Live data from Hacker News

YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

mercurynews.com

551–560 of 803 posts

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#551
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wearing masks is usually only a minor inconvenience. It's a minor inconvenience at the grocery store. It's a major inconvenience to wear one at gyms. It's a major inconvenience with regards to socializing with friends (a core human need), I really hate not being able to read other people's facial expressions when I talk to them. It's a major inconvenience to require it at schools. It's horrible for kids not to be abl…

You know what's really a "major inconvenience"? Getting intubated and not being able to breathe well for the rest of your life, assuming you survive at all. You know what's really a "major inconvenience" for kids? Dying, or transmitting covid to their parents, killing them, and then growing up with no parents.

Intubation is rare. Less than 5% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients are currently being put on mechanical ventilation.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/nhcs/intubation-ventilator-...

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#552
post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you could point us to what cdc website you are referring to? Because on cdc.gov wearing a multilayer cloth mask is recommended, and they cite a number of studies on the effectiveness of masks which all show significant reductions in transmissions in people and populations which where masks vs those who don't. See "Human Studies of Masking and SARS-CoV-2 Transmission" on this page: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavi…

It's notable that the only randomized controlled trial ever conducted for masks and Covid [1] was not listed under the personal protection section of this page, and was instead was inaccurately summarized: > A community-based randomized control trial in Denmark during 2020 assessed whether the use of surgical masks reduced the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among wearers (personal protection) by more than 50%. Findings we…

Ok so you say that characterizing the results as incoonclusive results is dishonest, but in the article the limitations sections literally lists "Inconclusive results" as their first item.

On top of that they state: "Although the difference observed was not statistically significant, the 95% CIs are compatible with a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection."

Which sounds like their saying they can say with 95% confidence that there is between a 46% reduction and a 21% increases, which sounds pretty damn inconclusive to me.

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is misinformation. Masks (cloth or otherwise) were meant to reduce infectiousness, not completely prevent the possibility of infection. Masks (cloth or otherwise) do in fact reduce infectiousness. The misinformation is the implication that masks are pointless because you can still get infected. The point of masks is to get the probability of spreading it down by some multiple, not to be a personal not-my-problem-a…

Saying cloth masks are effective in the context of (K)N95 masks is even worse misinformation. Even the CDC's website on masks points out you should really be using (K)N95's, and that cloth masks are completely ineffective when wet, which they get after 15 minutes or so of breathing through them. The science on cloth masks says they work, but only shortly and just barely. Rand Paul is closer to the truth by saying the…

Saying cloth masks are effective in the context of (K)N95 masks is even worse misinformation. Even the CDC's website on masks points out you should really be using (K)N95's, and that cloth masks are completely ineffective when wet, which they get after 15 minutes or so of breathing through them.

Edit: map is just Sydney.

Australia is currently attempting to contain the spread of the Delta strain.

You can see the map here https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/covid-19/Pages/case...

Anecdotally, based on what friends are saying about their neighbourhoods, the major hotspots have lower mask wearing compliance, and possibly compliance on visiting households.

I live in an area with almost no cases. Mask wearing is very common especially indoors. But people are still going to shopping centres. So congregation of people is not a differentiating factor in my opinion. Shops are quite busy during the day and social distancing is less than ideal. Especially with WFH, and cafes and restaurants still open for take away. People hang out outside shops.

I believe testing in my area is also high. When there was a few cases near me, I went to 2-3 testing locations to find the shortest queues. All were packed. People not wearing masks are so far outside, social distancing, in a park exercising with social distancing. There is a lot of different masks. Surgical, cloth, some of those fancier reusable ones.

So maybe masks work well enough to make a difference.

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube doesn't have any responsibility (especially legal) to the public discourse. It's weird that people have decided that privately owned companies should be required to do things they don't want to do, in the name of freedom.

> YouTube doesn't have any responsibility (especially legal) to the public discourse. Of course it does, should the government decide it does. Just like how the Civil Rights acts mandated that certain private businesses have responsibilities to serve certain classes of citizens equally. Just like the federal housing law requires landlords, corporate or not, to rent out to all people. The government is allowed to mand…

I would suggest that should congress decide to pass a law requiring youtube to carry Rand Paul's videos, the Supreme Court would toss it out as an infringement of youtube's first amendment right to free speech. As they should. If the government can require private media to carry government messages, the first amendment is toast.

