It's the season, not the masks.

These pieces are published a week or so apart but I am seeing them within an hour of one another.  Following the science means, on balance, quite a degree of skepticism about masking.  It has been a good while since I have seen any sort of half way rigorous study supporting the utility and effectiveness of mass masking with cloth masks.  The preponderance of evidence suggests it simply doesn't have a measurable benefit.

So this report about a professor, apparently among several professors, in the University of Georgia system is interesting.  A science professor being strident about adherence to a policy with weak or negligible empirical evidence to support it.  From ‘Morale Is in the Ditch’: Distressed by Light Covid Precautions, Georgia Faculty Members Take Action by Emma Pettit.  Pettit, as a journalist and non-scientist, is sympathetic to his concerns and treats masking as an effective strategy as a given.

Joseph H.G. Fu knew he was breaking the rules.

In August, the University of Georgia mathematics professor told students that they must wear a mask to attend lectures or office hours, and that he reserved the right to cancel all in-person interactions and conduct them over Zoom.

That runs afoul of University System of Georgia policy. Instructors at the system’s 26 public colleges aren’t allowed to require masks or unilaterally change their course modality. The system also distributed a template to provosts for disciplining faculty members who move a class online without prior approval, or who miss a lecture without either prior approval or a “documentable illness.” The steps range from a verbal warning to suspension or a reduction in duties and pay, depending on the conduct. Consideration for dismissal “will commence according to USG and university policy,” the guidance says. (Lance Wallace, the system’s associate vice chancellor for communications, said in an email the disciplinary framework is intended to help institutions “fashion their own policy or procedure” and does not carry the authority of a policy.)

Teresa MacCartney, acting system chancellor, defended the system’s Covid plans at a recent Board of Regents meeting. She said that students and state leaders expect safe, in-person learning, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. “We continue to be in alignment with the governor’s expectations,” she noted. Gov. Brian P. Kemp, a Republican, opposes both mask and vaccine mandates. He has banned colleges and other state entities from requiring proof of vaccination, and also barred cities from requiring businesses to enforce local mask mandates, the Associated Press reported.

Yet Fu, like many faculty members across the state, doesn’t see the logic of those decisions. Fueled by the Delta variant, Covid hospitalizations across Georgia reached and then surpassed the levels of the winter peak. Meanwhile, vaccination rates lag. Faculty members are teaching to full classrooms in which they can only cajole students — some of whom are unvaccinated, as the system encourages vaccination but does not require it — to mask up. Some feel like their ability to determine what’s best for their students, and themselves, has been stripped. “Morale,” said Cindy Hahamovitch, president of the University of Georgia Franklin College of Arts and Sciences’ Faculty Senate, “is in the ditch.”

The basic issue is that 1) Fu disagrees with the University System of Georgia policy and presumably the science on which they base it and 2) he wants them to accommodate his differing interpretation.  Fair enough.  Who has a better grasp of the science?

Apparently the University System of Georgia system.  From this thread of tweets.

And all without a mask mandate in the University System of Georgia! And this isn't unique to the Delta variant - we saw the same sharp rise and fall among college students last year as well. And before you blame lack of testing - test positivity also fell sharply at UGA. https://t.co/UpbUjOy50O

— Kelley K 😀 * covid-georgia.com (@KelleyKga) September 23, 2021

We've seen the same thing happen in K-12 schools as well, to the surprise of absolutely no one who has been paying attention. (Despite many "expert" predictions that school cases would continue rising exponentially without a major shift in strategy.) https://t.co/fVA86bB7lp

— Kelley K 😀 * covid-georgia.com (@KelleyKga) September 23, 2021

Click through for the thread.  

Case loads are being driven by seasons.  To the degree that masks make any difference (disputed),  it is so small a difference as to be dwarfed by the seasonality effect.  The summer/fall Covid peak hit in the South and is now fading.  Masks or no masks.

The masking campaign is built on personal opinions and not on the science.

Same thing is apparent with football games.  At peak cases a month or so ago, southern universities began to holding their football games in arenas of 50-100,000.  All those yelling, closely packed, enthusiastic unmasked fans in close contact for hours at a time?  Yet I have seen no reporting of any super spreader events.  

What is passionately believed by certain STEM professors does not necessarily have any grounding in reality.  It's the season, not the masks.