Dr. Fauci (Basically) Admits Rand Paul Was Right 6 Months Ago on Schools and COVID-19

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Top White House COVID-19 Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci recently changed his prior position and recommended that we keep schools open (while also advising the nation to close bars back down).

“Obviously, you don’t have one size fits all, but as I said in the past and as you accurately quoted me, the default position should be to try as best as possible within reason to keep the children in school or to keep them back at school,” Fauci said. “The best way to ensure the safety of our children in school is to get the community level of spread low.”

In the same interview, Fauci noted that the spread of the disease among school children has remained incredibly low throughout the pandemic.

“If you look at the data, the spread among children and from children is not very big at all,” Fauci added. “Not like one would have suspected.”

Fauci is correct. Schools have certainly not proven to be the hotbeds for the virus that many warned of this summer.

Two international studies have found no relationship between in-person K-12 learning and the spread of COVID-19. And another study, this one from the United States, found that childcare workers have experienced no greater risk of infection either.

These data, coupled with anecdotal evidence gathered from more than 2,000 schools across the nation, have led many health experts and pediatricians to warn of the risks of keeping schools closed, expressing concerns that the unintended consequences may be outweighing the threat of the virus.

The American Academy of Pediatrics said in a statement that:

“All policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school…. Lengthy time away from school and associated interruption of supportive services often results in social isolation, making it difficult for schools to identify and address important learning deficits as well as child and adolescent physical or sexual abuse, substance use, depression, and suicidal ideation.”

When families are able to homeschool their children or choose the private or public school that’s right for them, they thrive. However, when you take those options away and force all families into remote distance learning, the many kids for whom this isn’t the right fit suffer. Since the vast majority of districts have not passed school choice programs, most families have been left in a bind this year—paying for public schools they often cannot use or whose new models do not work for their children. The consequences include the risks of mental health problems, hunger, missing routine exercise, lack of medical care, child abuse in the home, and the loss of education.

Other research shows that kids are indeed beginning to fall significantly behind in math scores and modestly behind in some other proficiencies such as reading. This is especially troubling news as American children already lag in international proficiency scoring.

Additionally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released a report suggesting that the social isolation caused by COVID-19 and ongoing government lockdowns is taking a toll on children’s mental health.

All of that to say, Fauci’s new recommendations will come as welcomed news to millions of people who have been negatively impacted by private and public school closures, while being left with few or no alternatives.

Parents have been unable to work a regular schedule. Women have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic as a whole, but especially by school shutdowns as the brunt of childcare falls to them. In September alone, 865,000 women dropped out of the workforce, a number four times higher than that of men.

Businesses have struggled to provide flexible work schedules for impacted parents. And childcare providers have been met with uncertainty and a constantly changing landscape of regulations as they work to tailor curriculum to virtual environments, keep children physically distanced, and implement other new policies, like mask-wearing, for their pupils.

But while Fauci is currently correct in his findings and recommendations, he is incorrect when he asserts that this has been his consistent position. In reality, his newfound mentality is at least six months behind the curve, and there were many others who told him as much as far back as this summer. Notably, Senator Rand Paul, a doctor himself, took the correct position many months ago.

Fauci and Paul sparred over the question of whether schools should reopen back in May of this year, leading to countless online attacks against Senator Paul by many prominent progressives.

What did Paul do to deserve such visceral attacks? He merely pointed out the same science Fauci is now hanging his hat on.

“There’s a great deal of evidence that’s actually good—good evidence—that kids aren’t transmitting this—it’s rare—and that kids are staying healthy, and that yes we can open our schools,” Paul stated during a committee hearing.

While Fauci has maintained all along that the goal should be for children to return to schools, he previously issued much more cautious recommendations. He suggested some schools remain closed and pushed for a heavier handed approach from the federal government when it came to deciding protocols for reopening schools. At that time, he also indicated that children could spread the disease as easily as adults.

Fauci’s change in position has led many, including right-wing Twitter commentator Jack Posobiec, to call for apologies to Rand Paul, which wouldn’t be the first time the senator has been owed one by the establishment.

As per usual, Paul is right. Dr. Fauci does owe an apology to the American people. But his mistake is one of arrogance, not malice—and it’s one we see repeated over and over again by the adherents of central planning.

F.A. Hayek once famously said, “The more the state ‘plans’ the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.”

Central planning fails and wreaks havoc on the individuals in a country because of the knowledge problem. The knowledge problem refers to a concept developed by Hayek in his work “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” It’s actually a pretty simple economic concept that holds that central planners cannot possibly possess all of the information they need to successfully direct the lives of others—especially given the need for rapid adaptation in response to changing circumstances.

Such has been the case with Fauci and many others in our government as they seek to combat the coronavirus. They overestimate their abilities, presume they know more than they do, and seek to tell others from afar how to best respond to their rapidly changing environment. It hasn’t worked, and it never will, and the reasons for this trace their way back to the knowledge problem.

Dr. Fauci, and many of our other political leaders, have issued incorrect information, overstepped their constitutional boundaries, and often amplified the negative impacts of the coronavirus. Instead of recognizing their own limitations in the face of a virus, they’ve instead doubled down on their authority and continued to try and control the minute details of people’s lives. This has caused chaos, often needlessly, and it has placed undue hardships on individual Americans who are attempting to do the right things and rebuild their lives.

Fauci’s new recommendations ought to come with a dose of humility and a recognition that the government, and even very smart scientists working within it, cannot centrally plan their way out of an unprecedented pandemic and crisis. Instead, Americans should be given the best, most up-to-date information available and allowed to decide for themselves what the best path forward is for their family and their community.

COLUMN BY

Hannah Cox

Hannah Cox is a libertarian-conservative writer, commentator, and activist. She’s a Newsmax Insider and a Contributor to The Washington Examiner.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

NASDAQ Trades in Extremism

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According to NASDAQ, what happens in the bedroom now matters in the board room! In a bombshell announcement, the stock exchange is threatening to drop companies who don’t meet certain LGBT, race, and gender quotas on their boards of directors. It’s the latest shoe to drop in the march to trample the free market and replace it with woke activism. And if Joe Biden is president, they’ll have their best shot at success yet.

Among their demands, the exchange wants to require companies to have “at least one woman on their boards, in addition to a director who is a racial minority — or one who self-identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer.” Corporations that don’t meet the standard would have to justify their decision persuasively enough to stay on the registry. Regardless, everyone would have to hire at least one “diversity director” within the first two years.

NASDAQ’s spokesperson says the idea came from a recent survey, where it discovered that three-quarters of its companies weren’t “diverse” enough. Most boards are “white and male.” “Around 80 or 90 percent of companies had at least one female director, but only about a quarter had a second one who would meet the diversity requirements, a person familiar with the review said, adding that it was difficult to measure because of inconsistencies in the way companies report such data.”

Conservatives, who’ve seen radical political correctness creep into corporate America for years, warned that this would only be the beginning. Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, sued California this year over a state law mandating greater boardroom diversity. “This is NASDAQ getting into woke ideology, and it’s outside the law.” No one should be able to dictate to American CEOs how to run their companies. That’s not how capitalism works. Nor can anyone — including NASDAQ — force people to disclose their sexual preferences.

Apart from the obvious constitutional problems, ordering employers to appoint LGBT-identifying board members is no easy task for 3,000 companies. Although it seems like there’s a gay, lesbian, or transgender-identifying character on every channel or commercial these days, the actual reality is far different. This population, which seems to dominate political and cultural conversations, is actually quite small. In 2018, Gallup’s surveys found that LGBT-identifying adults made up less than five percent of the country. Finding thousands of board members with the right qualifications and sex lives would be a tall task for a lot of CEOs. Of course, those pushing this agenda at NASDAQ are not really concerned about legitimate qualifications.

Not that a Joe Biden administration wouldn’t make them try. Under a liberal SEC chairman — who would have to approve this requirement before it went into effect — a diversity mandate would almost certainly be met with enthusiasm. “[Current chair] Jay Clayton is not going to touch this on his way out the door,” one corporate lawyer told the New York Post. “Why would he? There will be questions of constitutionality from the folks who don’t want this.”

On the other hand, experts say, if Biden presses the issue (and his outspoken support for this kind of extremism suggests he would), the controversial policy could go into effect within months. And the pressure, as NASDAQ made quite clear, would ramp up for others to do the same. “We would welcome the opportunity for our peers to follow suit and see this as a good step forward for all of us,” an exchange spokesperson told the Post. “This is a step forward, but we would welcome the opportunity for our peers to take an active role here as well.”

That’s a chilling thought in corporate America, where so much autonomy has already been crushed in the name of political correctness. Markets operate in losses and gains. If NASDAQ’s capitulation to woke ideology succeeds, look for the financial profits of shareholders to be exchanged for the cultural profits of the Left.

