You may recall some years ago the New England Journal of Medicine went bonkers crazy trying to push masks on kids based on a single study that was put out there. They put out multiple editorials and tried to justify the massive mandates that were foisted on kids as young as two years old.
A recent study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine by Dr. Ambarish Chandra, Dr. Tracy Beth Høeg, and colleagues critically examines the effectiveness of school mask mandates in reducing COVID-19 transmission among students and staff. The research addresses the challenges of using observational data and difference-in-differences (DiD) analysis to estimate the impact of public health interventions, particularly in rapidly changing situations like a pandemic.
The difference-in-differences (DiD) methodology is a statistical technique commonly used in social sciences to estimate the causal effect of a policy intervention or treatment when randomization is not possible. It compares the changes in outcomes over time between a group that is exposed to a treatment (intervention group) and a group that is not (control group).
Hellbound and Down 