Recently obtained documents from the National Institutes of Health (HIH) suggest inaccurate information and misrepresented medical research was used to promote the policy that wearing masks would prevent COVID-19 and virus transmission. A letter sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in November of 2021 by top epidemiologist and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota Michael Osterholm, and seven colleagues confronted the agency for promoting flawed data, as well as excluding data that opposed their narrative. The letter warned that publishing misleading data on trusted websites, such as the CDC, would “damage the credibility of science” and endanger public trust by giving “false expectations” about mask protection. The letter requests that the CDC and Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) address the “serious errors” published on its sites regarding the efficacy of masks.
