Maine DOE Makes Bullshit Claims About the Effectiveness of Their COVID-19 Response in Schools

By:  David Deschesne

Fort Fairfield Journal, March 24, 2021

AUGUSTA, Maine - The Maine Department of Education recently released a COVID puff-piece press release that attempted to link the low number of COVID-19 cases among public school students to their mitigation strategies even though one has nothing to do with the other. 

   According to the press release, the Maine DOE stated; “This framework – developed in consultation with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Maine CDC – includes recommendations for schools and six requirements, such as physical distancing, mask wearing and other measures, to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 transmission within schools. Under these requirements, adults must maintain six feet of distance from others to the extent possible while maintaining 3 feet of distance is acceptable between and among students when combined with the other safety requirements, including the wearing of masks. These strategies have proven effective in mitigating the spread of COVID-19; to date, the new case rates for Maine schools continues to be significantly lower than that of the general population.”

   However, what the self-aggrandizing Bullshit press release failed to mention was the fact that school children are the least likely to catch, suffer from or transmit the SARS CoV-2 coronavirus to begin with.  So, to suggest that face masks and social distancing worked to keep those “positive” case numbers down in that demographic of the population is akin to snapping your fingers to keep the elephants away in an area where there are no elephants.

   The U.S. CDC recently adjusted their social distancing guidelines for children to three feet while remaining masked with face diapers.  This, despite the fact that the U.S. CDC published a meta-analysis of historical face mask studies in May, 2020 which showed there was no evidence that those face masks actually stopped or slowed the spread of respiratory viruses to begin with.

   A study conducted in Denmark last summer showed the difference between COVID-19 positive people who wore face masks versus those who did not wear face masks in public was “not statistically significant.”

  At this point, face mask mandates for a segment of the population that simply doesn’t catch or get sick from COVID-19 is superfluous at best and malevolent at worst.