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Comment by corndoge | Hacker News Reader

> YouTube indicated that examples of the offending content in the video included the line: “Most of the masks you get over the counter don’t work. They don’t prevent infection.”

> It also included the quote: “Trying to shape human behavior isn’t the same as following the actual science which tells us that cloth masks don’t work.”

Regardless of what you think about YouTube's misinformation policy, I don't think this is even misinformation! Seeing platforms control the narrative to this extent is truly fascinating. I never thought it would be as overt as it is. Tech companies feeling competent to dictate truth is scary.

View on HN

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-anymore pass.

This is like saying seat belts don't work because you can still die in a crash.

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.

The masks work, but he only mentions a narrow use that isn't the current reason for wearing them. That's the misinformation; he got you, too.

Think of it this way: "Don't wear a seatbelt because they don't keep other cars from hitting you."

Ah, I see, you're using "misinformation" to mean "came to a different conclusion than I did".

Misinformation, because it encourages a practice that is counter to the recommendations. Because it allows for a conclusion to be drawn that is counter to the recommendations.

No, it's bait and switch.

No, here it means "came to a different purpose than I and everybody else using science did."

If we are going to use a car analogy it would be better to use a more fitting one.

Installing an exhaust filter won't reduce lung cancer risk of the driver. Car dealers should be careful if they advertised filters as medical devices that reducing lung cancer for drivers, rather than an filter that reduces pollution for those who live near the road. Exhaust filters are still a good idea for society, but if you want to reduce the personal risk then an air filter for the AC is required. It would however be a rather bad world to live in if everyone installed air filters for the AC and excluded filter for the exhausts.

Outside of garages or other enclosed spaces where the driver might actually get exposed to the cars exhausts.

> 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 masks mandates, you need to be a whole lot more careful than that. And Paul isn't a careless guy, he knew what the fuck he was saying.

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.

> I see it as a race to the bottom for news organizations, and society

Why are you citing "news organizations" and "society" when the offender is a political leader? I don't argue with your point but it seems like your blame is misplaced.

But it should have been explicit in the reasoning for wearing masks in the first place. It seems to me that the pro-mask people have such contempt for the masses that they must disguise a reasonable social request into a selfish mandate, which is just weird. And yes, there are those who are unreasonably selfish, but I don’t think it’s working on them anyway. My personal take on this is that the mask issue is a poor choice for a hill to die on. It has to be the most reasonable and innocuous of all the unprecedented powers in exercise.

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".

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 they don't work than someone else saying they offer robust protection.

Yet Youtube isn't banning anyone who says cloth masks will keep you safe, which is extremely dangerous misinformation.

I've heavily worked out for 2 hours and worked in the office for 8 hours with a cloth mask without wetness issues. My experience may not be the same for others, but 15 minutes is an exaggeration. As early as April 2020 there was research indicating 2 layer cloth masks were at least 70% as effective as surgical masks, and the ones I have seal much better! Not to mention most people are wearing poorly fitted accordion style masks, not wearing N95 masks.

Either your "heavy workouts" are not heavy, or you are the sand guy from the mummy.

Lol, I was going to reply that maybe he lived in the desert. I just put my undershirt up to my mouth and breathed deeply through it 5 times, and it was pretty damp. I don't think it is controversial that humans expel a lot of moisture through breathing.

> 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 they get after 15 minutes or so of breathing through them.

In my personal experience this is far from correct, through this depends on the definition of "wet" and the weather.

(1): As long as they are not made of a specific kind of material, which e.g. is often used for bicycle masks and sometimes for scarfs which might from the get to go make thinks worse by splitting the aerosols into smaller lighter ones without stopping them at all.

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/advertise/mandate masks that are tested to prevent spread of infection and fit tested when appropriate, or drop it.

> 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.

> As far as I know this is not correct.

I'm just going by the CDC's webpage on masks showing a big red X next to using masks that are wet or dirty.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-si...

I bought a washable cloth mask. It claimed to be fancy, with "three layers!". Unfortunately, those three layers are polyester, and are impenetrable to air, so all of my breath in and out is through the gaps in the nose area/bottom. I went back to cheap medical masks. At least I know air is passing through it, so there must be some filtering.

KN95's are readily available in the US on Amazon. Your local university likely even keeps a list of brands which have been tested and pass the KN95 certification test. Mine does, and it has been extremely nice having a supply of cheap, safe, high quality masks my local uni has tested.

And since they are KN95, you aren't taking masks away from medical professionals.

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.

(I didn't downvote), I see what you're saying, but it is complex. If you spend an hour in a poorly ventilated classroom/office space/cubicle farm full of people, and your cloth mask gets damp from your breath, and the CO2 level hits 2000+ meaning the air circulation is extremely poor, is it really believable that a cloth mask is doing anything at all?

A well fit KN95 is drastically preferable, readily available, and highly affordable. No idea why these aren't being promoted as the only safe choice.

Because (at least in the US) the “optics” of a “KN95 as the only safe choice” message would be that the past encouragement of the cloth varieties as reasonably effective was wrong.

It would further decrease the credibility of the government/CDC/Fauci because it would be perhaps the (fourth or fifth?) shifting mask advisory that we have seen in the last 18 months.

Don't understand the downvotes ...

basic science: "Anything that reduces droplet velocity and interferes with aerosol dispersion is by definition better than nothing." here are some supercomputer simulations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAvO_QdO9eM

This site is full of people who, in defiance of Feynman, are absolutely sure that they're the ones who will finally come up with a way to fool Mother Nature. They don't care about science, simulations, or common sense.

To be fair, as insufferable as this attitude can be, it's probably necessary in order for progress to happen. It usually drags us in the other direction, though.

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/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

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 were inconclusive,54 most likely because the actual reduction in infections was lower.

This is inaccurate, and should make anyone doubt the judgment of whomever wrote this summary. The paper in question was quite clear that there was no statistical significance between groups:

> The between-group difference was −0.3 percentage point (95% CI, −1.2 to 0.4 percentage point; P = 0.38) (odds ratio, 0.82 [CI, 0.54 to 1.23]; P = 0.33). Multiple imputation accounting for loss to follow-up yielded similar results. Although the difference observed was not statistically significant, the 95% CIs are compatible with a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection.

