Authored by Guy Gin via DailySceptic.org,
A new systematic review has been published in Archives of Disease in Childhood, one of the journals of the British Medical Journal, by Sandlund et al. titled ‘Child mask mandates for COVID-19: a systematic review‘.
Since no randomised controlled trials have even been conducted on child mask-wearing or mask mandates, the authors systematically reviewed observational studies and included 22 in the final analysis: six found child mask mandates were associated with lower rates of infection; the other 16 didn’t.
But the studies that found they didn’t weren’t just greater in quantity; they were higher quality too.
Of the six studies reporting a significant negative correlation between masking and COVID-19 cases, five had critical and one had serious ROB [risk of bias].
Of the 16 studies failing to find a significant correlation, one (6.3%) had critical, 10 (62.5%) had serious, five (31.3%) had moderate and none had low ROB. [emphasis added here and below]
In short, almost all studies with critical ROB had pro-mask results, while all studies with moderate ROB did not.
Table 2 below gives a breakdown of the various types of bias the…
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