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YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days
231–240 of 803 posts
Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read one study that indicated an N95/KN95 mask was 10 times more effective than the regular (non) medical masks. I always thought it was unusual that the US government just didn’t mail KN95 masks to people, or widely distribute them at cost. And encourage their use. If something is 10 times less effective, it’s basically not even effective in comparison to what’s possible.
N95's for daily long-term use just isn't feasible. I've had a bunch of them from long before COVID19 for working with some auto detailing chemicals and I can't wear one for more than 10 minutes. Breathing becomes extremely difficult, maybe it would get better with time but it gets to a point where I constantly feel like I'm about to pass out.
i've been wearing n95 masks for almost two years now and i had no issues with them. i can even workout with an n100 without any problems.
Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
If he meant that "cloth masks aren't good enough " he could have said that. But he's a senator. His statement was a dog whistle to his base. They're not looking for an argument that people should be wearing N95s, they want to discredit all masking. The word "prevent" is a red herring -- nothing is 100% -- the goal is to decrease infection, not prevent it.
The phrases "doesn't work" and "doesn't prevent" have become staples of the COVID disinformation toolkit. Anything that is not exactly 100% effective transforms into "doesn't work" in the narrative. Educated experts will never say something is 100% effective, so this is always an easy way for detractors to "prove" that the experts agree XYZ doesn't work. EDIT: Other examples: Some people have gotten pregnant while on…
I hate the word "dog whistle" because they let people sub in what they think the person said for what they actually said. I have seen otherwise intelligent people who could not even come up with a convincing straw man of what the other side believes for longstanding debates like abortion due to their bubbles.
> Some people have gotten pregnant while on birth control, therefore birth control "doesn't work". Some people wearing seat belts still die in car crashes, therefore seat belts "don't work". This is a tried and true misinformation tactic.
Now look at this from the other perspective: You have an angry person from the other side of the political spectrum insisting to them that their eyes are lying to them and that their opinions should be censored.
Would this be effective persuasion to you?
That's why I say the answer is to add context. To explain how things work and how we know things. There's a great comment on this very thread about the various mechanisms by which masks capture particles for one example.
Or with vaccines, it's not "works vs. doesn't" but that it works X% of the time in preventing infection, reduces the period for which you're infectious by Y, and decreases the chance of serious infection by Z%. We should be making the case that going from unvaccinated to vaccinated reduces your odds of something bad happening from 2% to 0.0002%.
You will note that this doesn't deny their observations, it explains them and recontextualizes them.
This is also part of how I filter opinions on topics, those who can't explain the hows and the whys do not have any useful information to offer and can be ignored.
Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
The phrases "doesn't work" and "doesn't prevent" have become staples of the COVID disinformation toolkit. Anything that is not exactly 100% effective transforms into "doesn't work" in the narrative. Educated experts will never say something is 100% effective, so this is always an easy way for detractors to "prove" that the experts agree XYZ doesn't work. EDIT: Other examples: Some people have gotten pregnant while on…
That’s not “misinformation.” It’s a perfectly legitimate argument against ineffective government mandates. In a cost-benefit balancing framework, it points out that the benefits will be much less than expected.
What’s legitimate is subjective.
Rand Paul is too much of a troll to be given legitimacy
Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much of this is about 'masks' and really about Rand Paul calling for mass civil disobedience against COVID restrictions? Here's the full video: https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/1424399282447298563
mass civil disobedience against COVID restrictions is not only awesome, it a very explicit and central civic value of the American political mythology. I can't emphasize enough how bizarre and soviet-esque that this is even on the table as a contentious issue these days.
Probably has something to do with the 600k+ dead Americans.
Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
If he meant that "cloth masks aren't good enough " he could have said that. But he's a senator. His statement was a dog whistle to his base. They're not looking for an argument that people should be wearing N95s, they want to discredit all masking. The word "prevent" is a red herring -- nothing is 100% -- the goal is to decrease infection, not prevent it.
> If he meant that "cloth masks aren't good enough" he could have said that. He could have, but he didn't. You're not his editor. > But he's a senator. He's also a physician. He might know something about infectious diseases that you don't. > His statement was a dog whistle to his base. Maybe it was. So what? > They're not looking for an argument that people should be wearing N95s, they want to discredit all masking.…
Know who knows FAR more about infectious diseases than Rand Paul, a guy who didn't even get a bachelor's degree?
