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YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

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Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#431

Post by nomel »

newacct583 wrote: post #288
convery wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His comment was on masks reducing the risk of you getting infected, not infecting others. Which is a selfish point, but nonetheless a correct one.

> His comment was on masks reducing the risk of you getting infected, not infecting others. His comment was extremely ambiguous and certainly sounded to me like he was claiming masks don't work as a tool to fight the pandemic, or at least carefully choosing his works to align himself with the factions in his base that believe they don't. If you want to say the words "masks don't work", in a screed arguing against mas…

I find this need to pander to people who are incapable/uninterested in understanding the reality and nuances of a conversation very frustrating. I see it as a race to the bottom for news organizations, and society, where we weaponize and spread the intentional misunderstanding of conversations that are often well formed and logical.

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#432

Post by nhutton1 »

natural219 wrote: post #205
NonContro wrote: post #183

Earlier 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.

Is it awesome? It wouldn't be awesome if you replaced covid here with HIV (HIV restrictions being donating blood and having unprotected sex)

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#433

Post by wizzwizz4 »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #352
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is completely infeasible to eradicate a highly infectious zoonotic respiratory virus w/ abundant animal reservoirs. We know SARS-CoV-2 is abundant in humans, and we know it's related to viruses with abundant animal reservoirs, but do we know that SARS-CoV-2 has abundant animal reservoirs? I wasn't aware that it did, and I wouldn't expect it to have. And… what kind of a defeatist attitude is that? They said it wa…

> We know SARS-CoV-2 is abundant in humans, and we know it's related to viruses with abundant animal reservoirs, but do we know that SARS-CoV-2 has abundant animal reservoirs? I wasn't aware that it did, and I wouldn't expect it to have. Yes, it has abundant animal reservoirs. The fact you're not aware of this suggests that you are lacking some essential background info, which would explain why you are so myopically…

> Here's just one study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8002747/

That's “non-zero”; not the same thing as abundant. How do you even know R>1? I'd say “found in wild animals” is the standard for “abundant animal reservoirs”; that's “some animals can catch it from humans” which we already know.

> Smallpox had no known animal or reservoirs.

Smallpox had cases in practically undocumented people. The last few smallpox infections were stamped out by pre-emptive vaccinations of everyone found in the vicinity; that doesn't require the subjects to be human in principle, even if they were in this case.

I maintain we could do it.

> Oh, and BTW, even if we did eradicate it, which we can't, it would still exist in the bioweapon labs of every major country in the world.

Fully-general argument for never bothering to eradicate any disease! Congratulations; I literally cannot rebut this point. All disease eradication is pointless. (By the way, Earth's only got another ~2 billion years of habitability left. Let's just roll over and die now.)

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#434

Post by rcurry »

danuker wrote: post #428
kbelder wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 70s they'd be banning people who claimed the Earth wasn't cooling.

In the 1600s they'd ban people for claiming the Earth is not the center of the Solar System.

Some science may settle during shipping and handling.

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#435

Post by __blockcipher__ »

kenjackson wrote: post #303
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every year, ~647,000 Americans die from heart disease alone. Even if the COVID death numbers aren't over-inflated, I guarantee you that if I were to time-travel to 2019 and ask you if you think that it would be worth precipitating a global supply chain disruption, missed schooling and medical appointments for children around the globe, both first and third world, and the greatest erosion in civil liberties in Western…

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

There's no convincing evidence the mitigations made a real difference, especially in the long-run. I'd expect to see bodies in the streets in Sweden given that they largely avoided the ritualistic behavior that the rest of the western world engaged in.

Unfortunately, people have it so drilled into their heads that the lockdowns and masks worked, that I don't know what I could possibly say to convince someone otherwise.

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#436

Post by dathinab »

convery wrote: post #247
IIAOPSW wrote: post #229

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…

His comment was on masks reducing the risk of you getting infected, not infecting others. Which is a selfish point, but nonetheless a correct one.

It's a common strategy employed by misinformation campaigns and people which don't want to accept some facts but know that they are kinda in the wrong to

take advantage of the difference between the meaning conveyed by words(1) to the general public and the specific words said(2).

(1): I.e. the meaning large groups of people will interpret words as. In this case "masks do not work at all".

(2): I.e. "in a very specific context which in this way doesn't matter in the grater picture masks do not work well".

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#437

Post by keypusher »

rglover wrote: post #377

Easy fix for matters like this: citation. If you want to remove a video or other social media post, do so temporarily pending citation. Give people a way to back up their point of view with real data/research. If there is a conflict, put one of those warning banners beneath the video and link to the cited resource. Done. Otherwise, these companies look like oligarchs participating in low-key fascism.

I think this is a good idea, but even if they were to require a peer-reviewed citation in such cases, it's possible to find examples that somewhat support his view. Especially if you cherry pick quotes. For instance:

> Novel coronavirus is believed to be tiny enough (0.08–0.14 μm) to penetrate through face mask, thus protection offered by cloth mask may be too low.

> The efficacy of cloth face masks filtration varies and depends on the type of material used, number of layers, and degree of moisture in mask and fitting of mask on face.

> Cloth face masks have limited efficacy in combating viral infection transmission.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7497125/

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#438

Post by rajin444 »

nielsbot wrote: post #419
rajin444 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you prove the mitigations worked? The only controls out there (Sweden, some US states, etc.) aren’t very robust (nor in favor of mitigation efforts).

All you have to do is look at a deaths/infections curve before and after mitigations.

Yes, but you need a control to compare it against. How do you get one?

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#439

Post by xanaxagoras »

hobs wrote: post #414
xanaxagoras wrote: post #181

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.…

So what? It impugnes his motives 100% and it impugnes your motives as well to say "so what" to the clear implication made, that he wants no masking at all and would like the most negative outcome, increasing mass death. Saying "oh but he's a physician so him encouraging mass death is an interesting opinion I want to hear" sounds... a bit nutty dont you think?

I'm done with COVID. I'm immune to it. By this point everyone has had the chance to become immune to it. I'm not worried about the delta variant. I don't think mass death is on the table here.

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#440

Post by CamperBob2 »

merpnderp wrote: post #256
IIAOPSW wrote: post #229

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…

Cloth masks might not keep you safe. They do, however, improve safety for those around you. Anything that reduces droplet velocity and interferes with aerosol disperson is by definition better than nothing.
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