EDITORS NOTE: This FRC-Action column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

New ’Woke’ Denomination is a Warning Sign to Christians

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Over the weekend, the formation of a new Methodist denomination was announced during an online worship service hosted by former and current Methodist church leaders. According to organizers, the Liberation Methodist Connexion (LMX), as the group will be called, is a socially progressive denomination that will reimage what it means to follow Jesus. But even a cursory review of the new denomination reveals nothing close to orthodox Christianity and something more akin to a Marxist, LGBT-pride.

According to LMX leaders, theology and fidelity to Scripture or Christian theology is not a priority for the new denomination. In fact, as one leader explained, “There are no doctrinal litmus tests” for joining the movement. “We seek not answers that lead to correct doctrines as to why we suffer. We seek correct actions, correct praxis, where God sustains us during the unanswerable questions,” argued Rev. Althea Spencer-Miller, another LMX leader.

The creation of the new Methodist denomination is not surprising. At the beginning of the year, representatives of the United Methodist Church tentatively agreed to a proposal to split the nation’s second largest Protestant denomination over “fundamental differences” regarding doctrinal differences. In recent years, the denomination had reached an impasse on questions related to the morality of homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and the ordination of clergy who identify as gay.

The anticipated vote to split the denomination was set to take place at the 2020 General Conference in May. However, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the vote has been delayed until fall of 2021. In terms of the details of the proposal, progressives within the United Methodist Church will give a newly formed traditionalist Methodist denomination $25 million. Local churches that choose to affiliate with the traditionalist denomination may retain their assets including church buildings and properties. Moreover, conservative clergy may retain their pensions. These concessions were possible because conservatives maintain a governing majority within United Methodism despite the fact that American Methodist leadership is liberal.

However, as evidenced by this weekend’s developments, the extended wait time proved too long for some theologically liberal Methodists who see the new denomination as a better fit for their progressive beliefs. “The timeline of the Holy Spirit is driving our decision to launch the LMX at this moment, and we are following her call,” explained Spencer-Mill, while using female pronouns to refer to God.

A cursory overview of the LMX website reveals that the denomination will resemble nothing like the movement started by John and Charles Wesley in the 18th century where the importance of the new birth, works of piety, and missions were emphasized. Instead, leaders of the new group promise to journey toward a “new way of being followers of Christ” which include refuting the “powers, principalities, and privileges” they believe have defined Methodism. These include a litany of isms including colonialism, sexism, clericalism, ableism, ageism, transphobia, and “heteronormativity.”

While liberals within Methodism have been pushing for the inclusion of more LGBT affirming stances in recent years, the LMX represents a dramatic break from historic Methodist doctrine. But, and to their credit, the leaders of the LMX — who proudly list their preferred pronouns on their website — admit, “LMX theology is not written in stone.” But while their theology isn’t written in stone (or anywhere that I can find), the purpose behind the group is clear: providing ecclesiastical cover for unorthodox views on marriage and sexuality.

Even though the LMX is clearly out of the mainstream of Methodism, its emergence before the expected denominational split is noteworthy. But it is also cautionary. As Mark Tooley, President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy and Methodist leader, recently explained, United Methodism “was from the start an experiment in theological pluralism.” This meant that over the years an increasingly wide range of theological views was tolerated within the denomination. Eventually, this meant that heterodox views could coexist with orthodoxy without causing too much of a stir. However, as the broader culture drifted further left on issues such as marriage and human sexuality, the strain between conservatives and liberals over these issues became too much. Thus, in retrospect, the splintering of Methodism over biblical interpretation was predictable. Without clear theological guardrails in place, there was nothing to stop those with unbiblical views from entering the denomination’s ranks and no meaningful way to expel them.

Thus, while the LMX will likely remain a small group of former United Methodists and others, it stands as a cautionary tale for churches and denominations around the country. In an age when doctrine is not taken seriously, Christians, for the sake of faithfulness, must insist on sound doctrine and fidelity to God’s Word.

EDITORS NOTE: This FRC-Action column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Left’s Gender Theories Are Anti-Scientific Nonsense, but They’re Gaining Ground

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On Nov. 22, 2020, New York Times columnist Charles Blow unleashed one of the most bizarre tweets in recent memory.

“Stop doing gender reveals,” he stated. “They’re not cute; they’re violent. All we know before a child is born is their anatomy. They will reveal their gender. It may match your expectations of that anatomy, and it may not. If you love the child you will be patience, attentive and open.”

 

This is patently insane for a variety of reasons.

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First, the characterization of gender reveal parties—parties during which parents celebrate finding out whether their unborn children are boys or girls—as “violent” is, in and of itself, radically nuts. Parents are excited to learn whether their children will be boys or girls. That is absolutely unobjectionable.

But for an ardent fan of abortion-on-demand such as Blow to characterize a gender reveal party celebrating the sex of an unborn baby as “violent” while characterizing the in utero dismemberment of that same unborn baby as “choice” is so morally benighted as to boggle the mind.

Blow’s tweet goes further. The implication that parents are doing violence against their own children if they connect sex and gender is utterly anti-evidentiary. Sex and gender are interconnected. For nearly every human being born, biological sex will correspond with genital development in the womb.

And gender, contrary to the idiotic, pseudoscientific paganism of the gender theory set, is not some free-floating set of biases we bring to the table. Males and females have different qualities in a variety of functions, attitudes, desires, and capabilities.

In every human culture—indeed, in every mammalian species—meaningful distinctions between male and female remain. To reduce children to genderless unicorns simply awaiting hormonal guidance from within piles absurdity upon absurdity.

And, of course, Blow’s take on “patience” is not limitless. Presumably, should your daughter announce that she is a boy at the tender age of 5, all measures will immediately be taken to ensure that she is treated as a boy by those such as Blow. There will be no call for watchful waiting; to do so would be yet another act of “violence.”

Why does any of this matter? Because Blow’s perspective has become mainstream on the left. In October, Healthline, a supposed medical resource, ran an article reviewed by a licensed marriage and family therapist titled “‘Do Vulva Owners Like Sex?’ Is the Wrong Question—Here’s What You Should Ask Instead.”

Whether “vulva owners” like sex is indeed the wrong question. The right question, to begin, might be what makes “vulva owners” distinct from women; as a follow-up, we might ask how one would go about leasing or renting a vulva if ownership seems like too much of a burden.

But the madness gains ground. CNN reported in July that the American Cancer Society had changed its recommendations on the proper age for cervical cancer screenings for women, only CNN termed women “individuals with a cervix.” Which seems rather degrading to women, come to think of it.

Lest we believe that this is merely some lunatic fringe, it is worth noting that Blow, Healthline, and CNN are merely saying out loud what those who place gender pronouns in their Twitter bios, such as Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, imply: that gender and sex are completely severable, and that biology has nothing to do with the former.

President-elect Joe Biden has openly stated that an 8-year-old can decide on his transgenderism; Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., infamously stated that she would have a 9-year-old transgender child screen her secretary of education nominee. Male and female are arbitrary categories to which anyone can claim membership.

Unless, of course, the left wishes to treat sex as an important characteristic. Then the logic changes. Thus, it is historic that Biden has nominated an all-female communications team, and it is deeply moving that Harris is a woman.

It’s almost as though the definitions of words have no meaning, according to the left. All that matters is fealty to whatever narrative the chosen moral caste dictates on a daily basis. And if you cross it, you’re doing violence.

COMMENTARY BY

Ben Shapiro

Ben Shapiro is host of “The Ben Shapiro Show” and editor-in-chief of DailyWire.com. He is The New York Times best-selling author of “Bullies.” He is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, and lives with his wife and two children in Los Angeles. Twitter:

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Beverly Hills and Louisville Revolt Against Dining Bans as Lockdown Defiance Continues to Spread Across America

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In Beverly Hills, California, city leaders are demanding L.A. County repeal its ban on outdoor dining, while restaurants in Louisville, Kentucky pledge to reopen regardless of what the governor orders.

When Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear announced a week before Thanksgiving he was closing all indoor service for restaurants and bars because of rising COVID-19 case numbers, Richard Hayhoe had a simple message for his customers.

“Come hungry, come inside,” said Hayhoe, the owner of Beans Cafe and Bakery in Dry Ridge, a rural community about 50 miles north of Lexington.

Instead of complying with Beshear’s order, Hayhoe opted to keep his restaurant open, saying the governor’s order was not about public health.

“This is no longer just about health, it is about control,” Hayhoe wrote in a social media post.

Hayhoe’s act of civil disobedience appears to have started something.

USA Today reports that dozens of Louisville restaurants recently announced they will reopen their dining rooms (at 50 percent capacity) on December 14—regardless of what Beshear does. (Kentucky’s shutdown order is slated to expire at 5:00 PM on December 13.)

The group, called the Kentucky Restaurant Rescue Coalition, started an online petition that has garnered more than 5,000 signatures as of Wednesday morning.

“If Governor Beshear does not rescind restaurant closures, restaurants will reopen on December 14 at 50%,” reads the petition.

