Consider the CDC studies on school mask mandates, which have uniformly claimed benefits. Two researchers at the University of Toronto and University of California, Davis recently sought to replicate a CDC study that found that pediatric Covid cases increased faster in U.S. counties that didn’t have school mask mandates compared with those that did.
News media cited the CDC’s work as evidence that mask mandates in schools could help reduce community spread of Covid. Journalists ridiculed Republican governors who opposed mask mandates for ignoring this “science.” But the CDC studies were deeply biased.
While the two academic researchers trying to duplicate the study employed the same analytical methods as the CDC, they examined a larger sample of districts over a longer period. They found no difference in Covid cases between counties with and without mask mandates.
Noah Carl interviewed Matt Ridley.
Thorsteinn Siglaugsson busts one of the latest in a long line of Twitter-spread covid myths.
Before Mr. [Jair] Bolsonaro, Brazilians had to pay $260 for a new gun license and $25 every three years to renew it. This put legal gun ownership out of reach of the poor. The initial license fee has fallen to around $18.50, and licenses are good for 10 years.
Instead of surging, crime declined sharply in Brazil. In three years under Mr. Bolsonaro, the homicide rate has fallen 34%, to 18.5 per 100,000.
(DBx: Note that my posting this favorable remark about Bolsonaro does not imply that I generally support his policies. I do not. But this particular policy of increasing poor Brazilians’ access to guns does seem to have reduced Brazil’s murder rate – for a perfectly understandable reason.)
J.D. Tuccille warns about an inescapable reality of efforts to prevent abortions.
Barry Brownstein describes tribalism’s big lie.
Rich Vedder decries instances of dystopian irrationality at Duke and Princeton. (HT George Leef)
