Sen. Ron Johnson, ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, sent out a letter to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky on Tuesday requiring that she offer answers about a study the CDC has continuously mentioned to warrant keeping youngsters masked at school. It ends up the research is filled with errors, according to The Atlantic’s coverage and Johnson is demanding more transparency.
In September of 2021, the CDC published the study on the “Association between K-12 School Mask Policies and School-Associated COVD-19 Outbreak,” which was performed in two Arizona regions throughout July as well as August last year. And over the adhering to 2 months, Walensky pointed out the study as reason for forcing schoolchildren to put on masks.
Sen. Johnson’s Ongoing Fight For Transparency
“On September 26, 2021, during an interview on CBS Face the Nation, you stated, ‘[CDC] also published a study out of Arizona that demonstrated that places that had no masks in place were three and half times more likely to have outbreaks than places that did have masks in place,’” Johnson wrote, compiling these public appearances by Walensky into his letter.
The senator noted Walensky saying the very same thing at a White Home press briefing 2 days later, creating a similar statement on her main Twitter account, as well as citing the research once again at an October press briefing as evidence for masking children.
However for Walensky as well as her agency, nonetheless, The Atlantic increased a number of concerns with the research study in a December short article. The potential flaws consisted of the failure of the research study to represent inoculation status, the comparison of colleges open as many as 6 weeks without mask mandates with schools open just three weeks with mask requirements, and also failure to establish whether high positivity rates were the result of transmission within the college.
In addition, county guidelines could have led to schoolchildren under mask mandates not being tested for Covid as often as students without mask mandates, indicating that deciding whom to examine based upon whether they wore masks can have caused “detection bias.”
After The Atlantic released its story revealing the defects, the study authors wrote a letter to rebut it– a letter that the CDC stated supported. The CDC couldn’t keep the story straight though, about when it obtained a copy of the reply. As well as now it can not keep its tale straight on whether it stands by the research study anyhow. According to a write-up from Reason, it appears the CDC is acknowledging issues with the research study behind closed doors.
“The fact that you and the CDC appear to be willing to acknowledge potential flaws and limitations of this and other studies in nonpublic forums raises serious questions about CDC’s commitment to transparency,” Johnson wrote.
In an initiative to require the much-needed transparency, Johnson is requiring that the politicians hand over pertinent paperwork by March 15, consisting of inner interactions connected to the research study, Walensky’s public remarks, the rebuttal letter as well as when the CDC obtained it, The Atlantic post, Walensky’s recommendation of the research’s possible defects, along with details about how the CDC came to publish the study to begin with.
“CDC’s COVID-19 guidance has had and continues to have a direct impact on the lives of Americans as they attempt to navigate this pandemic,” Johnson wrote. “The lack of transparency from the CDC on pandemic policy throughout the past two years has been appalling.”
As political leaders floundering in the polls– including the room full of lawmakers on Capitol Hill who lost their face coverings in the nick of time for the State of the Union– begin to drop their mask mandates for voters in advance of the midterms, way too many children in schools are still muzzled. They’re paying the cost for grownups’ political Covid cinema and also experiencing under the absence of openness from government bureaucrats like Walensky.
“Unfortunately, our national response to the pandemic has been a miserable failure. Over 900,000 lives lost, businesses destroyed, lives disrupted, and our children harmed. Now the Biden administration and our federal health agencies want Americans to ignore their divisive policy failures and simply move on,” Johnson told The Federalist. He continued:
“Americans deserve transparency in government and as much information as possible to make their own health care decisions. Instead, the administration and agencies have not been honest and arrogantly refused to be transparent and accountable. It is far past time for the administration and the rest of the COVID Cartel to stop dividing America and abusing authority. They need to start respecting the public’s right to know and stop infringing on our God-given freedom and personal health autonomy.”
That’s why Johnson’s letter is an action in the appropriate direction– as well as why we require a lot more reps in Washington requiring lots more responsibility from the Covid cabal that’s held at risk Americans hostage for two complete years.
