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New York Times Fact Checks “Deceiving” CDC on Masks and Outdoor Transmission

by Will Jones
13 May 2021 9:17 AM

When the New York Times weighs in to fact check the CDC, you know something is in the wind. On Tuesday, reporter David Leonhardt wrote a scathing criticism of the U.S. Federal Health Authority’s recent advice that “less than 10%” of COVID-19 transmission is occurring outdoors.

Leonhardt points out that while this is technically true, it is like saying “sharks attack fewer than 20,000 swimmers a year” when the actual number is around 150 worldwide. “It’s both true and deceiving,” he says.

He calls this “an example of how the CDC is struggling to communicate effectively, and leaving many people confused about what’s truly risky”. The CDC places “such a high priority on caution that many Americans are bewildered by the agency’s long list of recommendations”.

They continue to treat outdoor transmission as a major risk. The CDC says that unvaccinated people should wear masks in most outdoor settings and vaccinated people should wear them at “large public venues”; summer camps should require children to wear masks virtually “at all times”.

However, in reality, “there is not a single documented Covid infection anywhere in the world from casual outdoor interactions, such as walking past someone on a street or eating at a nearby table”.

Leonhardt digs into the studies that supposedly underpin the CDC’s advice and finds layers of conservative over-caution.

Many of the instances of “outdoor transmission” in the literature turn out to be from construction sites in Singapore. This appears to be a classification issue.

The Singapore data originally comes from a Government database there. That database does not categorise the construction-site cases as outdoor transmission, Yap Wei Qiang, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health, told my colleague Shashank Bengali. “We didn’t classify it according to outdoors or indoors,” Yap said. “It could have been workplace transmission where it happens outdoors at the site, or it could also have happened indoors within the construction site.”

The decision that they were outdoors was made by researchers making conservative assumptions.

“We had to settle on one classification for building sites,” Quentin Leclerc, a French researcher and co-author of one of the papers analysing Singapore, told me, “and ultimately decided on a conservative outdoor definition.” Another paper, published in the Journal of Infection and Public Health, counted only two settings as indoors: “mass accommodation and residential facilities.” It defined all of these settings as outdoors: “workplace, health care, education, social events, travel, catering, leisure and shopping.”

Even with this conservative definition, however, the studies still found only a maximum of 1% of infections were caught outdoors.

So where did the CDC get 10% from? Leonhardt enquired and received this statement:

There are limited data on outdoor transmission. The data we do have supports the hypothesis that the risk of outdoor transmission is low. 10% is a conservative estimate from a recent systematic review of peer-reviewed papers. CDC cannot provide the specific risk level for every activity in every community and errs on the side of protection when it comes to recommending steps to protect health. It is important for people and communities to consider their own situations and risks and to take appropriate steps to protect their health.

The systematic review referred to is not provided so we cannot see their working, but it’s clear that this is another conservative estimate on top of a conservative estimate. Then the advice based on it, that this “less than 10%” transmission risk warrants wearing a mask outdoors most of the time even when vaccinated, is conservative on steroids smoking a pipe.

Some may think being over-cautious has no downside. Leonhardt disagrees. “Erring on the side of protection”, he says, “has contributed to widespread public confusion about what really matters”.

Unfortunately, for him “what really matters” includes wearing a mask indoors, which apparently makes “a huge difference”. He points to Britain, claiming that our “scientific approach” of being “more aggressive” and “requiring masks indoors even as most of the country is vaccinated” while being easy-going about outdoor masks is not doing us any harm.

Perhaps he would be interested to know then that the UK Government’s scientific advisers wouldn’t agree that masks make a “huge difference” indoors. In fact, they claim they offer no real protection to the wearer and, in terms of protecting others, cite a review study that states it could find no evidence above low quality for such an effect. They seem to misunderstand this study however and claim to have evidence that masks reduce transmission to others by 6-15%. While not a fair representation of their source, even taken at face value this can hardly be called a belief that masks make a “huge difference”.

Every journey starts with a single step though. The acknowledgement that the advice health authorities dole out might be harmful in its over-caution and even “deceiving” is welcome. Perhaps the New York Times will now develop a healthy taste for scepticism and begin to sniff out what else those in power might not be being entirely honest with us about.

Tags: CDCDavid LeonhardtFace MasksFact checkNew York TimesOutdoor transmission

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23 Comments
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Sandra Barwick
Sandra Barwick
4 years ago

We know they have been making it up from the start. This is how they have been making it up. Not The Science. Lies.

61
0
TORs
TORs
4 years ago

The NYT presents CDC disinformation as “conservative over-caution”, a problem of “not communicating effectively”. What a joke.