To characterize this as "inconclusive" is misleading at best, dishonest at worst. In general, I find this page to be a highly selective reading of the available literature, which was (and remains) predominantly inconclusive regarding the effectiveness of masks. Even the WHO meta-analysis of mask literature found only a weak positive effect after mixing together the results of studies ranging from cloth masks to respirators, in medical (most of the data) and non-medical settings [2]. This CDC page has instead chosen to lean on a few poorly controlled observational and/or correlative studies, and ignore the higher quality evidence that came before.

[1] https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817

[2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

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.

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.

I didn't mean to say the fact that the interval exists makes it uncertain, I meant to say the fact that it is a 67% spread makes it uncertain. They are saying that they have narrowed the effect down to within that spread with a 95% chance. That combined with sources of uncertainty not covered by that intervale (Listed in their limitations: missing data, variable adherence, patient-reported findings on home tests, no blinding, and of course inconclusive results) definitely make it sound pretty inconclusive.

There is also the limitation that there was "no assessment of whether masks could decrease disease transmission from mask wearers to others."

The article explicitly states "The findings, however, should not be used to conclude that a recommendation for everyone to wear masks in the community would not be effective in reducing SARS-CoV-2 infections, because the trial did not test the role of masks in source control of SARS-CoV-2 infection."

> That combined with sources of uncertainty not covered by that intervale (Listed in their limitations: missing data, variable adherence, patient-reported findings on home tests, no blinding, and of course inconclusive results) definitely make it sound pretty inconclusive.

The study is not inconclusive. The study failed to reject the null hypothesis. That much is definitive.

Whether or not there might be some smaller difference that the study wasn't powered to detect...we don't know. It's still a definitive rebuttal of any claim that "masks reduce personal risk of infection by 50%", and the fact that it's not in the "personal protection" section of the CDC webpage is simply editorial bias. At the very least, this paper is the best study ever performed on masks and SARS-CoV2, and it severely limits any real-world claim of protectiveness.

> There is also the limitation that there was "no assessment of whether masks could decrease disease transmission from mask wearers to others."

The study wasn't designed to do that. It should still be in the "personal protection" section of the CDC webpage, and is not.

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.

There is little reason to doubt a well fitted (K)N95 or other counterpart works well. But cloth masks are unproven to help and there are many other variables that could be in play here. For instance, people who wear masks might spend much less time within 6' of each other, be more likely to be vaccinated, or some other confounding factor to mask effectiveness.

Also I've not seen a single cloth mask particulate test that has tried to reproduce the dampness level of a cloth mask that's been worn for an hour. In any but the driest climates that mask will be damp and much less effective.

And given how few studies have been done on cloth mask efficacy over the last year, it is likely the experts already know that cloth masks don't do much.

My argument isn't that people shouldn't wear masks, it's that now that cheap, plentiful, effective quality masks are available, people are still being told to wear cloth masks. I assume that's the same confusion that got the Senator banned from Youtube.

For instance, people who wear masks might spend much less time within 6' of each other, be more likely to be vaccinated, or some other confounding factor to mask effectiveness.

Neither of those factors are true where I am and there are very few new cases. I don’t deny that there could be confounding factors. But, and I’m using the word literally correctly here, my supermarket is literally operating as normal with social distancing almost impossible. You can’t even walk past someone in an aisle correctly distanced.

And forget about getting vaccinated. It’s very hard to get an appointment here.

I’m not sure what other confounding factor is powerful enough to counteract hundreds of people in close proximity breathing the same air if cloth masks have an insignificant effect.

> I’m not sure what other confounding factor is powerful enough to counteract hundreds of people in close proximity breathing the same air if cloth masks have an insignificant effect.

The difference in populations. If your population is younger, fitter, lighter skinned (and that's just three of the most important of the many factors found in severity of the disease) then there could be the same number of cases in both populations but yours has a higher number of asymptomatic or symptomatic but self-misdiagnosed cases.

Unless both populations are being mass tested weekly? Or do they only get a test if they show symptoms…

There's so much contradictory science on what you're claiming as ultimate truth.

There's paper saying masks don't work there's paper saying masks do work.

This is not a conclusive settled fact.

It's pretty conclusive. It's been conclusive for years and years, before COVID-19. There's no question at all that masks reduce infectiousness through the extremely obvious method of preventing some virus particles from going from one person to another, and also no question at all that probability of infection depends on number of virus particles around, and that viruses in general produce worse symptoms when the initial viral load is higher (and masks reduce the initial viral load via the extraordinarily obvious physical mechanism).

You will find literally zero papers credibly claiming otherwise.

You will find many papers claiming that masks do not reduce the risk to zero. That's obvious and also irrelevant in light of the above.

You will find papers claiming that random cloth masks do not negligibly reduce the risk when you're immersed in a high-virus-density environment for hours on end. Not as obvious, but also irrelevant in light of the above.

If you think you know of a paper that contradicts the above, send it our way please.

> It's been conclusive for years and years, before COVID-19.

March 2020:

U.S. health officials say Americans shouldn’t wear face masks to prevent coronavirus https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-cdc-says-americans-don...

In fact the U.S. surgeon general recently urged the public to “STOP BUYING MASKS!” “They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!,” wrote Surgeon General Jerome Adams on Twitter.

The CDC said last month it doesn’t recommend people use face masks, making the announcement on the same day that first case of person-to-person transmission of coronavirus was reported in the U.S. The CDC recommendation on masks stands, a spokesman told MarketWatch Wednesday, even with the first reported case of a COVID-19 infection in an individual in California who had not been to China or been exposed to a person diagnosed with the virus.

“The virus is not spreading in the general community,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the Center for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said in a Jan. 30 briefing. “We don’t routinely recommend the use of face masks by the public to prevent respiratory illness. And we certainly are not recommending that at this time for this new virus.”

WHO stands by recommendation to not wear masks if you are not sick or not caring for someone who is sick https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-masks-r...

“There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there’s some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly,” Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO health emergencies program, said at a media briefing in Geneva, Switzerland, on Monday.

The CDC made that statement because masks work. It was worded dumbly, but they're just saying that when the mask supply is constrained, healthcare workers should be prioritized over the general public. If masks didn't work, there'd be no point in triaging who gets them.