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#555
post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because Eric Raymond (who is more famous for his mouth than for his technical achievements) is a libertarian, and billionaires are libertarian, doesn't mean techies are in general.

I don't know who Eric Raymond is. What I was referring to, and just my opinion mind, is the impression from e.g. reading slashdot 15 years ago and other similar discussions. There are still elements today, when we get into age-related tracking, what apple is up to, censorship and privacy, etc, but I feel like there has been a swing in the mainstream viewpoint towards conformity away from individual rights.

It's frowned upon but the term "Long March Through the Institutions" may be applicable here.

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#556
post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it terrifying that there's a large portion of the population that encourages and wants them to do this.

These companies are maintaining systems that are analogous to message boards. Why not just view this as moderation? This viewpoint makes it a lot less sinister, in my opinion.

Therein lies the problem though. There seems to be a growing number of people who use sinisterness as a heuristic for the truth. Instead of Occam's Razor, where the simplest explanation is the most likely explanation, it is the most damning answer that is most likely correct.

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#557
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

>>I for one want to hear his expertise, even if it disagrees with the conclusions you've already made. That's fine. YouTube doesn't want to host it, because in their view it's harmful. What's the problem?

> That's fine. YouTube doesn't want to host it, because in their view it's harmful. What's the problem?

It is perfectly rationale to say that YouTube has the freedom to make editorial choices while also pointing out that they are making bad choices.

You aren't countering any criticism by stating that YouTube has the freedom to make those choices -- you're just changing the topic and ignoring the nature of the criticism.

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you should really be using (K)N95's Better masks are obviously better. > completely ineffective when wet, As far as I know this is not correct. I remember to have read a study showing quite well that even a wet cloth mask(1) still contains the spread of aerosols surprisingly well. Sure it's far worse then a medical mask of any kinda but still a surprisingly high improvement compared to the no-mask scenario. > which…

If you're referring to the material used in most goiter style masks, then I can vouch for it doing nothing more than the aerator filter on your kitchen sink. Yet this is accepted by "science following" industries as an effective mask against an aeresol-transmitted disease. I get the "better than nothing" argument but forgive me for not feeling comfortable with the "any mask is fine" messaging. Either recommend/advert…

> not feeling comfortable with the "any mask is fine" messaging.

Sure, there is a reason that in Germany they moved from "any mask" to "medical" mask to requiring FFP2/(K)N95 masks.

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#559
post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's notable that the only randomized controlled trial ever conducted for masks and Covid [1] was not listed under the personal protection section of this page, and was instead was inaccurately summarized: > A community-based randomized control trial in Denmark during 2020 assessed whether the use of surgical masks reduced the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among wearers (personal protection) by more than 50%. Findings we…

Ok so you say that characterizing the results as incoonclusive results is dishonest, but in the article the limitations sections literally lists "Inconclusive results" as their first item. On top of that they state: "Although the difference observed was not statistically significant, the 95% CIs are compatible with a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection." Which sounds like their saying they can say with 95% c…

The between-group results are not "inconclusive" -- they found no statistically significant difference between the masked and unmasked cohorts. There's no reason to reject the null hypothesis ("masks are not protective") based on this data.

The authors say this:

> The most important limitation is that the findings are inconclusive, with CIs compatible with a 46% decrease to a 23% increase in infection.

This is not saying that that study is inconclusive. It's saying that the protective effect is inconclusive -- masks could be anything from slightly protective, to slightly harmful. The fact that the writer characterizes the entire paper as "inconclusive" is incriminating: it's an editorial bias, a complete misunderstanding of statistics, or a combination of both.

> Which sounds like their saying they can say with 95% confidence that there is between a 46% reduction and a 21% increases, which sounds pretty damn inconclusive to me.

No. They're stating the confidence interval on the point estimate. All point estimates have confidence intervals, and the existence of a confidence interval does not mean that the result is uncertain. To restate basic statistics: the top-line conclusion of the study is that the 95% confidence intervals of the two groups overlap to such a degree that you can't reject the conclusion that they're the same.

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

600k deaths after huge mitigations. Without any mitigation’s is it 3 million in the US dead?

Compare states - Florida with almost no mitigation, vs New York, New Jersey, or California with extreme mitigation. Go ahead and check the pre-vaccine data - there is no indication that the extreme mitigations did anything.

Have you actually looked at the data? Take a look at this study: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261286v...

And you do realize that in the past month Florida has 3x as many deaths as California, while being a much smaller state.

Post reply on HN