The news from Kentucky comes amid a surge of backlash against economic lockdowns, which have wreaked damage on America’s small businesses, the broader economy, and the mental health of Americans.

The opposition has taken many forms—from criticism from Waffle House to enforcement defiance from Weld County Colorado to civil disobedience in Brooklyn and Buffalo—and continues to spread.

In Beverly Hills, California, city leaders are demanding Los Angeles County repeal its ban on outdoor dining.

“The resolution demands a motion be placed on the December 8, 2020 agenda of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to repeal the current Health Order,” Beverly Hills City Council said in a press release.

Reports say Beverly Hills is also exploring creating its own city public health department, similar to Pasadena, which currently allows outdoor dining. (If nothing else, the coronavirus is helping Americans rediscover the virtue of federalism and decentralization.)

The fact that politicians in California—and Beverly Hills of all places!—are growing disenchanted with the punishing and ineffective lockdowns is a sign that Americans are tired of being ordered around by politicians who blithely choose which parts of the economy stay open and what gets shut down, while ignoring their own rules.

Churches? Closed. Strip clubs? Sure. Restaurants? Sorry. Liquor stores? Okay. Private gatherings? Nope. Lottery ticket sales? You bet! The sheer banality of these orders has given lie to the notion that public health is driving the lockdowns.

“Who knew public health would so perfectly align with secular convenience?” Justice Neil Gorsuch recently quipped in a Supreme Court case overturning Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s coronavirus restrictions on houses of worship in New York.

The case for forced lockdowns was always dubious, especially in the absence of clear data on the mortality risk of COVID-19. But the fact that lockdowns are continuing today in light of the evidence we now have—which shows lockdowns are incredibly harmful and terribly ineffective at slowing the spread of a virus, which appears to have been in the US since 2019, according to new CDC research—is maddening.

As Jason Riley recently pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, many Americans are simply done with all of it.

“What’s going on is not simply hypocrisy but an infantilization of the American public,” Riley wrote. “There’s a widespread assumption among liberal elites that the rest of us are incapable of calculating risks and taking necessary precautions to ride out the pandemic, and it’s insulting.”

Across the United States—from Beverly Hills to Louisville to New York City and beyond—Americans are finally resisting. In doing so, Americans are channeling the tradition of civil disobedience that is part of our DNA and was used by figures ranging from Sam Adams to Henry David Thoreau to Susan B. Anthony and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“This is a form of mass civil disobedience like nothing the country has seen since the 1960s,” Riley notes. “Some of it is born of Covid fatigue, to be sure. But the endless parade of politicians flouting their own rules surely has also played a role. It began shortly after the spring lockdowns and if anything has become more commonplace, even farcical.”

The paradox of civil disobedience, which Thoreau called the “true foundation of liberty,” is that it empowers those who lack power through peaceful non-compliance. Throughout history, it has proven an effective tool against injustice and the use of capricious and arbitrary power.

And it was arbitrary power that compelled Richard Hayhoe, the owner of Beans Cafe and Bakery to take a stand against state lockdown orders.

“Small businesses,” Hayhoe told Neal Cavuto, “are being made to submit to these orders that just seem arbitrary.”

Indeed. Nevertheless, Hayhoe’s non-compliance may come with consequences, which is why he has started a legal defense fund.

Americans like Hayhoe may soon have to determine how far they’re willing to go to peacefully oppose the injustice of lockdowns in the face of politicians who have the power and show no signs of wishing to relent.

“You’re not going back to normal,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently told reporters.

As governments heap threats and penalties on those who defy orders by peacefully conducting business to stay afloat, Americans seeking to steel themselves can find inspiration and courage in these words from Thoreau.

“[The state] is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength,” Thoreau wrote in Civil Disobedience. “I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”

COLUMN BY

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Do American Conservatives Have A Fertility Advantage?

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Holding conservative beliefs and attitudes probably makes people more determined to marry and have children earlier.

In an election post-mortem interview, progressive election analyst David Shor claimed that increasingly delayed marriage and childbearing have given Democrats an electoral advantage and that these changes in family formation are “reason for hope” for Democrats.

Indeed, the recent presidential election revealed sharp divides in American society: between urban and rural, men and women, Black and white, conservative and liberal.

Less recognized is the way in which different approaches to family life also shaped the 2020 presidential election. Whereas Americans on both sides of the aisle once shared a basic model of family, today our political divisions show up quite literally at birth, with conservatives having (and desiring to have) considerably more children than liberals. We are not only divided by our political visions, but also by our values and behaviors around childbearing and childrearing; that is, by our visions of family life.

One way this shows up is fertility. In this election, the association between fertility rates and voting patterns was crystal clear. The figure below shows the share of a county’s vote won by President Trump vs. the total fertility rate for that county from 2016 to 2019, the latest available data.

FIGURE 1

Data about fertility rates is only available for around 600 of the largest counties, thus many small, rural counties are excluded. But the relationship shown here is clear: President Trump did better in counties with higher birth rates, and the difference is fairly large, with the most pro-Biden counties having total fertility rates almost 25% lower than the most pro-Trump counties.

If anything, this effect is understated, since the most pro-Trump counties were small, rural counties that usually have even higher birth rates and are excluded from this analysis. Indeed, Yi Fuxian at the University of Wisconsin showed that the relationship between voting and fertility is even more pronounced when we look at fertility rates and state voting trends.

Nor is the relationship between fertility and presidential voting a spurious result related to urbanization, race, or state practices in drawing county lines. The figure below extends the analysis to more presidential elections, and includes controls for the state a county is in, the county’s non-Hispanic white population share, and the county’s population density.

FIGURE 2

As can be seen, the Republican fertility advantage is relatively stable across elections. It even shows up in a panel model, suggesting that as counties become more Republican, their fertility rates tend to rise relative to the national average. The use of state controls (and some robustness tests I ran in large states with many counties) suggests this effect isn’t driven by unique features of states: within Red states or Blue states, and controlling for county racial and ethnic characteristics and population densities, Republican counties have higher birth rates.

This is particularly astonishing given that Democrats perform very well in counties with many Hispanic and black voters, who have higher birth rates than non-Hispanic white Americans (and indeed, the more non-Hispanic whites in a county, the lower its birth rate in my models). The relationship is also unchanged if the sample is restricted to only very-high-density counties, such as those representing the center of major cities. In other words, the Republican “fertility advantage” does not arise from more rural counties with higher birth rates, and it exists despite the fact that much of the Democratic Party’s electoral base is among racial and ethnic groups with higher birth rates in general. The split I identify isn’t about race or urbanization or region of the country: it’s about family. Within racial- or ethnic-groups, within states or urbanized areas, the more conservative areas tend to have more babies.

Election data can only tell us so much. But data from the General Social Survey can be used to provide a more granular understanding of the ideological fertility difference. The figure below shows the number of children ever born to women sampled in the GSS who were over age 44, and women ages 30-44, by political ideology.

FIGURE 3

In the 1970s, there was little or no difference in fertility rates between liberal and conservative women. But by the 2000s, completed fertility for liberal women had declined markedly below that of conservative women. In recent years, the gap in childbearing between young conservative and liberal women has really opened, which may portend a bigger gap in the coming years.

This graph has no controls for other factors. But the figure below introduces control variables for women’s age, the year of the survey, women’s race or ethnicity, educational level, and marital status. It shows the difference between conservative and liberal women after all these variables are controlled for, with the period 1972-1994 lumped together as one group, and 1995-2018 lumped together as another group.

FIGURE 4

Before the 1990s, fertility differences by ideology were small. Women over age 45 had no difference in completed fertility, and women of all ages (but with controls for year of age) had only a small difference. There was, however, already a difference in ideology: conservative women reported a childbearing ideal about 0.12 kids higher than liberal women, which is a small, but significant, difference.

For the period after 1995, however, gaps grow. Conservative women over age 45 had about 0.25 more children on average than their liberal peers, an effect which in fact shows up throughout the age distribution once the “over 45” restriction is relaxed. The gap in fertility ideals grew larger as well.

In other words, the “family gap” between conservatives and liberals is a new phenomenon. It’s only in the last two decades that conservatives began to reap a fertility advantage. But it’s not just a fertility difference: if controls for marital status are removed, the conservative fertility advantage gets even bigger. That is, conservatives are simply more likely to be married than liberals. Thus, there is a conservative-liberal gap on marriage and separately on odds of childbearing conditional upon marital status.

But what’s really going on here? Is it that conservatives get married more and have more children? Or is it that getting married and having children makes people conservative? It’s likely that causality flows in both directions. Holding conservative beliefs and attitudes probably makes people more determined to marry and have children earlier, given the significant emphasis conservatives place on the family, children, and marriage. Moreover, some liberals (though certainly not most) have begun to adopt explicitly anti-natal ideologies related to worries about population growth and climate change. Indeed, as shown above, more conservative people report desiring more children in the future, a good indication that conservative attitudes may indeed lead to higher fertility: conservatives who have no kids yet desire more kids than liberals with no kids yet.