So, you linked a number of articles from early 2020, when there was not significant community spread of COVID and thus the primary strategy for dealing with it was isolating and quarantining individual cases, and most people in the country would probably not come in to contact with someone carrying COVID.

If you want to know what the WHO recommends, you need only look at their website:

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2...

"Make wearing a mask a normal part of being around other people. The appropriate use, storage and cleaning or disposal of masks are essential to make them as effective as possible."

It wasn't hard to find sources that disagree:

> The use of masks, which are medical devices, requires correct use, based on medical principles unfortunately not known by the whole population. This cultural deficiency, linked to the breathing difficulties caused by the use of this filter, has led to incorrect management of these important medical devices, facilitating the commission of errors that can make the masks ineffective or *even dangerous because they can become a vehicle for the spread of the disease itself*.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092575352...

That article cites a WHO statement:

> Using a mask incorrectly however, may actually increase the risk of transmission, rather than reduce it.

https://www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/Adviceusemask...

Edit: what is wrong with people here, downvoting quotes from scientific articles and WHO statements, because they don't like what they say?

>Using a mask incorrectly however, may actually increase the risk of transmission, rather than reduce it.

Read your link. Proper usage isn't hard to understand. If you touch your mask with your dirty hands it might increase the chance that you breathe in the germs that were on your hands.

Don't put a dirty mask on your face. Don't touch your mask with dirty hands.

Notice that these messages are different than "masks are a mind-control conspiracy" and "masks are ineffective."

I see people misusing masks all the time. Read the CDC guidance on masks and check out how many people follow it:

> A mask is NOT a substitute for social distancing.

> Masks should completely cover the nose and mouth and fit snugly against the sides of face without gaps. [People with beards should closely trim their beard or wear two masks]

> Wash your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds or use hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol after touching or removing your mask.

> Not recommended: Masks that do not fit properly, masks made from fabric that is loosely woven, masks with one layer, masks with exhalation valves or vents.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-si...

> It's been conclusive for years and years, before COVID-19

What? The overwhelming literature showed the exact opposite! That cloth masks did not prevent Influenza whatsoever.

I'd start with https://aapsonline.org/mask-facts/ as a great review, and then take a look at some specific studies like this one:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4420971/

> The rates of all infection outcomes were highest in the cloth mask arm, with the rate of ILI statistically significantly higher in the cloth mask arm (relative risk (RR)=13.00, 95% CI 1.69 to 100.07) compared with the medical mask arm. Cloth masks also had significantly higher rates of ILI compared with the control arm. An analysis by mask use showed ILI (RR=6.64, 95% CI 1.45 to 28.65) and laboratory-confirmed virus (RR=1.72, 95% CI 1.01 to 2.94) were significantly higher in the cloth masks group compared with the medical masks group. Penetration of cloth masks by particles was almost 97% and medical masks 44%.

> This study is the first RCT of cloth masks, and the results caution against the use of cloth masks.

> The control arm was ‘standard practice’, which comprised mask use in a high proportion of participants. As such (without a no-mask control), the finding of a much higher rate of infection in the cloth mask arm could be interpreted as harm caused by cloth masks, efficacy of medical masks, or most likely a combination of both.

---

The TL;DR is masks were never thought to work for community transmission of any respiratory virus, but they definitely don't work for SARS-2 where the preponderance of evidence points to aerosol transmission as the dominant transmission mode, which masks cannot help against and could theoretically worsen (by increasing the total quantity of aerosols released, and that's before looking at factors like them giving a false sense of security or requiring conversational partners to stand more closely together)

Where did your conclusion of "masks definitely don't work for SARS-2" come from? Just in your quote it stated that the control that cloth mask use was compared to was a population with a high proportion of mask wearing. The study does not compare cloth mask usage to no mask usage, and only says that it is possible that cloth masks are harmful.

Also if you would like some more up to date information, as well as a larger number of studied, which are specific to COVID, the CDC website has a lot of information here:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

> Just in your quote it stated that the control that cloth mask use was compared to was a population with a high proportion of mask wearing. The study does not compare cloth mask usage to no mask usage, and only says that it is possible that cloth masks are harmful.

That was me debunking the “before COVID, masks were known to work” claim of the GP. That was not a study of SARS-2 but rather Influenza.

The “masks don’t work for sars-2” was in reference to sars-2 aerosol transmission, which masks mechanistically don’t protect against. There is only one RCT of sars-2 in a community setting, and it failed to demonstrate an improvement in the primary endpoint of self-infection. There is no study showing that masks slow the spread of sars-2 in a community. Yet despite the lack of any studies, various medical authorities like the CDC are issuing statements that they do exactly that, which is a classic case of an institution using its credibility to advance baseless claims

> There is no study showing that masks slow the spread of sars-2 in a community

You say that, and yet "At least ten studies have confirmed the benefit of universal masking in community level analyses"

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

And the website goes on to list each of them, as well as a number of other studies relating to the effectiveness of masking.

Those studies all have fundamental flaws. The basic problem is those are associative studies, which can’t separate the effects of masking from the normal curve of a viral epidemic.

You are right though I should have been much more specific than just “study”.

A question though: if masking is so great, why wouldn’t the health authorities have performed an actual RCT to conclusively prove they work? (We have one RCT for SARS-2 which showed no statistically significant effect on the primary endpoint)

>I'd start with https://aapsonline.org/mask-facts/ as a great review, and then take a look at some specific studies like this one:

for one, this was last updated a year ago. That's OK -- but it's jam-packed with 'citations' (many are from non-medical groups like NY Times, so on) from 2020, around 50 of them. Much of the data changed, was redacted, or non-reproducible by other groups.

I read through it until I came upon the second or third 'conclusion' that was at odds with the conclusion of the paper-authors she cites.

The 'curator' of that data is an anesthesiologist who 'teaches constitutional law to non-lawyers', and posts political blogs regarding 'mainstream media propaganda regarding the vaccine and ivermectin' and articles that refer to Kamala Harris as 'another snake slithering out of the swamp'.[0]

Her conclusions may be right, it may be wrong -- but the political axe being ground, combined with the conclusion/data inaccuracies portrayed against the cited works, leads me to believe -- anecdotally -- that the opinions are likely unreliable and biased; it prompts me to want to find other professionals to consult.

[0]: https://marilynsingletonmdjd.com/category/politics/page/5/

> You will find literally zero papers credibly claiming otherwise.

