Syag,
an interesting case of mask and public discourse: some articles today quote a michigan study where schools with no rules now have same transmission as schools with rules. Hurrah!
Click on the study and you see a very simple timeline: both types of school started at the same rate in august, then masked schools stayed 20-30% below the unmasked and then all schools experienced sharp increase in November becoming equal by thanksgiving and then all falling down together. So, if you care about number of kids who were infected (and transmitted to families, etc) you would understand that total number of sick people is way less in masked case. If you care about making a silly point – you point to the plot and say – see they are now the same.
Same presentation shows 13x higher rate of death for unvaxed v vaxed, standardized by age, and a plot of direct correlation between state cumulative death rate and vaccination rates. None of this is quoted, of course, in those childish articles.