37
0
Susan
Susan
4 years ago
Reply to  TORs

The NYT IS a joke.

5
0
peyrole
peyrole
4 years ago

The NYT gives out a deluge of lies and propaganda in every issue, on a par with the Guardian. WaPo is not much better. The WSJ is better, but still gets its SARS2/covid stuff from OmniCom. There are always one or two stray articles if you look closely enough, put there to deflect criticism, to ‘prove’ inclusivity of other views.

24
0
Jess
Jess
4 years ago

Lies, exaggeration, fear-mongering, threats – all evident from the start.
Never a mention of the palpable harms that either forcibly or insidiously masking a population causes.

As demonstrated this week by ShitHandcock’s dismissal of any ‘costs’ incurred by dis-facing society – or last year by FatPig when he referred to muzzles as a minor inconvenience.

41
0
Andy R
Andy R
4 years ago
Reply to  Jess

I have asked my MP and my childrens secondary school head about whether they are aware or have research on the risks of mask wearing. They don’t know. They don’t care. They are following “The Science”. I told my secondary head that he is just “Following Orders”. They are oblivious of all risks except COVID. It is a global political and media monomania.

28
0
Annie
Annie
3 years ago
Reply to  Andy R

We know, from an illustrious precedent, that ‘just following orders’ doesn’t save the necks of totalitarian terrorists and their stooges.

0
0
DanClarke
DanClarke
4 years ago

All BS while they collapse the economy

25
0
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
4 years ago
Reply to  DanClarke

REDISTRUBTE the economy.
Progressivism is a welfare state for billionaires and the globalistas are all about “our” fixed future and changing the past to ensure it occurs.

10
0
Jo Starlin
Jo Starlin
4 years ago

The New York Slimes. Writing lies in the blood of starving Ukrainians since 1932.

12
0
OKUK
OKUK
4 years ago

Why do the folk above the line feel this need to genuflect to the “Lying Giants” of the mainstream media, like NYT. The New York Times has lied and lied and lied again about Covid among many others things.

That this article is being published now suggests to me that the globalists are trying to extricate themselves from a highly exposed and embarrassing strategic position, because the strong federal US government means people can now see exactly what’s happening in the states that have abandoned lockdowns and mask mandates ie nothing bad. So it looks like they have decided to make the CDC the fall guy.

27
0
Silke David
Silke David
4 years ago

How do you “virtually” wear a mask?
I guess they meant the children can take it of for eating and drinking, but as a journalist, could you have phrased this better?

8
0
Jess
Jess
4 years ago
Reply to  Silke David

“How do you “virtually” wear a mask?”

Maybe it means a face-hammock/chin-warmer or dangling from one ear, as so many love to do. This way, they are displaying their virtuosity to all whilst being able to breathe etc.

8
0
Susan
Susan
4 years ago
Reply to  Silke David

They meant to write
“virtuely.”

5
0
Annie
Annie
3 years ago
Reply to  Susan

Goodthinkfully. .
Non-breathing is goodbreathing.

Last edited 3 years ago by Annie
0
0
DomTaylor
DomTaylor
4 years ago

The recent discovery of a 2015 Chinese Communist Party text book on biological warfare, which much describes the events of 2020, rather gives the game away now: see gnews.org. I suspect the rats are niw desparately trying to leave the sinking ship.

13
0
Susan
Susan
4 years ago
Reply to  DomTaylor

If only!

5
0
epythymy
epythymy
4 years ago

2022
“100% of transmission occurs outdoors. And also, 100% indoors”

4
-1
helenf
helenf
4 years ago

Funny how the CDC “errs on the side of protection” when it comes to NPIs but doesn’t seem to give 2 hoots about serious and fatal side effects of the mass rollout of experimental gene therapies.

14
0
A Heretic
A Heretic
4 years ago
Reply to  helenf

They’ve not given 2 hoots about all the serious and fatal side effects of their NPIs either.

4
0
Jules
Jules
4 years ago

Do they (public, journalists, government & scientists) not look at states with absolutely no restrictions before making any judgements on what makes a difference and what doesn’t. I thought it was just selective hearing that was a growing problem!

6
0
LMS2
LMS2
4 years ago

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6254124128001?playlist_id=5198073478001#sp=show-clips

Tucker Carlson’s take on masks on last night’s show.
“Biden promoted vaccine skepticism by wearing a mask”

2
0
tom171uk
tom171uk
4 years ago

Don’t get excited folks. Boris has set us up for indefinite mask wearing. You can’t be too careful with the terrifying Indian variant. But shoving a bit of cloth on he end of your nose will save you from eternal damnation.

4
0

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