Of the papers cited in the WHO meta-analysis of face masks and infection [1], all of the (three!) papers from a non-health-care setting had a confidence interval overlapping 1.0 (i.e. "no benefit"). Of those in a health-care setting, about half had confidence intervals overlapping 1.0 (i.e. "no benefit"):

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

The literature in this area was exceptionally ambiguous prior to 2020, and hasn't improved over the course of the pandemic. You've just made a provably incorrect claim. If you did it on YouTube, I guess you'd be banned!

(just kidding; we all know that you can't possibly misinform people when you're agreeing with the party line!)

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Thanks for posting. No one on the pro-mask side reads scientific papers.

They're fascists and want to crush their opposition through controlling the narrative instead of actual science.

Anecdotal, how do you explain the non existing flue season (last autumn ) and the low incidences in Japan? We got higher rates during the Olympic.

I live in Tokyo, Japan and visit US/Europe often. The only significant difference I see is the willingness to wear masks. And there's way less space here (packed subways etc.)

Well, any rational conversation about Japan has to start with the observation that cases are at an all-time high right now:

https://www.asahi.com/topics/word/%E3%82%B3%E3%83%AD%E3%83%8...

I don't think changing rates of masking can explain that change.

> Anecdotal, how do you explain the non existing flue season (last autumn ) and the low incidences in Japan? We got higher rates during the Olympic.

I haven't seen any data on flu during the olympics, so I can't comment on that. Covid cases, of course, were shooting up long before the first athletes even arrived in Japan (see above).

To answer your question, nobody knows why flu "disappeared" during the last year. My hypothesis is a combination of two things:

1) it didn't disappear, it just spread less due to to the dramatic reduction in international travel (plus maybe closure of schools).

2) we stopped testing for flu at rates necessary to detect it. Our prior surveillance system for influenza was pretty limited, and most of it switched to Covid in 2020.

In general, I think people fixate on masks far too much, because they're visible. Even in Japan, what qualifies as a mask would make Americans in the "mask compliant" cities laugh out loud. I routinely see people wearing these on Instagram and on television:

https://www.superdelivery.com/product_image/812/8/8128738_10...

... the increase in incidences are coinciding with early travel and reducing the state of emergency related to the olympic. I work at a place that housed one of the teams, and the incidence increased around 1-2 weeks after some people arrived.

NHK made a lot of efforts like the one bellow: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/1247/

Check the video,I would say masks help. It's basic physics ...

it's similar to the seat belt and car discussion. It's debatable how much they help (and they might have increased the number of accidents initially), yet they help. Statistics is hard.

> Check the video,I would say masks help. It's basic physics

Masks leak. Airflow seeks the path of least resistance. Also basic physics. People are not mannequins in a fume hood with scrap of cloth glued to their slobberhole.

I don't think anyone is disputing the idea that if you could somehow hermetically seal off everyone's face holes, you'd stop the spread of a respiratory virus. But we can't, and we don't, so the question becomes: in the real world (i.e. not a mannequin in a lab), does it make a difference?

All of the real-world evidence on the question is mixed, at best.

what is the risk of wearing a mask? that you look silly?

the real world evidence is mixed, yes.

People are not mannequins, people die. If a simple action of mine, that might make me look silly, might save some lives (might, I don't know, yet from annexdotes countries that had no problem with wearing masks and other measures faired better) I will do what these countries did (and also wear a mask). It's rational compassion for me.

You might say, I don't care (and science might prove you right or wrong after a long while), yet consider the potential cost if you are proven wrong ... Looking silly versus potentially killing people ... The evidence is not in, and it depends on what you value more ;)

It's your own choice. For me I decided to wear a mask in public, do social distancing and get vaccinated. I think these are reasonable things to ask from people. You don't seem to think that.

> what is the risk of wearing a mask? that you look silly?

Fortunately, "lack of silliness" is not the standard of evidence for a medical intervention.

There are a great many things that we might impose on others that might have some impact. There are, in fact, an infinite number of these things.

Your desire to do these things "just in case" does not justify their imposition on other people. But more importantly: we've had a long time to study this intervention now. Perhaps it's time to gather some actual evidence that it works?

After all, it's not just the question of whether or not I want to do it -- it's the question of whether or not huge number of people are convinced that they're protecting themselves, and somehow behaving differently out of a misguided sense of protection. That matters quite a bit.

> It's rational compassion for me.

No, without evidence, it's just a guess.

Wearing a mask is a medical intervention for you??

wearing a mask is not about protecting you, it's protecting other people. If you don't value other people's lives, don't wear one it won't help you personally.

Ok ... so where is the evidence that they don't work?

Current scientific consensus is on my side of the debate:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0843-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8

If you know better, do the experiments and the analysis, get it peer-reviewed and we can talk again.

If you are ok with the consequences that you might kill people, don't wear a mask. Fine with me. Just don't tell anybody afterwards that you didn't know and that it was just a guess.

i feel this discussion as tedious as the discussion about vaccinations: https://twitter.com/nathanTbernard/status/142511666690879488...

People are no mannequins ... people die.

> Ok ... so where is the evidence that they don't work?

I provided you with the link to the WHO meta-analysis of all research literature surrounding masks prior to the pandemic. Here it is again:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

This covers 172 publications on masks and disease leading up to the pandemic. It is far more comprehensive than any particular paper or editorial you cherry-pick to support your arguments.

The best you can possibly say is that there is poor evidence supporting a small marginal effect. And that's if you combine all of the data in an illogical way and ignore that cloth masks and respirators are not the same, and that n95 masks in hospitals are not at all the same as bandanas in the subway. If you limit the argument to the question of non-respirator masks outside hospitals, there's no supporting evidence at all.

Spamming the comments with links to the same two papers from 2020 -- neither of which are good (see my other response) -- is not a rebuttal. The only high-quality paper on masks in 2020 was the Danish mask study, which was a well-controlled, high-quality RCT, and failed to find evidence for a protective effect:

https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817

Despite exasperating claims to the contrary, it is unlikely to be true that masks are magical one-way valves, with protective effect in one direction but not the other -- particularly if the virus is spread by aerosols, which are not blocked by poorly fitting masks.

