If you’ve been following the politics of the pandemic response, you can pretty much predict the sorts of conclusions the committee’s majority wanted to reach: Masks were useless, the vaccines weren’t properly tested for safety, and any restrictions meant to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2 were ill-informed, etc. At the same time, some efforts pursued during the Trump administration, such as the Operation Warp Speed development of vaccines or the travel restrictions he put in place, are singled out for praise.
In contrast, when it comes to mask use, where there’s extensive evidence that they can be effective, the report concludes they’re all worthless: “The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention relied on flawed studies to support the issuance of mask mandates.” The supposed flaw is that these studies weren’t randomized controlled trials—a standard far more strict than the same report required for travel restrictions. “The CDC provided a list of approximately 15 studies that demonstrated wearing masks reduced new infections,” the report acknowledges. “Yet all 15 of the provided studies are observational studies that were conducted after COVID-19 began and, importantly, none of them were [randomized controlled trials].”
Similarly, in concluding that “the six-foot social distancing requirement was not supported by science,” the report quotes Anthony Fauci as saying, “What I meant by ‘no science behind it’ is that there wasn’t a controlled trial that said, ‘compare six foot with three feet with 10 feet.’ So there wasn’t that scientific evaluation of it.”
Perhaps the most egregious example of shifting the standards of evidence comes when the report discusses the off-label use of drugs such as chloroquine and ivermectin. These were popular among those skeptical of restrictions meant to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2, but there was never any solid evidence that the drugs worked, and studies quickly made it clear that they were completely ineffective. Yet the report calls them “unjustly demonized” as part of “pervasive misinformation campaigns.” It doesn’t even bother presenting any evidence that they might be effective, just the testimony of one doctor who decided to prescribe them. In terms of scientific evidence, that is, in fact, nothing.