However, having children probably also makes people more conservative. Prior academic research has found that after women have children, they tend to subsequently adopt more conservative social attitudes around gender roles, a result present in both British and American datasets.

The key takeaways of this are three-fold: first, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, increasingly inhabit different worlds in terms of family life. Republicans tend to live in communities with low rates of childlessness and larger families; Democrats are more likely to live in places where childbearing is rarer and families are smaller. This informs how family policy is approached: Democrats see smaller and fewer families, and so see a cost barrier with which families need help, perhaps because in communities with a lot of Democrats, childbearing is less universal and frequent. On the other hand, Republicans tend to live in places with much higher birth rates and more uniform childbearing, and so tend to think that kids are just a part of life, and people adjust to afford them. Democrats tend to live in places with pricier housing, while Republicans tend to live in places where it’s easier to afford more bedrooms.

Second, the Republican political coalition is heavily weighted towards counties that have a lot of children. In other words, any policy increasing across-the-board transfers to children will tend to provide more financial support to Republicans and more conservative parts of the country, where there are more children. A child allowance, for example, would disproportionately transfer funds from the predominantly Democratic counties that make up 70% of the country’s economic output towards more Republican counties and individuals.

Moreover, the decline in birth rates around the country in recent years may present a challenge for conservative politicians: delayed and reduced transition into marriage and parenthood will result in young adults spending more years with more liberal ideologies. It will be increasingly difficult to build constituencies around conservative social priorities in a world where fewer young adults are at the point in life (married with kids) where those priorities make sense with their life situation.

Finally, this conservative fertility advantage probably will not give conservatives some inevitable long-term political edge.

Fertility rates are falling for conservatives just as much as liberals. Given the size of the fertility differential between conservatives and liberals, it doesn’t actually take a large amount of ideology switching to offset this higher birth rate. Thus, while conservatives may wish that their fertility advantage could afford a durable political majority, that hope is probably just as fleeting as the now-silly-sounding claims of progressives a decade ago that immigration would create a durable Democratic majority.

That’s because, at least right now, conservative parents have not been sufficiently successful in keeping their kids in the fold.

This article has been republished with permission from the Institute for Family Studies.

COLUMN BY

Lyman Stone

Lyman Stone is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, an Adjunct Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the Chief Information Officer of the consulting firm Demographic Intelligence,… 

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EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Affidavit: DVS, Scytl/SOE Software/eClarity and Smartmatic are vulnerable to data manipulation by unauthorized means

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In a sworn affidavit Dr. Navid Keshavarz-Nia stated:

I conclude that a combination of lost cryptographic key contained on stolen USB memory cards, serious exploitable system and software vulnerabilities and operating system backdoor in DVS, Scytl, SOE Software/eClarity and Smartmatic created the perfect environment to commit widespread fraud in all states where these systems are installed. My analysis of the 2020 Election from NY Times data shows statistical anomalies across the battleground state votes. These failures are widespread and systemic – and sufficient to invalidate the vote counts.

Dr. Keshavarz-Nia concluded:

I conclude with high confidence that the election 2020 data were altered in all battleground states resulting in a hundreds of thousands of votes that were cast for President Trump to be transferred to Vice President Biden. These alterations were the result of systemic and widespread exploitable vulnerabilities in DVS, Scytl/SOE Software and Smartmatic systems that enabled operators to achieve the desired results. In my view, the evidence is overwhelming and incontrovertible.

Pursuant to 28 U.S.S. 1746, I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America that the foregoing is true and correct to the best of my knowledge.

READ THE FULL AFFIDAVIT HERE

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29th November Election Update 2020

About Navid Keshavarz-Nia, CISO, Black Key Solutions, LLC

Dr. Keshavarz-Nia is a vice president and senior director in INFOSEC with 30 years of experience in national security spanning leadership and program execution supporting the civilian, Defense, US Intelligence Agency (USIA), and commercial banking organizations. His background extends in cyber security engineering, technical counterintelligence and incident response management. He is an innovator and has implemented next generation security solutions across the IC, defense, and civilian clients. He has engineered technical solutions and managed large development teams involving security risk assessment, insider threat, incident response, and threat hunting exercises to identify advanced persistent threats. He is an experienced ethical hacker, big data architect and cloud security expert in cloud computing, Blockchain technology, and big data analytic solutions. He has led or supported the CIA, NSA, DHS US-CERT, USCYBERCOM and the FBI.

©All rights reserved.

Me, Über Alles: The Maddening Reason Politicians Break Their Own Lockdown Rules

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There’s hypocrisy, damned hypocrisy, and the actions of statist politicians.

Most of us have seen the pictures or heard the stories. Governor Gavin Newsom, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Diane Feinstein and other leftists have been caught blithely breaking the very COVID-1984 restrictions they self-righteously visit on the citizenry. In the case of Denver mayor Michael Hancock, he recently flew to Mississippi not an hour after warning city residents to “avoid travel, if you can.” I guess he couldn’t.

This has left a lot Americans wondering if these posturing pols actually believe their own coronavirus rhetoric. Many no doubt don’t, at least not completely. Also, whatever they believe, they quite surely lack the discipline (not a big word among leftists) to adhere to any program. What would we expect, after all, from people whose only consistent credo is “If it feels good, do it” other than convenience-driven behavior? Yet there’s another, mostly unknown reason for these statists’ hypocrisy.

Studies have shown that leaders, no matter the time or place, tend to be worse than the people they lead. A major reason for this is that politics attracts power-mongers (along with the narcissists and sociopaths).

Power lust is alien to most people. Oh, they can understand lusting after sex or food or money, as virtually all of us have related urges (just hopefully not to a disordered degree). Though it’s a rarer defect, however, people can lust after power in just the way a robber baron may crave money; a nymphomaniac, sex; and a glutton, food. But most people can’t relate to this problem — and generally don’t even consider its existence — because they’re not saddled with it; instinctively projecting one’s own mindset and priorities onto others is a common error.

(If only this weren’t so, people might be more on guard against the power-driven, known as “megalomaniacs.”)

Now, megalomaniacs are overrepresented in politics because, of course, that’s the realm in which you can most directly exercise control and power. These people love it, “need” it and live for it. At risk of seeming frivolous, I think the following nine-second Star Wars clip well epitomizes their mindset.

[Please insert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg14jNbBb-8]

(If Gavin Newsom actually had the above ability, he could at least make himself useful and remedy his state’s rolling blackouts.)

So how does this relate to COVID hypocrisy? Well, one way to enhance your sense of power is by flouting rules everyone else must follow.

It’s even more of a rush if you imposed those rules on them in the first place.

It can make you feel special, above it all, like an elite, master of all you survey. Rules are “for the little people,” as the supercilious suppose, so you can feel like a big person if you’re beyond rules, beyond limits, beyond constraints.

These politicians are beyond reason and rectitude, though, tragically. A truly great leader knows he should share the sacrifices he asks of his people, but our power-mongers will have none of that. The point, however, is that they’re not necessarily just weak and willing to violate their own rules. Often, they revel in doing so.

Leaders’ increasing exhibition of blatant hypocrisy is also a sign of a declining republic. In a healthy one, this is less possible because politicians are held accountable. But to whatever degree a pseudo-elite establishment places itself beyond voter discipline (e.g., via rigged elections), it can in the same proportion place itself beyond the voters’ government-imposed burdens.

Megalomaniacs will never stop exercising irrational control over you because control is the goal, an end unto itself. They inflict their torments not just with the approval of their own consciences, but at the urging of their most animalistic desires.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Gab or Parler (preferably) or Twitter, or log on to SelwynDuke.com.

Follow-up Video Regarding Election Fraud — Dr. Shiva Answers his Critics

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A more detailed follow-up to Dr. SHIVA Ayyadurai’s previous video on the indicators of election/voter fraud.

This video spends a lot of time regarding the aspects of “pattern recognition” before he gets into directly answering the criticisms he has received as regards his previous video AND he shows what normal vs abnormal looks like AND he does comparisons with what Biden looks like AND he confirms he’s already been in contact with Trump’s people.

You’re probably going to have to watch the whole thing but, hang in there, He answers his critics quite effectively!

©Tad MacKie. All rights reserved.

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VIDEO: John Stossel discusses film Climate Hustle 2

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John Stossel posted a great video with extensive excerpts from CFACT’s feature move Climate Hustle 2: Rise of the Climate Monarchy.

Watch Stossel:

Stossel interviews CFACT’s Marc Morano and asks him about the climate campaign’s insatiable appetite for power.

Stossel: Your movie suggests this world government conspiracy, that they want to rule us. But I think they are genuinely concerned and they want to save us. 
Morano: Their vision of saving us is putting them in charge. 
Stossel: And if they’re in charge says the movie, they will destroy capitalism.
Guardian columnist George Monbiot: We’ve got to go straight to the heart of capitalism and overthrow it.