Your lancet study with 172 publications comes to this conclusion:

"These data also suggest that wearing face masks protects people (both health-care workers and the general public) against infection by these coronaviruses."

Again, were is evidence that they don't work?

For example if cloth masks would not block around 40% in contorlled experiments: https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mSphere.00637-20

Masks are not the magic one thing. Yet, it's one of the measures that helps. Don't put too much trust in masks, add social distancing and other preventive measures.

Yet, I don't see what the rational behind "they don't work" is. They lower the risk of getting infected and more important to infect others (anything in front of your mouth will do as it stops droplets ... basic physics. how much it does it that's debatable.

If I have a very wet speaking language, and am infected with COVID. You tell me I'm infecting the same amount of people if I wear a mask as if I would not wear one? (given the rest is the same??). Sorry, my understanding of physics does not agree with you. Not even going for virology or other topics.

Do you have a novel particle model we can use that explains your assumptions? You should test it in a lab.

here's a newer paper:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24115-7

(no evidence ... just guesses ... just nature level publication guesses ... probably all wrong)

The entire state of Texas lifted all Covid restrictions around March? Had only 16% vaccination rates and had record low levels of Covid infections for 6 months up until recently with apparently the Delta variant.

So don't understand why actual reality contradicts this paper.

If you tell me that millions of Texans followed social distancing rules on their own without a citation, it will be humorous.

About Texas: https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/12/texas-coronavirus-gr...

Check the graph about mask mandates ... Hoping the best for Texas, yet this looks bad.

"So don't understand why actual reality contradicts this paper."

This is similar as saying ... It had the biggest blizzard last winter in Texas, that's why Global Warming is a hoax.

Where is this paper wrong? Maybe you spotted something that the peer reviewers didn't.

Also you should submit your "scientific" observations of Texas ... because it's real reality (not science ... who needs the scientific method, when we have your observations).

Hundreds of labs recording tests across the state and reporting the data to the CDC.

Telephone call in reporting from the paper you linked.

Which one is more scientifically reliable I wonder?

Didn't know the labs recorded if a person was wearing masks .. If they didn't the second is more reliable :)

Basic science if you dont measure something (e.g. how many people wear masks) you don't know anything. Fairly simple isn't it?

lol ... scientists are all wrong, because my gut tells me I'm right. That's not how it works. If you have studies that masks don't work (or are harmful) similar to the 3 linked on top .. There's also the lancet study and another nature study showing that masks reduce infection risks. Then please show me ... Yet don't come with anecdotes ( I know what happened in Texas .. Lol I know what happens in Hong Kong and Taiwan .. People just laugh about the US here :))

To address several of your points:

> Basic science if you don't measure something (e.g. how many people wear masks) you don't know anything. Fairly simple isn't it?

So phone call in's are measuring...phone call ins, it measures neither covid tests nor mask usage? Seems like it's measuring even less?

> scientists are all wrong, because my gut tells me I'm right

I think the pro-mask people are listening to their gut more than anyone. I've never seen a more fanatical group who don't question their assumptions.

Here's just a few studies that contradict the narrative that masks are effective.

The effectiveness of masks in a community setting is not a settled fact.

Especially the CDC's policy of 'wear a dirty rag on your face until the waiter brings the breadsticks'.

https://swprs.org/face-masks-evidence/

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577

now we are getting somewhere... away from personal insults (and ad hominem attacks).

Honestly, if you show me proof about your position, I easily flip. that's the point of science, I'm happy to be proven wrong. That's what I like about HackerNews as well.

Yet, what you showed so far makes me rather worry.

I used nature papers from medicine (these are super hard to publish ... I have friends who tried. You need to be rigorous and on the top of your field in research. don't get me wrong there are issues with peer-review and publishing but they are nothing compared to the sources you currently shared).

Ok let's look at your papers. The first is not a paper, not even peer reviewed. It's a blog that is known to post factually wrong articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Policy_Research There is not even an author on the website. Wikipedia lists founders and authors unkown. The focus is also politics not medicine (seems no medical expert has ever looked at this). The wikipedia article has even lists were they debunk the claims of the article you posted.

Moving on to the bmjopen article. Yes, this is peer reviewed, in an open access journal. Compared to nature, I think I could be able to write an article that is published there ( Impact factor 3 compared to nature with over 14).

Still it's peer-reviewed and not blog propaganda from some unknown author. First of all, the paper does not say anything about the overall effectivness of masks.

They compare cloth masks with medical masks in healthcare workers. That matters. Also of course, here (and in Hong Kong) everybody wears surgical masks (and a lot of people wear cloth mask on top), so 2 masks. Makes sense doesn't it.

Again where is some scientific evidence that masks don't work? There is no evidence. The Texas example you bring up is an anecdote. I can bring an anecdote on how better HK, Taiwan and China dealt with the issue all of the people wearing masks and then where are we? We have no clue who is right. Then take in the advice of the majority of medical healthcare professionals (they advice to wear masks).

The expert in COVID-19, who made a test detecting it recommends wearing masks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Drosten

The people who are against masks just don't have that standing, they usually are not experts in virology (have never published scientifically), and don't seem to understand the difference between anecdotes and the scientific methods. You might find some that are not in there and I'm careful to listen and check their claims ... because I want to be proven wrong (This is how I learn, this is why I engage in discussion ... I want to see where I am wrong.). Your argumentation is unfortunately completely lagging.

Your post was super patronizing and filled with assumptions.

You clearly didn't read the article I posted, go check out that Swiss article again.

It's a bunch of 10 articles from Oxford, Plos One, American journal of Medicine, and other legit sites that refute effectiveness of masks.

Mass effectiveness is not settled fact.

> The expert in COVID-19, who made a test detecting it recommends wearing masks.

The main test is a PCR test. And he didn't invent the test.... A guy named Kary Mullis did. AND won the Nobel. And Kary Millis HATED Fauci.

Also the entire swedish epidemiology team recommends against mask mandates.

You pick and choose your experts and I'll pick and choose mine.

The point is mask effectiveness is not a settled conclusive fact and these fascist authoritarian know it all mindsets are getting really old.

It might benefit you to think that you might be wrong or at least question the narrative from an opposing mindset to see where/if holes in your argument exist.

Science is about questioning not about being a know-it-all.

Yes I'm patronizing because you have a problem with reading.

