27 page rebuttal letter from 8 industrial hygienists complaining about flawed CDC mask guidance

The people who know this stuff the best (the industrial hygienists) weigh in on the flawed CDC mask guidance. There is no hiding from the truth here, so I predic the CDC will simply ignore the letter.

Eight industrial hygienists, including my friends Stephen Petty and Tyson Gabriel, wrote a 27-page letter to the CDC, NIH, and other top US government officials that points out serious flaws in the CDC mask guidance.

The key points in their letter

The letter starts out with:

They made four key points :

1. Recommending N-95 type masks is inappropriate for the general population and children

2. CDC has issued harmful guidance for masking children that contradicts manufacturer’s recommendations, world-wide standard practice and CDC’s own guidance, and without appropriate risk-benefit analysis

3. The CDC continues to ignore the fact that COVID-19 is primarily spread by aerosols (not droplets) making mask use mostly ineffective

4. CDC’s position for masks used by the general public lacks proper scientific justification and creates potential harm based on a false sense of security:

They also sent email to scientificIntegrity@cdc.gov

They also emailed scientificIntegrity@cdc.gov the following:

We have conducted a peer review of the CDC's “Types of Masks and Respirators” that was updated on January 28, 2022. Our findings have shown that this publication does not meet the scientific integrity that we have come to expect from HHS and all affiliated agencies. Please review the findings in our report. We strongly encourage your team to remove this publication from use and publish an acknowledgement of the concerns. We are willing to discuss our findings further at your request. We appreciate your time and look forward to a response. 

However, I’m pretty sure that there isn’t any scientific integrity left at the CDC and there will be nobody there to answer their complaint.

Their conclusion

The CDC is doing enormous damage to science and scientists by allowing politics to dictate public health policy rather than actual science. Increasingly, and for good reason as we have illustrated, the public does not trust the CDC and its science; this must change.

Their offer to help

We recognize that it is easy to judge from afar and know that you and your team are under tremendous stress during this period. Our desire is to see the CDC and our country succeed in these efforts. As such, instead of just being critical, we want to offer our time to your organization to find solutions together. We would be willing to collaborate in the creation of a competent plan that will be based on the Hierarchy of Controls and will be tailored to various work and living environments. We will also help develop data points we can use to monitor and measure this program to enable proper adjustments as needed.

Summary

The industrial hygienists are right. The CDC is wrong.

I predict that the CDC isn’t going to admit they are wrong. When was the last time you saw that happen?

And they aren’t going to accept help from the experts who know this stuff because it would be a tacit admission that they’ve been giving out crappy advice through the entire pandemic that has made the problem worse.