Plus, the study doesn’t look at actual mask use, just the mandates. Nor does it account for any differences in behavior, income level, lifestyles and so on. (Which also means it can’t show a thing about masks and “structural racism,” whatever that is anyway.)

Oh, and: It’s an “observational” study — the kind the left dismissed as irrelevant when we’d point out that New Mexico and next-door Utah had very similar COVID trajectories despite very different masking policies. Or that Europe largely didn’t mask kids in school at all but had similar or lower rates than we did. None of that counted.

Which didn’t stop The New York Times’ Roni Caryn Rabin from promoting the new study as “a so-called natural experiment” and breathlessly concluding, “The bottom line: Masking mandates were linked with significantly reduced numbers of Covid cases in schools.”

This is full-on nonsense. The mask mandates did no such thing. New Mexico-Utah and Europe are just part of the avalanche of “natural experiments” that prove it.

It’s pathetic that in November 2022, we have to keep pointing out the obvious — and that garbage science like this destroys everyone’s confidence in the medical field.