The expert in COVID-19, who made a test detecting it. Drosten was in the team who MADE the test for COVID-19, yes they use a PCR test. I never claimed he invited it. Kary Mullis did not make the test for COVID-19 ...

That about summarizes your problem. About the articles ... another commenter already pointed out the problems with them:

1. Study : Influenza not COVID 19 (different, no aerosol transmission ) 2. Faceplam: The authors were in the nature article I posted . This was discussed. https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-paper-... 3. The authors say themselves that most people wear not wearing the masks ... "his trial was unable to provide conclusive evidence ... most likely due to poor adherence to protocol." 4. Says what I claim: "The evidence regarding the effectiveness of medical face masks for the prevention of COVID-19 in the community is compatible with a small to moderate protective effect" 5. Strangely they focus on the Danish study (which has problems see top). They did not address any of the nature studies (as well as others from the Lancet posted on this thread), so they might need to reevaluate :) (Also they missrepresent the Danish study ... it's just about infection transmission. 6. is about influenza again (no over-air transmission lol) 7. here's a good article that also discusses these claims: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118 (it's from 2021). The article is full of missing citations and claims that are false. https://masks4all.co/cidrap/ "It claimed, without any references, that “sweeping mask recommendations… will not reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission, as evidenced by the widespread practice of wearing such masks in Hubei province”. No references or data were provided to back up this claim.

Looking at the actual data, however, shows that it supports the opposite conclusion – masks may have been critical in controlling the Hubei outbreak. A report from Guo Yi in HK01 pointed out that up until Jan 22 most people in Wuhan were not wearing a mask."

8. that's the best. All 3 authors from the study paper: ""We understand that some people are citing our perspective article as support for discrediting widespread masking. In truth, the intent of our article was to push for more masking, not less. It is apparent that many people with SARS-CoV-2 infection are asymptomatic or presymptomatic yet highly contagious and that these people account for a substantial fraction of all transmissions. . Universal masking helps to prevent such people from spreading virus-laden secretions, whether they recognize that they are infected or not."

9. about cloth masks... we are wearing medical (surgical )masks 10. Prof. Dr. Ines Kappstein is not working as a professor in virology, epidemiology. She is heading the Hygiene department for a Clinic in Passau (she's not teaching and not researching ...). I know her, I lived in Passau ... lol ... to have her cited here is super funny. She's definitely no expert.

I pick my experts and you pick random people ... good luck. That's ridiculous. lol :)

Prof. Dr. Ines Kappstein versus Christian Drosten. ... lol

I have nothing to say anymore. It's clear that you don't know what expertise in a field means (you pick a the head of a hygiene department in a small German hospital over the expert on SARS and COVID).

Good Luck.

I tried to address your claims but only got through a few before seeing they were either cherrypicked or outright scientifially wrong.

> Yes I'm patronizing because you have a problem with reading.

You're patronizing because you arrogantly think it's impossible that you're wrong.

1> Influenza not COVID 19 (different, no aerosol transmission )

Are you saying Influenza doesn't have aerosol transmission?

2>Faceplam: The authors were in the nature article I posted

I don't know what you mean by this. I didn't see the authors in the first article you posted.

> This was discussed. https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-paper-

Good counterpoint. And interesting. However, community compliance is a huge part of mask effectivness, no?

> 3. The authors say themselves that most people wear not wearing the masks ... "his trial was unable to provide conclusive evidence ... most likely due to poor adherence to protocol.

Community compliance is a huge part of mask effectivness at the community level, no?

>Says what I claim: "The evidence regarding the effectiveness of medical face masks for the prevention of COVID-19 in the community is compatible with a small to moderate protective effect"

Quit cherry picking, the next sentence after the one you posted:

"""Most, but not all, studies show a favourable effect for medical face masks for protecting against COVID-19. However, this effect was not statistically significant in several studies, and the quality of the evidence was assessed as low in several studies, so the results should be interpreted with caution."""

> Kary Mullis did not make the test for COVID-19 ... PCR tests are all the same test just with a different amplified region of DNA. Drosten may have posted the region of DNA but Kary Mullis invented the test.

Are you familiar with how PCR tests work?

Mask effectiveness is not conclusive.

I really hope you get some help with your ego and obsessive tendencies and amphetamine abuse. Good Luck to you as well.

I treat you like that because: 1. Ad hominem attacks and argumentation ...

2. You post a partisan website that posts links to studies with claims that are wrong. Where even the authors of papers linked there say that these conclusions are wrong.

2. You use anecdotes over studies.

3. You post links to studies from 2020 (and didn't even read the papers I posted earlier from 2021). You continue to troll people with the same old papers that have been rebunked (other users before me pointed out weaknesses that you just ignore ... and then you call them facist ... lol, very scientific.

4. Who are your experts who say "no need to wear masks"? Can you find even a virologist and epidemiologist actively working on COVID 19 (not writing policy papers but doing actual lab work on the virus) who claims that in a statement, what you are claiming?

Two of my experts in the pro mask camp are Sandra Ciesek and Christian Dorsten: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Ciesek

5. I was hoping for the aerosol influenza question: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/13/1/06-1202_article It's not conclusive :P You are easy to get ... You jump on any vaguely false information (ignoring the rest). Same with the PCR test .. It's super funny. Honestly, I was not so much in the pro-mask camp, as I didn't know that much about it. Now I'm sure they work (after reading all the papers you linked and doing some further research), thanks for clarifying!

Thanks a lot. I pray for you. Personally, I don't need help. I have a great job, you know doing science stuff ... on a second consideration probably you won't understand (it's about hypothesis testing, reproducible experiments and statistics ...)

You're a fascinating specimen!

You literally said the flu wasn't an airborne disease in a previous comment!

And almost everything else you claim is either an outright falsehood or a disingenuous misrepresentation.

Yet you fervently, fascistly, and insanely fight for your narrative in a gish gallop style of conversation that resembles an amphetamine fueled rage.

And you can't believe anything you say is even remotely incorrect! Even if presented otherwise!

It's hopeless to talk to you but fascinating to see how your mind works and the minds of the other Covid zealots!

You are a rich specimen of a human being!

Best of luck!

It's even easier to rebut you. I'm neither fascist nor do I take drugs.