The opponents of free markets and free minds have long seized upon climate change to boost their radical agenda.  Climate Hustle 2 presents an ironclad case.

John Stossel did a great job on his video.  There’s much more, take a look.

Yesterday’s Washington Times called CFACT’s Climate Depot, the website Marc Morano manages, “an astute website which tracks climate, political and culture-related aberrations around the world.”

CFACT continually educates the public with news, commentary and analysis.  We’re proud to have created this latest feature film.

Have you watched Climate Hustle 2 yet?

©CFACT. All rights reserved.

Massive Danish Mask Study Finds MASKS INEFFECTIVE

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https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/1329068654349185025?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1329068654349185025%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgellerreport.com%2F2020%2F11%2Fmassive-danish-mask-study-finds-masks-ineffective.html%2F

Abstract

Background:

Observational evidence suggests that mask wearing mitigates transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). It is uncertain if this observed association arises through protection of uninfected wearers (protective effect), via reduced transmission from infected mask wearers (source control), or both.

Objective:

To assess whether recommending surgical mask use outside the home reduces wearers’ risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection in a setting where masks were uncommon and not among recommended public health measures.

Design:

Randomized controlled trial (DANMASK-19 [Danish Study to Assess Face Masks for the Protection Against COVID-19 Infection]). (ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT04337541)

Setting:

Denmark, April and May 2020.

Participants:

Adults spending more than 3 hours per day outside the home without occupational mask use.

Intervention:

Encouragement to follow social distancing measures for coronavirus disease 2019, plus either no mask recommendation or a recommendation to wear a mask when outside the home among other persons together with a supply of 50 surgical masks and instructions for proper use.

Measurements:

The primary outcome was SARS-CoV-2 infection in the mask wearer at 1 month by antibody testing, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), or hospital diagnosis. The secondary outcome was PCR positivity for other respiratory viruses.

Results:

A total of 3030 participants were randomly assigned to the recommendation to wear masks, and 2994 were assigned to control; 4862 completed the study. Infection with SARS-CoV-2 occurred in 42 participants recommended masks (1.8%) and 53 control participants (2.1%). The between-group difference was −0.3 percentage point (95% CI, −1.2 to 0.4 percentage point; P = 0.38) (odds ratio, 0.82 [CI, 0.54 to 1.23]; P = 0.33). Multiple imputation accounting for loss to follow-up yielded similar results. Although the difference observed was not statistically significant, the 95% CIs are compatible with a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection.

Limitation:

Inconclusive results, missing data, variable adherence, patient-reported findings on home tests, no blinding, and no assessment of whether masks could decrease disease transmission from mask wearers to others.

Conclusion:

The recommendation to wear surgical masks to supplement other public health measures did not reduce the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among wearers by more than 50% in a community with modest infection rates, some degree of social distancing, and uncommon general mask use. The data were compatible with lesser degrees of self-protection.

Primary Funding Source:

The Salling Foundations.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the cause of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), has infected more than 54 million persons (1, 2). Measures to impede transmission in health care and community settings are essential (3). The virus is transmitted person-to-person, primarily through the mouth, nose, or eyes via respiratory droplets, aerosols, or fomites (4, 5). It can survive on surfaces for up to 72 hours (6), and touching a contaminated surface followed by face touching is another possible route of transmission (7). Face masks are a plausible means to reduce transmission of respiratory viruses by minimizing the risk that respiratory droplets will reach wearers’ nasal or oral mucosa. Face masks are also hypothesized to reduce face touching (8, 9), but frequent face and mask touching has been reported among health care personnel (10). Observational evidence supports the efficacy of face masks in health care settings (11, 12) and as source control in patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 or other coronaviruses (13).

An increasing number of localities recommend masks in community settings on the basis of this observational evidence, but recommendations vary and controversy exists (14). The World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (15) strongly recommend that persons with symptoms or known infection wear masks to prevent transmission of SARS-CoV-2 to others (source control) (16). However, WHO acknowledges that we lack evidence that wearing a mask protects healthy persons from SARS-CoV-2 (prevention) (17). A systematic review of observational studies reported that mask use reduced risk for SARS, Middle East respiratory syndrome, and COVID-19 by 66% overall, 70% in health care workers, and 44% in the community (12). However, surgical and cloth masks were grouped in preventive studies, and none of the 3 included non–health care studies related directly to COVID-19. Another systematic review (18) and American College of Physicians recommendations (19) concluded that evidence on mask effectiveness for respiratory infection prevention is stronger in health care than community settings.

Observational evidence suggests that mask wearing mitigates SARS-CoV-2 transmission, but whether this observed association arises because masks protect uninfected wearers (protective effect) or because transmission is reduced from infected mask wearers (source control) is uncertain. Here, we report a randomized controlled trial (20) that assessed whether a recommendation to wear a surgical mask when outside the home among others reduced wearers’ risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection in a setting where public health measures were in effect but community mask wearing was uncommon and not recommended.

Methods

Trial Design and Oversight

DANMASK-19 (Danish Study to Assess Face Masks for the Protection Against COVID-19 Infection) was an investigator-initiated, nationwide, unblinded, randomized controlled trial (ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT04337541). The trial protocol was registered with the Danish Data Protection Agency (P-2020-311) (Part 10 of the Supplement) and published (21). The researchers presented the protocol to the independent regional scientific ethics committee of the Capital Region of Denmark, which did not require ethics approval (H-20023709) in accordance with Danish legislation (Parts 11 and 12 of the Supplement). The trial was done in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki.

Participants and Study Period

During the study period (3 April to 2 June 2020), Danish authorities did not recommend use of masks in the community and mask use was uncommon (<5%) outside hospitals (22). Recommended public health measures included quarantining persons with SARS-CoV-2 infection, social distancing (including in shops and public transportation, which remained open), limiting the number of persons seen, frequent hand hygiene and cleaning, and limiting visitors to hospitals and nursing homes (23, 24). Cafés and restaurants were closed during the study until 18 May 2020.

Eligible persons were community-dwelling adults aged 18 years or older without current or prior symptoms or diagnosis of COVID-19 who reported being outside the home among others for at least 3 hours per day and who did not wear masks during their daily work. Recruitment involved media advertisements and contacting private companies and public organizations. Interested citizens had internet access to detailed study information and to research staff for questions (Part 3 of the Supplement). At baseline, participants completed a demographic survey and provided consent for researchers to access their national registry data (Parts 4 and 5 of the Supplement). Recruitment occurred from 3 through 24 April 2020. Half of participants were randomly assigned to a group on 12 April and half on 24 April.

Intervention

Participants were enrolled and data registered using Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) software (25). Eligible participants were randomly assigned 1:1 to the mask or control group using a computer algorithm and were stratified by the 5 regions of Denmark (Supplement Table 1). Participants were notified of allocation by e-mail, and study packages were sent by courier (Part 7 of the Supplement). Participants in the mask group were instructed to wear a mask when outside the home during the next month. They received 50 three-layer, disposable, surgical face masks with ear loops (TYPE II EN 14683 [Abena]; filtration rate, 98%; made in China). Participants in both groups received materials and instructions for antibody testing on receipt and at 1 month. They also received materials and instructions for collecting an oropharyngeal/nasal swab sample for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing at 1 month and whenever symptoms compatible with COVID-19 occurred during follow-up. If symptomatic, participants were strongly encouraged to seek medical care. They registered symptoms and results of the antibody test in the online REDCap system. Participants returned the test material by prepaid express courier.

Written instructions and instructional videos guided antibody testing, oropharyngeal/nasal swabbing, and proper use of masks (Part 8 of the Supplement), and a help line was available to participants. In accordance with WHO recommendations for health care settings at that time, participants were instructed to change the mask if outside the home for more than 8 hours. At baseline and in weekly follow-up e-mails, participants in both groups were encouraged to follow current COVID-19 recommendations from the Danish authorities.

Antibody and Viral PCR Testing

Participants tested for SARS-CoV-2 IgM and IgG antibodies in whole blood using a point-of-care test (Lateral Flow test [Zhuhai Livzon Diagnostics]) according to the manufacturer’s recommendations and as previously described (26). After puncturing a fingertip with a lancet, they withdrew blood into a capillary tube and placed 1 drop of blood followed by 2 drops of saline in the test chamber in each of the 2 test plates (IgM and IgG). Participants reported IgM and IgG results separately as “1 line present” (negative), “2 lines present” (positive), or “I am not sure, or I could not perform the test” (treated as a negative result). Participants were categorized as seropositive if they had developed IgM, IgG, or both. The manufacturer reported that sensitivity was 90.2% and specificity 99.2%. A previously reported internal validation using 651 samples from blood donors before November 2019 and 155 patients with PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection estimated a sensitivity of 82.5% (95% CI, 75.3% to 88.4%) and specificity of 99.5% (CI, 98.7% to 99.9%) (26). We (27) and others (28) have reported that oropharyngeal/nasal swab sampling for SARS-CoV-2 by participants, as opposed to health care workers, is clinically useful. Descriptions of RNA extraction, primer and probe used, reverse transcription, preamplification, and microfluidic quantitative PCR are detailed in Part 6 of the Supplement.

