An epidemiologist has criticized teachers’ union head Randi Weingarten, saying she rigged a scientific study to wrongly argue to Congress that schools should have been closed during the COVID-19 peak.
Dr. Tracy Hoeg, who co-author of the January 2021 study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which detailed the low levels of coronavirus transmission in schools, claimed that the president of the American Federation of Teachers had misrepresented evidence in her testimony before the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
“We’ve seen extremely low levels of transmission in schools and no known transmission among teachers,” said Høeg long Twitter thread late Wednesday.
“Fact [CDC] took the advice of [AFT] rather than scientists publishing on the subject in their own journal and without taking into account data from Europe, they seem to have played a role in a huge mistake that has left millions [of] American children are missing school unnecessarily.”
During the earlier hours of the hearings, Weingarten admitted to lawmakers that President Biden’s staff coordinated with her union guidelines for reopening schools before the 80-year-old commander in chief took office.
![Randi Weingarten testifies before the House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on April 26, 2023.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000010190965.jpg?w=1024)
![Dr. Tracy Hoeg](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000010312748.jpg?w=1024)
In her testimony, Weingarten mentioned Høeg’s study “repeatedly as evidence that schools needed ‘layered mitigation’ to reopen”, and said in her prepared remarks that Høeg was “at the time quite flattering about the work that we were doing.”
“The way Mrs. Weingarten mentioned me in her testimony, you’d think I was consulted all along, but that wasn’t the case,” Høeg wrote, adding that she had expressed her disapproval of the head of the teachers’ union when they met after for the first time virtual AFT panel on “COVID Safety in Schools” in September 2021
“Despite the wording in [Randi Weingarten’s] written testimony, I have consistently *disagreed* with what she and the AFT have asked for in terms of easing school reopening, and have consistently said so (on social media, in newspaper articles, in interviews) since our study was published. “
![Empty classroom](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000010134145-1.jpg?w=1024)
According to Høeg, the CDC went so far as to ignore the results of a study that analyzed data from 17 rural schools in Wisconsin between August and November 2020 and found that less than 4% of coronavirus cases among students were transmitted at school.
It reported that “mask wearing was high and the prevalence of COVID-19 among students and staff was lower than the county as a whole.”
“I was the lead author of this … study, and as we said in our paper, because we didn’t have a control group, ‘It was not possible to determine the specific roles that wear masking and other disease mitigation strategies played in the low rate of disease spread,’ Høeg said on Twitter.
![Empty classroom](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000007453349.jpg?w=1024)
“In other words, because we didn’t have a unmasked control group, our study did not show that the masks prevented transmission,” she added. “It amazes me that people find it so hard to understand. The bit rate could be the same or even lower without the masks. Who knows.”
Høeg then turned his attention to European studies that also showed minimal COVID transmission among schoolchildren, even with fewer restrictive measures in place.
“In fact, the Swedish experience (no primary school closures and no masks for under 12s) spring/summer 2020 was a very good indication that masks are not needed,” she noted. “Same with Norway reopening after 6 weeks and also not masking children <12."
In July 2020, Weingarten pushed for additional millions of dollars in federal funds to reopen schools, citing the need for “ventilation systems, but also to buy damn masks for cleaning equipment, for the nurses we’re going to need. “
![Randi Weingarten testifies before the House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on April 26, 2023.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000010194458.jpg?w=1024)
According to Høega, neither the AFT nor the CDC consulted her or her co-authors on the desirability of the new ventilation systems. She also said they didn’t ask about other COVID-related questions – such as whether it’s safe to eat lunch outside or the effectiveness of social distancing.
Three months after the study was published, Høeg and the other authors were fired detailed report their findings, which confirmed low COVID transmission, even though most students eat lunch indoors and do not practice social distancing.
The Wisconsin study also found a low number of cases, even though more than half of the schools did not install new ventilation systems.
Høeg concluded that she disagreed with the way the CDC and the AFT used her study “to make it look like we needed more easing before a full reopening”, when in fact further delay “was dangerous”.
“Ultimately [the CDC] hesitated because they looked at the AFT instead of the data from Europe and the US,” she concluded. “Our children have paid an unnecessary price.”