Could you find a virologist researcher actively working on COVID (in the lab) with a standing in the sciences who agrees and states your opinion (not publishing papers that you misunderstand or propaganda websites)? Are you sticking with Prof. Dr. Ines Kappstein? Can you read German or why did you cite her article?

My opinion is aligned with two of the world top experts on epidemiology and virology, as I said before I know too little and am often wrong. Therefore, I tend to go with the scientific consensus.

My only point, believe what you want to believe ... Yet, it's not the scientific consensus. (That does not mean that you are wrong, it just means that I don't follow your advice, as there are people working 20 years and more on the topic who disagree with you and have the better arguments. )

Forgot:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7883189/#__ffn_...

That seems a decent summary of all studies ...

anything that interfere with droplet dispersion is better than nothing ... no? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwOwMsCc6NA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAvO_QdO9eM

Seems basic to me ... If the droplets from me don't reach to the first person in the cinema I cannot infect them.

> If the droplets from me don't reach to the first person in the cinema I cannot infect them.

It would be nice if that was true. In a small study here in Sweden they tested for covid particles in the AC system, and found particles in every single place they tested. This in a major hospital where everyone are wearing masks, and where the AC is located in the ceiling. The finding was not what the researcher was expecting, especially not in the AC system located on the roof.

How much interference a mask has is determined by the leak rating, but for most surgical masks there are no protection for the finer droplets in coughs and sneezes.

In a similar style, people though initially that bath houses and saunas would be safe against covid because the large droplets in the humid air would drop quickly to the ground. Later it was generally agreed here that the conclusion was incorrect and all public bath houses and saunas closed. Like with masks, humid air might be better than nothing but you really do not want to be near a person who are sick unless you got yourself an air filter and face shield.

Yes, that's the point masks are better than nothing. They might reduce the likelihood (without much of a negative impact). That's why we should wear them.

A vaccination also just reduces the likelihood you get covid. People can still get it and still spread it, even if they are vaccinated. It just reduces the likelihood and masks might do that as well ...

Yes, through masks don't reduce the likelihood of infection in the same way like vaccinations. The vaccination significant reduce infection rate for the person who takes it. Any secondary effect on other people is the result of the vaccinated person not being sick. Mask on other hand might in a limited way reduce spread if the person who wear it is sick. Masks without intake filters has zero effect on the person who wears the mask.

Vaccinations also have requirements with generally 90%+ protection, while masks has anything from 0 to 90% effectiveness in filtering breath emissions. As a effective measure against covid, vaccinations are a much more effective and powerful tool.

After two years and in my experience, you can't have large gatherings and expect a low risks. Neither vaccines nor mask nor the combination of both can produce enough of an defense. 2m distancing, washing hands, and keeping human gatherings inside to an absolute minimum is the only way, and then follow up with mass vaccinations. I don't think given current scientific knowledge that one can cheat that process.

Science is the history of people debunking ideas that "seem basic" to other people.

Those are called "hypotheses", and they're great. The next step is to find evidence that proves the hypothesis...and that's where we're stuck here.

Science is the history of people seeing something basic and getting told by others that it's not true ... E.g. the earth is round. Yet, You can never prove a hypothesis just present more and more evidence.

My point: it does not hurt me to wear a mask and it might help people, so I will do it. It seems also that scientists who know more about this than me, support this idea. They might be wrong, yet even if they are the negative consequences are so low (I wore a mask for a couple of days ... ) that for me it's worth it.

When I hear Rand Paul, I hear the smuggness of "I know masks don't work" and sorry but we don't know that ... Saying this right now, is showing me that he does not understand science (we don't know, they might help) and that he does not have any compassion.

Fauci seems to have the better track record (seeing how he dealt with AIDS).

Not driving a car might help people also.

Not leaving your house also might help people.

If it 'might help people' why not either of those options?

Finally we are getting somewhere. I didn't drive a car and I was not often leaving the house in the last year :)

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24115-7

Good you should continue to do that!

Sacrificing myself? lol ... Doesn't really make sense.

You might want to read the guidelines or stay on 8chan? ... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"it does not hurt me to wear a mask and it might help people,"

This is a very slippery slope argument. I'm not sure you fully thought it through.

I thought it through. I don't say you have to do any of it. It's my personal decision. If that's a slippery slope for you, i don't get it.

1. there is sufficient evidence that masks (as one measure) can reduce infection (especially together with other measures: vaccinations, social distancing etc.)

2. I decide for myself that I will do what keeps other people save. I didn't tell you what I think about politics or what

Did I tell you to wear a mask? No. I just told you what the scientific consensus on mask wearing is. you are free to do whatever. Eat a burger and directly go swimming ... I don't care. Just don't tell me "Swimming after a full meal is the best you can do." "Driving without a seatbelt is super secure." If you do that I will just tell you that you are wrong. That's all I did.

Where's your slippery slope?

You tell me that I am wrong and I should change my opinion, seamingly based on your political believes (see the political blog you posted before). You could not bring one decent study that underlies what you believe in.

Again, I'm super happy to say: i'm wrong. you are right. I don't want to wear a mask all day out of the house. Yet, what you are offering are no scientific arguments (anectodes and QAnon Stuff (the blog you posted had QAnon conspiracies on it). Again, you can believe what you want, yet don't expect me to change my opinion based on conspiracy theories.

Masks work in healthcare settings due to proper mask usage and training.

The problem is at the community level.

The current world mask usage is: "Wear a filth rag on your face until the waiter brings the breadsticks".

This could actually be doing more harm than good.

The paper you linked to says, in its summary section, "For the general public, evidence shows that physical distancing of more than 1 m is highly effective and that face masks are associated with protection, even in non-health-care settings, with either disposable surgical masks or reusable 12–16-layer cotton ones, although much of this evidence was on mask use within households and among contacts of cases."

But I assume you mean that the meta analysis didn't claim masks were useless, those three underlying papers did? I'm not sure what those three were, though, maybe I missed it. I found all the papers used but there were like a dozen in the non-health-care setting.

That is their interpretation of the meta-analysis, yes ("summary section" == "discussion section"). That is not a statement of fact, but of the authors' opinions about the facts reported. The data stands on its own -- though in this case, since it's a meta-analysis with fancypants statistical re-weighting of the data, the line between "data" and "analysis" is decidedly blurred.

