I am the 4th generation of my family to live in Chicago. My dad grew up in Uptown and my mom on Alta Vista Terrace, before that area was called Wrigleyville. My mom’s side got pushed out of the old Greektown when Richard J. wanted Circle Campus and a highway, the other side was pushed out of Turkey when Ataturk didn’t want them there, so I guess I have refugee or Displaced Person (DP) in my blood.
We learned “The Chicago Way” at a young age. One election my dad (who worked 2 jobs his entire life) decided he was going to vote in the Republican Primary. If you recall back in the day, we used 55 gallon drums for garbage cans. Shortly after the election our garbage cans disappeared but not our neighbors.
The 90’s and 00’s were good in Chicago. Richard M. shined it up, planted flowers, lots of flowers and crime was down. What most didn’t realize was that he was cleaning it up by washing away the city’s foundation.
The state of Georgia had opened up, so we decided to take a vacation there for a week to get out from under the tyranny of Lightfoot and Pritzker, it was eye opening. Then the riots came to Chicago.
I went into an Apple store down here in Florida shortly after we moved. As I jaunted out into the sunny blue skies with my purchase, I realized it was the first time I ever walked out of an Apple store without my head on a swivel worried about getting mugged.
Facebook should just put in their terms of service that they’re uninterested in the truth being shared on their platform, just in the name of honesty.
They should. I mean it’s a freekin’ place for your aunt to post photos of her cat.
You are a joke.
Remember folks, Mike swears he’s a libertarian.
Facebook is the new MySpace.
“Laboratory experiments provide good reason to believe that masks, especially N95s, can reduce the risk that someone will be infected or infect other people.”
When you go to that link, it is a study on how masks prevent the transmission of droplets through physics. It’s not a study on rates of infection in actual people.
If we’ve learned anything during the pandemic, we’ve learned that respiratory diseases like Covid are not spread through droplets hitting your face. In fact, the whole mask fiasco is based on this faulty theory of disease transmission.
Hey, how dare you challenge the Science! that Sullum chooses to believe in?
That one sentence ruined the entire article.
When Yevgeny Zamyatin wrote in 1924, it was The Benefactor. When Ayn Rand wrote in 1937 it was the Council of Scholars. When Orwell wrote in 1948 it was Big Brother. Now that Jake Sullum is writing, it’s Independent Fact-Checkers. Whatever became of “…or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Facebook is a private company. Nobody has a right to assemble or compel speech using its property.
But the government does.
We already know for certain that the FBI was contacting Facebook about censoring political stories, but look a Mike obfuscate.
Don’t you dare say he’s not a libertarian though.
Imagine being so dishonest that you claim the Twitter files are old news, then turn right around and say the feds don’t influence moderation at Facebook.
I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say at this point that Mike is a horrible person.
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The gestapo police is here….
And it’s founded in Nazi (National Socialist) – Agencies…
Who could’ve possibly guessed that one coming?
The CDC is an UN-Constitutional agency.
https://reason.com/2021/04/01/the-cdc-vs-the-constitution/
OK, now close the loop. You were wrong when you said there were no shadow bans. You were wrong when you cheered people being banned for “misinformation”. You were wrong when you defended Facebook and their Truth Commission featuring such luminaries of leftist misinformation as the queen of Gamergate.
You guys want credibility on this topic? Do a complete mea culpa on why you participated for so long. Explain how you determined that all the stories that were promoted by the FBI disinformation teams were worthy of your fealty. Explain why you still buy into so many stories that they propagated, and still shy away from attempting to correct the injustices they have perpetrated.