Media Promotes Misinformation Claiming Mask, Vaccine Mandates Would Have Saved Lives

What’s impressive about major media outlets and their COVID coverage is just how committed they are to the narrative.

The media dutifully viewed their chief responsibility during the pandemic as promoting and even demanding more lockdowns and mandates. Mask mandates, vaccine mandates — name a mandate, the media supported it and encouraged it. Over time, as these policies have been consistently disproven and discredited, they’ve retained their fierce loyalty to the Anthony Fauci/CDC-led anti-science extremism.

That loyalty has manifested itself in any number of disappointing and infuriating ways, but predominantly in how they chose to cover or ignore decisive information and research. 

In yet another indication of how the media’s priorities lead to continued misinformation, they’ve once again used inaccurate framing to create an unsupported claim to promote their preferred interpretations. They've learned nothing, and they never will.

BETHESDA, MARYLAND - DECEMBER 22: Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, prepares to receive his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at the National Institutes of Health on December 22, 2020 in Bethesda, Maryland. (Photo by Patrick Semansky-Pool/Getty Images)

No, Mask And Vaccine Mandates Would Not Have Saved More Lives

The Hill was one of many media outlets to breathlessly headline a story just last week on the importance of mask and vaccine mandates.

"Strict mask, vaccine rules could have saved as many as 250K lives, says new study"

As has so often been the case since the start of the pandemic, the headline is designed to be the only conclusion one should accept. "Look no further," it might as well claim. "We’ve discovered the answers. The reason COVID mandates didn’t work is because there weren’t enough of them."

Though, as has also so often been the case since the start of the pandemic, the devil is in the details. And the details disprove the headline.

The Hill’s story references a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), which does, in fact, make the claim that stricter rules would have been life-saving. Except that’s not at all what the "study" actually shows.

The study design was essentially created to directly lead to this conclusion, based on the dates and criteria, yet makes unsupported assertions based on absurd assumptions.

Essentially, the researcher used excess deaths across states along with survey data from IHME on mask usage and policy severity to create comparisons and a counterfactual: would more restrictions lead to better outcomes. But instead of starting the analysis in March 2020, when restrictions actually came into effect, the study author began in July 2020.

"First, the analysis started in July 2020, 4 months after the first substantial COVID-19 fatalities in the US."

Sure enough, when you ignore the time period when most restrictive states saw the most excess deaths, you obtain the results you prefer. His argument is that after July 2020, those same restrictive states had fewer excess deaths. Though even in doing so, undermines his own conclusion.

"Stronger restrictions were associated with lower monthly excess death rates and ratios in virtually every month from July 2020 to June 2022, with the largest gaps during the second half of 2020, when the virus first became widespread, and in September through December 2021 when the delta variant became dominant. However, strong restriction states had much higher excess death rates and ratios in the preanalysis period (March 2020 to June 2020). This early COVID-19 exposure may have lowered subsequent mortality risk."

Again, the writer ignored the four month time period when states like New York and New Jersey were experiencing extreme levels of excess deaths with mask mandates and strict lockdowns. Then he admits that the high rate of early exposure may have limited the susceptible pool of unhealthy or elderly people that unfortunately lost their lives in early 2020.

That alone is enough to thoroughly undermine both his argument and the headline from The Hill.

But it gets worse.

He also found that "mask requirements and vaccine mandates" led to lower excess deaths, while prohibitions of vaccine or mask mandates were associated with higher death rates.

"Mask requirements and vaccine mandates were negatively associated with excess deaths, prohibitions on vaccine or mask mandates were positively associated with death rates."

This is again, based on a limited time period, and ignores that prohibitions on mask or vaccine mandate were extremely limited. And limited to a distinct time period. For example, Florida’s total ban on mask and vaccine mandates came into effect on June 1, 2023. The study period ended July 2022. This isn’t even competent work.

Just a few states have banned mask mandates permanently, and all of them did so long after mandates had ended. And long after the examination period in this study. Not only is his conclusion dishonest, it’s sloppy.

Importantly, he continues by admitting that "activity limitations" were not associated with death rates at all. So the school closures, limitations on specific activities, business closures were useless. But he still advocates that there should have been further restrictions.

"If all states had imposed restrictions similar to those used in the 10 most restrictive states, excess deaths would have been an estimated 10% to 21% lower than the 1.18 million that actually occurred during the 2-year analysis period; conversely, the estimates suggest counterfactual increases of 13% to 17% if all states had restrictions similar to those in the 10 least-restrictive states. The estimated strong vs weak state restriction difference was 271 000 to 447 000 deaths, with behavior changes associated with 49% to 79% of the overall disparity."

Even this conclusion is completely unjustified.

Firstly, and importantly, there’s no attempt in the study to distinguish how many of the excess deaths counted were actually due to COVID. As we know, excess deaths count all causes. Missed cancer screenings due to the admittedly ineffectual lockdowns, deaths of despair, increased alcoholism, car crashes, drug abuse…the list goes on and on.

This researcher merely claims that mask mandates=lower excess deaths in a specific time period, end of story.

Secondly, the behavioral change percentage he attributes is based on his own regression and analysis. Essentially, it’s a guess. And it’s a bad one, given what we know the data actually shows about mandates and COVID spread. 

So to recap, the researcher got basic, easily observable facts wrong about COVID policies, used those inaccuracies to create an unsupported conclusion, attributed all excess deaths to causes that could have been prevented by mask or vaccine mandates, and cherry picked dates to ensure that states with mask mandates in early 2020 performed better.

In short, it’s classic COVID media "science." Complete fabricated nonsense designed to sell a conclusion to gullible readers who share the same disregard for reality.