One of the most influential federal health journals in the United States has published unsupported claims about the benefits of masks in preventing transmission of COVID-19, according to authors of a manuscript recently accepted for publication in The American Journal of Medicine.
The claims come from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), which has a powerfully persuasive effect on public health decision-making. How the studies published in the MMWR advance scientific understanding “remain largely opaque to the general public,” the authors wrote in the pre-proofed paper. For this reason, the authors expressed, it is essential to dig into how agency conclusions—and subsequent recommendations that affect citizens across the globe—are made.