Data Collection

Participants received 4 follow-up surveys (Parts 4 and 5 of the Supplement) by e-mail to collect information on antibody test results, adherence to recommendations on time spent outside the home among others, development of symptoms, COVID-19 diagnosis based on PCR testing done in public hospitals, and known COVID-19 exposures.

Outcomes

The primary outcome was SARS-CoV-2 infection, defined as a positive result on an oropharyngeal/nasal swab test for SARS-CoV-2, development of a positive SARS-CoV-2 antibody test result (IgM or IgG) during the study period, or a hospital-based diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection or COVID-19. Secondary end points included PCR evidence of infection with other respiratory viruses (Supplement Table 2).

Sample Size Calculations

The sample size was determined to provide adequate power for assessment of the combined composite primary outcome in the intention-to-treat analysis. Authorities estimated an incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection of at least 2% during the study period. Assuming that wearing a face mask halves risk for infection, we estimated that a sample of 4636 participants would provide the trial with 80% power at a significance level of 5% (2-sided α level). Anticipating 20% loss to follow-up in this community-based study, we aimed to assign at least 6000 participants.

Statistical Analysis

Participants with a positive result on an antibody test at baseline were excluded from the analyses. We calculated CIs of proportions assuming binomial distribution (Clopper–Pearson).

The primary composite outcome (intention-to-treat) was compared between groups using the χ2 test. Odds ratios and confidence limits were calculated using logistic regression. We did a per protocol analysis that included only participants reporting complete or predominant use of face masks as instructed. A conservative sensitivity analysis assumed that participants with a positive result on an antibody test at the end of the study who had not provided antibody test results at study entrance had had a positive result at entrance. To further examine the uncertainty of loss to follow-up, we did (post hoc) 200 imputations using the R package smcfcs, version 1.4.1 (29), to impute missing values of outcome. We included sex, age, type of work, time out of home, and outcome in this calculation.

Prespecified subgroups were compared by logistic regression analysis. In a post hoc analysis, we explored whether there was a subgroup defined by a constellation of participant characteristics for which a recommendation to wear masks seemed to be effective. We included sex, age, type of work, time out of home, and outcome in this calculation.

Two-sided P values less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Analyses were done using R, version 3.6.1 (R Foundation).

Role of the Funding Source

An unrestricted grant from the Salling Foundations supported the study, and the BESTSELLER Foundation donated the Livzon tests. The funders did not influence study design, conduct, or reporting.

Results

Participants

A total of 17 258 Danish citizens responded to recruitment, and 6024 completed the baseline survey and fulfilled eligibility criteria. The first participants (group 1; n = 2995) were randomly assigned on 12 April 2020 and were followed from 14 to 16 April through 15 May 2020. Remaining participants (group 2; n = 3029) were randomly assigned on 24 April 2020 and were followed from 2 to 4 May through 2 June 2020. A total of 3030 participants were randomly assigned to the recommendation to wear face masks, and 2994 were assigned not to wear face masks (Figure); 4862 participants (80.7%) completed the study. Table 1 shows baseline characteristics, which were well balanced between groups. Participants reported having spent a median of 4.5 hours per day outside the home.

Figure. Study flow diagram. Inclusion and exclusion criteria are described in the Methods section, and criteria for completion of the study are given in the Supplement. SARS-CoV-2 = severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.

Table 1. Characteristics of Participants Completing the Study

Based on the lowest adherence reported in the mask group during follow-up, 46% of participants wore the mask as recommended, 47% predominantly as recommended, and 7% not as recommended.

Primary Outcome

The primary outcome occurred in 42 participants (1.8%) in the mask group and 53 (2.1%) in the control group. In an intention-to-treat analysis, the between-group difference was −0.3 percentage point (CI, −1.2 to 0.4 percentage point; P = 0.38) (odds ratio [OR], 0.82 [CI, 0.54 to 1.23]; P = 0.33) in favor of the mask group (Supplement Figure 1). When this analysis was repeated with multiple imputation for missing data due to loss to follow-up, it yielded similar results (OR, 0.81 [CI, 0.53 to 1.23]; P = 0.32). Table 2 provides data on the components of the primary end point, which were similar between groups.

Table 2. Distribution of the Components of the Composite Primary Outcome

In a per protocol analysis that excluded participants in the mask group who reported nonadherence (7%), SARS-CoV-2 infection occurred in 40 participants (1.8%) in the mask group and 53 (2.1%) in the control group (between-group difference, −0.4 percentage point [CI, −1.2 to 0.5 percentage point]; P = 0.40) (OR, 0.84 [CI, 0.55 to 1.26]; P = 0.40). Supplement Figure 2 provides results of the prespecified subgroup analyses of the primary composite end point. No statistically significant interactions were identified.

In the preplanned sensitivity analysis, those who had a positive result on an antibody test at 1 month but had not provided antibody results at baseline were considered to have had positive results at baseline (n = 18)—that is, they were excluded from the analysis. In this analysis, the primary outcome occurred in 33 participants (1.4%) in the face mask group and 44 (1.8%) in the control group (between-group difference, −0.4 percentage point [CI, −1.1 to 0.4 percentage point]; P = 0.22) (OR, 0.77 [CI, 0.49 to 1.22]; P = 0.26).

Three post hoc (not preplanned) analyses were done. In the first, which included only participants reporting wearing face masks “exactly as instructed,” infection (the primary outcome) occurred in 22 participants (2.0%) in the face mask group and 53 (2.1%) in the control group (between-group difference, −0.2 percentage point [CI, −1.3 to 0.9 percentage point]; P = 0.82) (OR, 0.93 [CI, 0.56 to 1.54]; P = 0.78). The second post hoc analysis excluded participants who did not provide antibody test results at baseline; infection occurred in 33 participants (1.7%) in the face mask group and 44 (2.1%) in the control group (between-group difference, −0.4 percentage point [CI, −1.4 to 0.4 percentage point]; P = 0.33) (OR, 0.80 [CI, 0.51 to 1.27]; P = 0.35). In the third post hoc analysis, which investigated constellations of patient characteristics, we did not find a subgroup where face masks were effective at conventional levels of statistical significance (data not shown).

A total of 52 participants in the mask group and 39 control participants reported COVID-19 in their household. Of these, 2 participants in the face mask group and 1 in the control group developed SARS-CoV-2 infection, suggesting that the source of most observed infections was outside the home. Reported symptoms did not differ between groups during the study period (Supplement Table 3).

Secondary Outcomes

In the mask group, 9 participants (0.5%) were positive for 1 or more of the 11 respiratory viruses other than SARS-CoV-2, compared with 11 participants (0.6%) in the control group (between-group difference, −0.1 percentage point [CI, −0.6 to 0.4 percentage point]; P = 0.87) (OR, 0.84 [CI, 0.35 to 2.04]; P = 0.71). Positivity for any virus, including SARS-CoV-2, occurred in 9 mask participants (0.5%) versus 16 control participants (0.8%) (between-group difference, −0.3 percentage point [CI, −0.9 to 0.2 percentage point]; P = 0.26) (OR, 0.58 [CI, 0.25 to 1.31]; P = 0.19).

Discussion

In this community-based, randomized controlled trial conducted in a setting where mask wearing was uncommon and was not among other recommended public health measures related to COVID-19, a recommendation to wear a surgical mask when outside the home among others did not reduce, at conventional levels of statistical significance, incident SARS-CoV-2 infection compared with no mask recommendation. We designed the study to detect a reduction in infection rate from 2% to 1%. Although no statistically significant difference in SARS-CoV-2 incidence was observed, the 95% CIs are compatible with a possible 46% reduction to 23% increase in infection among mask wearers. These findings do offer evidence about the degree of protection mask wearers can anticipate in a setting where others are not wearing masks and where other public health measures, including social distancing, are in effect. The findings, however, should not be used to conclude that a recommendation for everyone to wear masks in the community would not be effective in reducing SARS-CoV-2 infections, because the trial did not test the role of masks in source control of SARS-CoV-2 infection. During the study period, authorities did not recommend face mask use outside hospital settings and mask use was rare in community settings (22). This means that study participants’ exposure was overwhelmingly to persons not wearing masks.

The observed infection rate was similar to that reported in other large Danish studies during the study period (26, 30). Of note, the observed incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection was higher than we had estimated when planning a sample size that would ensure more than 80% power to detect a 50% decrease in infection. The intervention lasted only 1 month and was carried out during a period when Danish authorities recommended quarantine of diagnosed patients, physical distancing, and hand hygiene as general protective means against SARS-CoV-2 transmission (23). Cafés and restaurants were closed through 18 May, but follow-up of the second randomized group continued through 2 June.