Infectious disease specialists. We already know what they have to say about masks.
Asking Rand Paul for his knowledge on infectious diseases and how they spread is akin to asking a random computer science graduate to tell you how to fix your Windows domain.
Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't follow this reasoning. An imperfect mask is surely going to result in a borderline contacts with infection being non-infections. The debate is "by how much" and without really clear evidence to the contrary, the precautionary principle wins. Wearing masks is usually only a minor inconvenience. I'm gobsmacked how it's become such a battleground.
How long are you expecting people to wear masks? What are the exit criteria? It obviously isn't sustainable for most people. The virus is now endemic in the worldwide human population, plus some animal species. It can't be eradicated even with high vaccination rates. It's inevitable that eventually all of us will be exposed. The only question is when. Wearing masks and other non-pharmaceutical interventions can be us…
How would you know whether the virus can be eradicated with high vaccination rates? We haven't achieved high rates. Anywhere. At all. Ever.
And of course, we have a century of history of viruses that now do not exist anymore because we eradicated them. With vaccines.
So what are you even talking about?
Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days
#238Good. He's a clown.
How does Joe Biden's boot taste.
Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is unquestionably misinformation, and Rand Paul needs to have a permanent muzzle installed until covid is extinct. Masks DO WORK. Yes, N95s work better than cloth masks, usually, but cloth masks work very well for reducing the likelihood that a covid-positive person will transmit the virus. This isn't controversial. Rand Paul needs to stop spreading lies on purpose, and if he won't, I fully support YouTube telli…
An unfit mask with anything more than a single centimeter^2 aperture gap is effectively What doesn't help is censoring people pointing out this nuance. What we need is N95/ffp2 mask mandates for indoors. That would really help mitigate sars-cov-2 spread. Now, unfit masks do do something. They block the spittle for sure and less than half the aerosols. But if you look at how influenza stopped spreading almost complete…
Decreased influenza was influenced by loads of changes - not just masks. Various social distancing measures, schools closing, travel being restricted, etc. I don't think you can conclude anything empirically about influenza and masks without controlling for this dearth of other variables.
Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is unquestionably misinformation, and Rand Paul needs to have a permanent muzzle installed until covid is extinct. Masks DO WORK. Yes, N95s work better than cloth masks, usually, but cloth masks work very well for reducing the likelihood that a covid-positive person will transmit the virus. This isn't controversial. Rand Paul needs to stop spreading lies on purpose, and if he won't, I fully support YouTube telli…
An unfit mask with anything more than a single centimeter^2 aperture gap is effectively What doesn't help is censoring people pointing out this nuance. What we need is N95/ffp2 mask mandates for indoors. That would really help mitigate sars-cov-2 spread. Now, unfit masks do do something. They block the spittle for sure and less than half the aerosols. But if you look at how influenza stopped spreading almost complete…
> But if you look at how influenza stopped spreading almost completely the last year and a half you have to conclude that either unfit masks with gaps do help significantly versus respiratory viruses, or, sampling for influenza cases has been borked due to the overloading need to test for sars-cov-2.
I think it's three effects:
(1) Acute infection with respiratory virus X is protective against respiratory virus Y. This is because of the cellular interferon response (see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/778995/); basically the non-specific component of the immune system gets "revved up" and thus subsequent pathogens don't stand a chance. This might be further accentuated by the fact that SARS-2 specifically can acutely downregulate interferon response (see https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.16.252973v1), presumably to suppress the immune response against it, which would/could lead to a rebound upregulation in interferon after the initial phase of SARS-2-mediated interferon suppression
(2) Some people who actually had Influenza would have tested for COVID first, and been PCR positive because the PCR tests in the real world can stay positive for a couple months after resolution of the infection (due to the absurdly high cycle threshold that is often used). This is what you said, I'm just elaborating a bit more on how it actually happens
(3) Influenza spreads less easily than SARS-2, so it's possible the NPIs had some effect. This is my least favorite theory because the NPIs were so poor against SARS-2 and measures like school closures haven't been shown to reduce Influenza. My guess is stuff like people avoiding family members during 2020 holidays etc did decrease the connections between social nodes a bit, so there was some effect but not a huge one from the altered behavior