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For those who find that Fox News is not right-leaning enough, One America News Network (OANN) has filled this gap. The cable show and news site, although launched three years before Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, has emerged as a mainstay of pro-Trump propaganda during his presidency. The network notoriously amplified Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Before that, he took pro-Trump positions on everything from the supposed “migrant caravan” in 2018 to the claim that the new coronavirus was developed in a Chinese biological weapons lab. Trump himself praised OANN, calling the organization a “big network” at the start of his presidency and urging his supporters to follow its coverage as it was helping him try to overturn the 2020 election. And, like Trump and many on the right, the network has been keen to politicize the COVID-19 pandemic and the public health measures designed to combat it. Now, a recent OANN article presents such a shocking misinterpretation of a public health study that it almost intentionally feels bad faith.
It is certain that many right-wing networks have politicized the science of public health; this is nothing new. But this OANN story, purported to reflect a scientific study by the CDC, was such a blatant misunderstanding of science and statistics that public health experts are horrified at the public health implications of their misinterpreted message. . The title in question? “CDC: Face masks do not prevent COVID-19, study finds masks have negligible impact on coronavirus count.”
In the article itself, the OANN newsroom writes that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “admitted that face masks do little to prevent the spread of COVID-19 so as the growing pressure to lift mask warrants across the United States, the CDC found that face masks had a negligible impact on the number of coronaviruses that did not exceed statistical margins of error. “
The original CDC study is titled “Association of State-Issued Mask Warrants Authorizing Dining at On-Site Restaurants with Growth Rates of COVID-19 Cases and Deaths at County Level – United States, from March 1 to December 31, 2020 ”. (You can find the study here.) It describes the impact of state-issued mask warrants between March 1 and December 31 in 2020 in the 2,313 U.S. counties that followed them (or 73.6% of the total number of counties). According to the study, the growth rates of COVID-19 cases fell 0.5% every day in the first 20 days after the mask warrants were implemented in those counties. This was followed by declines of 1.1%, 1.5%, 1.7%, and 1.8% respectively in subsequent blocks of 20-day intervals after the policy was implemented.
Likewise, the mask warrants coincided with a 0.7% decrease in COVID-19-related death rates every day in the first 20 days after their implementation. This percentage increased to 1%, 1.4%, 1.6% and 1.9% in the following 20-day intervals.
OANN, on the other hand, opens by writing that “the CDC has admitted that face masks do little to prevent the spread of COVID-19 as pressure increases to lift mask warrants across the United States. on coronavirus numbers that did not exceed statistical margins of error. “The outlet says CDC study found face mask orders” reduced infection rates by 1.5% on rolling periods of two months each “between March and December 2020. He also claims that” the masks were 0.5% effective in the first 20 days of terms and less than 2 percent effective after 100 days. The authors conclude with a bit of implied sarcasm, adding that the CDC “still recommends wearing face masks, although it admits that such warrants make no statistical difference.”
Salon contacted public health experts who strongly disagreed with OANN’s interpretation of the CDC study.
“The OANN reporter completely misread the CDC report,” Dr. Sten H. Vermund, dean of the Yale School of Public Health, wrote to Salon. “Their opening two sentences are incorrect. CDC reports that within a very short period of time,” the implementation of the mask warrants was associated with a reduction in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, while the reopening of restaurants for on-site dining was associated with increased transmission. [OANN] journalists use “per day” statistics to give the false impression that the magnitude of the impact of mask use was small when, in fact, the benefits were remarkably large. “
He concluded: “It is disturbing to see this level of scientific misrepresentation in the press.”
The CDC itself questioned OANN’s interpretation. “The data we now have conclusively shows that the widespread use of masks is a very effective way to reduce the spread of COVID-19,” the CDC told Salon in a statement. They also noted that the OANN title was not accurate, as the referenced study did not relate to masks: “It is important to note that the study did not examine the effectiveness of masks,” said they added.
Dr. Jonathan Zenilman, professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, spoke to Salon by phone and openly questioned OANN’s competence.
“I think they completely misinterpreted the article,” Zenilman explained. After describing how OANN seemed to misunderstand the significance of the daily drops in COVID-19 cases and deaths associated with mask warrants, he speculated “if anyone who can read these things would read this.” Zenilman observed that anyone who has followed academic calculus can understand what the CDC is explaining.
“The CDC report basically reports the first order derivative of the curve, the change in the growth rate,” Zenilman told Salon. “It’s not about reporting on actual data. So if the growth rate goes down 1.5% a day, it’s going to add up, when basically they think of it as, ‘Oh, there is only a 1.5% difference between the two curves. ‘”
Dr Russell Medford, president of the Center for Global Health Innovation and Global Health Crisis Coordination Center, wrote to the Salon that he was “not sure what they (OANN) are talking about (the study is statistically significant)”, adding that he reads the CDC report to mean the opposite of what OANN says. He interpreted it to say that “mask warrants were associated with statistically significant decreases in the daily growth rates of COVID-19 cases and deaths at the county level within 20 days of implementation” and that “Authorization to eat at on-site restaurants was associated with a statistically significant increase in the daily growth rates of COVID-19 cases start 41 to 100 days after implementation and statistically significant increase in daily growth rates of deaths start 61 to 100 days after implementation. “
This is not the first time that OANN has published inaccurate information on COVID-19. In November, YouTube temporarily suspended and demonetized its account after uploading a video promoting a fake cure for the disease. YouTube has issued a “warning” against OANN’s account for violating its policy which prohibits claiming that there is a guaranteed cure for the virus.
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