The first randomized group was followed while the Danish society was under lockdown. Reopening occurred (18 May 2020) during follow-up of the second group of participants, but it was not reflected in the outcome because infection rates were similar between groups (Supplement Figure 2). The relative infection rate between mask wearers and those not wearing masks would most likely be affected by changes in applied protective means or in the virulence of SARS-CoV-2, whereas the rate difference between the 2 groups would probably not be affected solely by a higher—or lower—number of infected citizens.

Although we saw no statistically significant difference in presence of other respiratory viruses, the study was not sufficiently powered to draw definite conclusions about the protective effect of masks for other viral infections. Likewise, the study had limited power for any of the subgroup analyses.

The primary outcome was mainly defined by antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. This definition was chosen because the viral load of infected patients may be only transiently detectable (31, 32) and because approximately half of persons infected with SARS-CoV-2 are asymptomatic (33, 26). Masks have been hypothesized to reduce inoculum size (34) and could increase the likelihood that infected mask users are asymptomatic, but this hypothesis has been challenged (35). For these reasons, we did not rely solely on identification of SARS-CoV-2 in oropharyngeal/nasal swab samples. As mentioned in the Methods section, an internal validation study estimated that the point-of-care test has 82.5% sensitivity and 99.5% specificity (26).

The observed rate of incident SARS-CoV-2 infection was similar to what was estimated during trial design. These rates were based on thorough screening of all participants using antibody measurements combined with PCR, whereas the observed official infection rates relied solely on PCR test–based estimates during the period. In addition, authorities tested only a small subset of primarily symptomatic citizens of the entire population, yielding low incidence rates. On this basis, the infection rates we report here are not comparable with the official SARS-CoV-2 infection rates in the Danish population. The eligibility requirement of at least 3 hours of exposure to other persons outside the home would add to this difference. Between 6 April and 9 May 2020, we found a similar seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 of 1.9% (CI, 0.8% to 2.3%) in Danish blood donors using the Livzon point-of-care test and assessed by laboratory technicians (36). Testing at the end of follow-up, however, may not have captured any infections contracted during the last part of the study period, but this would have been true in both the mask and control groups and was not expected to influence the overall findings.

The face masks provided to participants were high-quality surgical masks with a filtration rate of 98% (37). A published meta-analysis found no statistically significant difference in preventing influenza in health care workers between respirators (N95 [American standard] or FFP2 [European standard]) and surgical face masks (38). Adherence to mask use may be higher than observed in this study in settings where mask use is common. Some mask group participants (14%) reported adverse reactions from other citizens (Supplement Table 4). Although adherence may influence the protective effect of masks, sensitivity analyses had similar results across reported adherence.

How SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted—via respiratory droplets, aerosols, or (to a lesser extent) fomites—is not firmly established. Droplets are larger and rapidly fall to the ground, whereas aerosols are smaller (≤5 μm) and may evaporate and remain in the air for hours (39). Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 may take place through multiple routes. It has been argued that for the primary route of SARS-CoV-2 spread—that is, via droplets—face masks would be considered effective, whereas masks would not be effective against spread via aerosols, which might penetrate or circumnavigate a face mask (37, 39). Thus, spread of SARS-CoV-2 via aerosols would at least partially explain the present findings. Lack of eye protection may also have been of importance, and use of face shields also covering the eyes (rather than face masks only) has been advocated to halt the conjunctival route of transmission (40, 41). We observed no statistically significant interaction between wearers and nonwearers of eyeglasses (Supplement Figure 2). Recent reports indicate that transmission of SARS-CoV-2 via fomites is unusual (42), but masks may alter behavior and potentially affect fomite transmission.

The present findings are compatible with the findings of a review of randomized controlled trials of the efficacy of face masks for prevention (as personal protective equipment) against influenza virus (18). A recent meta-analysis that suggested a protective effect of face masks in the non–health care setting was based on 3 observational studies that included a total of 725 participants and focused on transmission of SARS-CoV-1 rather than SARS-CoV-2 (12). Of 725 participants, 138 (19%) were infected, so the transmission rate seems to be higher than for SARS-CoV-2. Further, these studies focused on prevention of infection in healthy mask wearers from patients with a known, diagnosed infection rather than prevention of transmission from persons in their surroundings in general. In addition, identified comparators (control participants) not wearing masks may also have missed other protective means. Recent observational studies that indicate a protective association between mandated mask use in the community and SARS-CoV-2 transmission are limited by study design and simultaneous introduction of other public health interventions (14, 43).

Several challenges regarding wearing disposable face masks in the community exist. These include practical aspects, such as potential incorrect wearing, reduced adherence, reduced durability of the mask depending on type of mask and occupation, and weather. Such circumstances may necessitate the use of multiple face masks during the day. In our study, participants used a mean of 1.7 masks per weekday and 1.3 per weekend day (Supplement Table 4). Wearing a face mask may be physically unpleasant, and psychological barriers and other side effects have been described (44). “Face mask policing” between citizens might reinforce use of masks but may be challenging. In addition, the wearer of a face mask may change to a less cautious behavior because of a false sense of security, as pointed out by WHO (17); accordingly, our face mask group seemed less worried (Supplement Table 4), which may explain their increased willingness to wear face masks in the future (Supplement Table 5). These challenges, including costs and availability, may reduce the efficacy of face masks to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The potential benefits of a community-wide recommendation to wear masks include combined prevention and source control for symptomatic and asymptomatic persons, improved attention, and reduced potential stigmatization of persons wearing masks to prevent infection of others (17). Although masks may also have served as source control in SARS-CoV-2–infected participants, the study was not designed to determine the effectiveness of source control.

The most important limitation is that the findings are inconclusive, with CIs compatible with a 46% decrease to a 23% increase in infection. Other limitations include the following. Participants may have been more cautious and focused on hygiene than the general population; however, the observed infection rate was similar to findings of other studies in Denmark (26, 30). Loss to follow-up was 19%, but results of multiple imputation accounting for missing data were similar to the main results. In addition, we relied on patient-reported findings on home antibody tests, and blinding to the intervention was not possible. Finally, a randomized controlled trial provides high-level evidence for treatment effects but can be prone to reduced external validity.

Our results suggest that the recommendation to wear a surgical mask when outside the home among others did not reduce, at conventional levels of statistical significance, the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in mask wearers in a setting where social distancing and other public health measures were in effect, mask recommendations were not among those measures, and community use of masks was uncommon. Yet, the findings were inconclusive and cannot definitively exclude a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection of mask wearers in such a setting. It is important to emphasize that this trial did not address the effects of masks as source control or as protection in settings where social distancing and other public health measures are not in effect.

Reduction in release of virus from infected persons into the environment may be the mechanism for mitigation of transmission in communities where mask use is common or mandated, as noted in observational studies. Thus, these findings do not provide data on the effectiveness of widespread mask wearing in the community in reducing SARS-CoV-2 infections. They do, however, offer evidence about the degree of protection mask wearers can anticipate in a setting where others are not wearing masks and where other public health measures, including social distancing, are in effect. The findings also suggest that persons should not abandon other COVID-19 safety measures regardless of the use of masks. While we await additional data to inform mask recommendations, communities must balance the seriousness of COVID-19, uncertainty about the degree of source control and protective effect, and the absence of data suggesting serious adverse effects of masks (45).

This article was published at Annals.org on 18 November 2020

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

US Household Incomes Increased More in 2018 Than in the Previous 20 Years—Combined

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For years, a school of economists has complained that US wages have been virtually stagnant for decades.

“Jobs are coming back, but pay isn’t. The median wage is still below where it was before the Great Recession,” former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said in 2015. “Last month, average pay actually fell.”

In fact, it’s not hard to find data showing that wages have barely increased since the 1970s, a figure many have used to stoke classy envy.

The truth is, there have always been problems with the claim that real wages (adjusted for inflation) have been stagnant for years. As economist Don Boudreaux has pointed out (see below), Reich and others overlook several important factors—including how inflation is calculated, compensation outside of wages such as healthcare, and the distinction between individuals and statistics.

The stagnant wage narrative was always mostly wrong. Federal Reserve data (which uses a chain-weighted price index) shows US hourly earnings have seen impressive growth in recent years.

Nevertheless, if one does choose to use Bureau of Labor Statistics data to measure family incomes over the last two decades, the picture is indeed a bit bleaker—at least it was.

Government statistics, which use the Consumer Price Index to measure inflation, show that from 2002 through 2015 median weekly earnings didn’t budge at all, but surged between 2018 and 2020.

I’m not the first person to notice this stunning wage growth. Writing in Bloomberg, economist Karl W. Smith describes the growth in income using a slightly different metric, real median household income.

“In 2016, real median household income was $62,898, just $257 above its level in 1999,” writes Smith. “Over the next three years it grew almost $6,000, to $68,703.”

Indeed, median household incomes increased from $64,300 to $68,700 in 2018 alone—an increase of $4,400. To put it another way, US incomes increased more in 2018 than the previous 20 years combined. (Household incomes were $61,100 in 1998 and $64,300 at the end of 2017.)

The question, of course, is why did US incomes suddenly explode after decades of tepid growth? The answer is not difficult to find.

The year 2017 saw massive deregulation and passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). Estimates placed the deregulation savings at $2 trillion. But what was likely even a bigger factor was the cut businesses saw in corporate taxes.

Prior to 2017, the US had the highest corporate tax in the developed world (if not the whole world). With a top bracket of 35 percent, its corporate tax rate was higher than Communist China and socialist Venezuela.

This was a terrible policy on a number of levels. For starters, the revenue-maximizing rate of a corporate tax is 15-25 percent, which means anything above that isn’t even generating more revenue, it’s simply punitive and economically harmful. (Evidence bears this out. The United Kingdom, for example, reduced its corporate tax rate and saw revenues grow.)

Second, high corporate taxes actually hurt workers more than “Big Business.” Tax experts point out that roughly 70 percent of what businesses earn in profits gets paid to workers in the form of wages and other benefits. So it’s no surprise to see that studies show that workers bear between 50 and 100 percent of the brunt of corporate income taxes.

But the reverse is also true: cutting corporate taxes leaves companies more capital to grow and invest.

“Lower corporate taxes increase rewards for improving techniques, technology, and increasing capital investments, which increase worker productivity and earnings,” writes economist Gary Galles. “They expand rewards for risk-taking and entrepreneurship in service of consumers. They reduce the substantial distortions caused by the tax. And those changes benefit others, such as workers and consumers.”

So in 2017, when the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was signed into law, companies saw their tax rate fall from 35 percent to 21 percent. Just that fast, businesses suddenly had more capital to spend to grow their business, improve productivity, and hire more workers—and few things attract workers more than higher wages.

Media scoffed at the possibility that corporate tax cuts would actually result in wage increases for US workers. But the data speaks for itself: Families saw incomes increase faster than at any time in generations.

Moreover, though median wages surged, showing the benefits were broad-based, every segment benefited from these wage gains.

“The lowest quintile increased their pay more than the upper quintile,” Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist recently pointed out in a conversation with FEE’s Brad Polumbo.

To be sure, reducing the corporate tax rate wasn’t the sole factor for the surge in wages, but it was likely by far the biggest.

The surge in family incomes no doubt helped soften the impact of the economic destruction the world suffered in 2020 during the recession precipitated by economic lockdowns during the coronavirus pandemic.

Whether the wage gains continue may depend to some extent on the permanency of the corporate tax cut. Former Vice President Joe Biden, who appears poised to become the next US president, has signaled he’d restore the corporate tax to its 35 percent rate or raise it to 28 percent.

“Biden would make our business tax higher than China’s,” Norquist quipped. (He’s not wrong. China’s corporate tax rate stands at 25 percent.)

This appears unlikely to happen, however. Even if Biden’s claim was more than campaign rhetoric, it appears unlikely that he’ll have enough votes in the Senate to roll back the tax cuts.

Even more promising for US workers, Biden appears inclined to roll back Trump’s tariffs, which are basically taxes on Americans and imposed costs on businesses.

“When you put a tariff on steel, you make American cars not competitive anymore. You make everything made with steel less competitive,” Norquist observed. “We did a lot of damage to the American economy that way.”

If a Biden administration rolls back Trump’s tariffs while leaving the corporate tax rate in place, the US economy could build on the gains made prior to the arrival of the lockdowns.

That would be a winning formula for US workers, businesses, and the US economy.

COLUMN BY

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Why I Wear My Mask | Welcome to the Masquerade

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Video by WhatsHerFace:

I love my mask. It’s a simple and effective way to display my righteousness. Am I concerned that two children in China died because they were forced to wear a mask in gym class? NOPE! I concerned that I’m contributing to an impending socialist technocracy that will enslave the global population? NO!

Am I concerned that my mask is symbolic of my compliance to the social conditioning that will eventually lead to the forced vaccination of every man, woman, and child on planet earth? Not a chance!

Why am I not concerned you ask?

Because I decided a long time ago that shallow insignificant gestures are a much easier way to showcase my morality than actually being moral.

Because in order to be a really good person, I need to stand up to a really bad person, and I don’t like standing up to or for anything. It’s much easier to trick my mind into thinking compliance is a virtue instead of what it really is, cowardice.

©WhatsHerFace. All rights reserved.

“America’s Frontline Doctors” Should Not Be Censored

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On July 27, a video that allegedly made “false coronavirus claims” was taken down by Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, but not before nearly 20 million people watched it.

The people in that video, led by Dr. Simone Gold, have formed a group called “America’s Frontline Doctors,” with a mission to “counter the massive disinformation campaign regarding the pandemic.” They have reestablished an online presence, on multiple platforms, although it is hard to find. Hence we have added their profile to the Winston84 directory.

The debate over the efficacy of Hydroxychloroquine has now completely disappeared from mainstream discussion. But Gold’s group, all of them MDs, maintain it can be used, especially in the early stages, to effectively treat COVID-19.

The even bigger question however is why medical doctors are, for what may be the first time in history, being harassed for prescribing HCQ, and being silenced for suggesting publicly that it has theraputic value in certain situations? And perhaps even bigger than that – why are Americans being trained to relinquish their constitutional rights whenever a “health emergency” is declared?

Which brings us to another profile we’ve just added, Debbie Georgatos, host of “America Can We Talk.” In a video released on 10/27, Georgato had this to say:

“The Left is planting the seed in the minds of the American people that a health threat legitimizes and justifies taking away the freedom of the people… when there’s a crisis, it is time to surrender our liberty.”

Watch out. Because COVID-19, and the next pandemic, and genuine medical issues, are not the only sources anymore of what the Left markets as a “health crisis.” Also being developed as a crisis of public health are the “right to housing,” systemic racism, and the climate emergency.

We’re going to learn a lot and endure a lot as we make our way through the COVID-19 pandemic. But one lesson we must not forget, is that the Left is attempting to medicalize issues of public policy that have nothing to do with medicine. Don’t let them.

RELATED VIDEO: The Censored DC America’s Frontline Doctor Video | Hydroxychloroquine

EDITORS NOTE: This Winston84 column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Action Civics Is Teaching Our Kids to Protest

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Many young Americans seem to have a growing disdain for our country. According to a Gallup poll, pride in our nation has declined, especially among young adults.

Young adults are taking to the streets and not merely protesting but wreaking havoc, rioting and looting, tearing down statues, and shutting down anyone who doesn’t share their perspective.

One reason this is happening is what our children are being taught in school. And that doesn’t mean only in college. We all know college campuses have become centers of radical indoctrination, but now it is happening in K-12 as well, through something called action civics, a new movement in civic education.

As educator Thomas Lindsay explains, action civics was born in 2010 when six organizations set out to redefine civic education. Dissatisfied with traditional civics, which depended on book learning, they wanted to create a new civics that was more experiential. They wanted kids to engage, get involved, get active.

When the elections end, the work begins. Learn what the election results mean for the future of America now >>

The problem is that without a solid understanding of why the Founders were so deliberate in designing our self-governing republic, with its separation of powers to prevent any one branch from becoming tyrannical, or establishing the rule of law so that we would not be subject to the whims of any one person, we risk falling into the same traps of other, less just regimes.

Indeed it is no accident that today’s protests are looking more like the French Revolution, with its guillotines and beheadings, than the American Revolution, with its debates and deliberations.

>>> To learn more about action civics, watch “How Action Civics Teaches Our Kids to Protest,” the Oct. 28 webinar featuring educator Thomas Lindsay held by The Heritage Foundation. To read his study, published in September by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, go here.

Robert Pondiscio, himself once a proponent and teacher of action civics, wrote that it has grown into “a manipulative and cynical use of children as political props in the service of causes they understand superficially, if at all.”

Indeed a study published by the National Association of Scholars found that action civics projects essentially teach students to protest for progressive political causes.

As Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, pointed out, the “new civics” is in fact a form of anti-civics. It does not teach students how our government works or, even more importantly, their critical role as citizens in a self-governing republic. Rather, it simply teaches them how to be activists.

For many today, it feels as if our country never has been more divided and the ideals of our Founders never more at risk. That is due in no small part to what is being taught in our schools.

Parents must step up and take a more active role in their children’s education, carefully watching what their children are being taught. The good news is that with the COVID-19 crisis and the prevalence of online learning, it is easier than ever before for parents to keep an eye on what is being taught to their children.

But what parents do with that information is what really matters. They must engage with schools, school boards, teachers, and principals to ensure that students are taught more than simply how to protest.

COMMENTARY BY

Katharine Gorka

Katharine Gorka is director of the Center for Civil Society and the American Dialogue at The Heritage Foundation’s Feulner Institute.

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Join Heritage Foundation leadership for a tele-townhall on Wednesday, Nov. 4 at 2:00pm ET for an in-depth analysis into what the election results mean for the future of America.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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