> But I assume you mean that the meta analysis didn't claim masks were useless, those three underlying papers did? I'm not sure what those three were, though, maybe I missed it. I found all the papers used but there were like a dozen in the non-health-care setting.

The data they have presented, aggregating ~all of the prior research literature on masks, shows a weak effect, at best. Only by mixing data from different settings (mostly hospitals) and different types of masks (from cloth to respirators) and re-weighting the conclusions do they arrive at this claim of even weak effectiveness.

Do masks work? Based on the literature, the only honest answer is "maybe they have a small effect, but the evidence isn't very good."

Compare this to what you see repeated in the media and by "experts". The truth is...most of these people haven't read the papers, and are just repeating what they've heard.

Not improved?? I just checked nature...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0843-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24115-7

Seems pretty clear to me.

The Leung et. al. paper (first link) should never have passed editorial review. Look at figure 1: the only significant result in the entire paper (1a, panel 3) is based on four data points. I don't know if this is p-hacking, per se, but it's not a robust result. And not that I give the paper a lot of credence, but it's worth nothing that the overall trend across all pathogens is that masks are ineffective against aerosols.

Link two is a news article and contributes no data.

Link three is a survey of people self-reporting a bunch of different things, where they've thrown out 32% of the data for non-response, selected the ones who did respond (bias!) and used that to make claims about face masks. Moreover, their data shows that as people wear face-masks more often, their chance of getting Covid goes up! This paper has so many confounders and potential sources of bias that it simply cannot be taken seriously.

When I said that the research literature on masks over 2020 hasn't gotten any better, these kinds of papers are exactly what I meant. They're terrible, they're littered with methodological and data analysis flaws, and provide no useful information to the debate. If these "seem clear to you", you don't understand what you're reading and lack the ability to assess research literature.

Sadly, top-tier journals publish a lot of garbage, particularly when that garbage is topical and will get press. You cannot use "Nature paper" as a badge of quality. You still have to read and understand the paper.

in terms of physics I see a good reason to wear a mask. If COVID did not invent a sneaky way to go around that

Article 2 has a whole lot of pre-prints with data in the citations ... :) Here's a follow up (also with a lot of paper citations : https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01394-0

Talking with friends who are virologists, they all seem to agree masks help.

What's wrong with the articles the nature commentary are based on And articles like that: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7883189/#__ffn_...

> Article 2 has a whole lot of pre-prints with data in the citations

This is yet another news article, written by a journalist (Lynne Peeples, who wrote the other Nature news article you've shared upthread) who is mostly re-hashing her previous article. Did you read it or follow the citations? This is an excellent example of hearsay: if you don't take the time to read the citations in detail, you won't realize what you're missing.

Most of the citations here are same citations in the previous Nature news article. Only citations 4-8 deal with the question of masks' impact on transmission (the remainder are for other questions, like whether vaccinated people can be infected). Of the papers in citations 4-8, two are new. Both are based on mathematical models using self-reported survey data and/or state-level case data. I don't know how good these papers are, but all studies of this form are low-quality medical evidence.

Unfortunately, bad journalists can re-hash the same crappy studies faster than skilled people can debunk their work.

> Talking with friends who are virologists, they all seem to agree masks help.

That's meaningless. You can find a sample of scientists to support pretty much anything.

> What's wrong with... https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

So many things. The paper uses survey responses (= bad data), and tries to correlate it with state-level infection curves (= blurry data), and only does it for a month-by-month difference for every month between April and September 2020, when cases were falling across all of north america. It sets arbitrary thresholds for "high cases" and "high mask wearing". It doesn't control for confounding factors, like other policies the states in question might have enacted.

This is a terrible paper. I cannot believe PLOS One published this. It is embarrassing.

> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7883189/#__ffn_...

This is not a paper, it's a review. It presents no data. It summarizes the authors' opinions on other papers.

So I don't know what you are arguing: We have a lot of evidence on the effectiveness of masks in relationship to preventing droplet infection.

We don't have so much about COVID 19. On the community level it looks promising for me, the papers are flawed but coming out.

What I am missing ... where is the other side of the coin. All models are wrong but some are useful. The particle simulations are wrong, but pretty useful (and I don't see why COVID should behave differently). What model do you base your assumption that masks don't work? Is there research that supports your claims? All science is bad science :) Some is useful.

> survey responses (= bad data)? So any research based on survey responses is bad? It's a standard method in policy research. What data would you use to show the community effect of mask wearing?

I'm usually listening critically to experts in a field (not to dentists or surgeons), it seems people who claim masks don't work are not virologists and have not worked with the virus (COVID19): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Drosten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Ciesek

Both strong in the pro mask camp. Are there virologists working on COVID 19 (in the lab) that are on your side of the argument?

For me that these papers get accepted is rather a sign that scientific consensus is on the side of masks work.

Usually, it takes 2 -5 years to get a nature paper ready (at least for the labs I know). Seeing also the pre-prints that were in the article that you dismissed as "news article." and others it seems a strong indication that most virologists and epidemiologists think masks work.

They might be wrong, yet I haven't heard any convincing theory or model on why that should be the case.

> For me that these papers get accepted is rather a sign that scientific consensus is on the side of masks work.

Well that's a great way to confirm your biases. The "scientific consensus" was that the earth was the center of the universe, that infection was transmitted by miasma, that plate tectonics were a crackpot theory...I could go on.

Science is the history of well-controlled experiment overturning consensus thinking.

In any case, editorial review is a human process, and like all human processes, has ample sources of error. In this case, a big source of error is that the major scientific journals have spent the better part of 2020 falling all over themselves to publish garbage about Covid that gets press hits.

> Usually, it takes 2 -5 years to get a nature paper ready (at least for the labs I know).

This obviously isn't true in this case. The pandemic hasn't been around for that long!

Also, no, it doesn't take 2-5 years to put together an editorial. Even in normal times.

> The "scientific consensus" was that the earth was the center of the universe.

Yes, and then somebody found a better model (that's also still wrong) yet explained more and we used it. So my question, what's your better model you base your assumptions on? Any scientific paper is wrong, you can find problems with any of them. Just, critique is easy and often doesn't lead anywhere.

my point: The scientific consensus right now is wearing masks help. This is supported by physics (particle simulations), medicine (respiratory disease and their transmission .. and a lot of other fields.

You say there's little data ... come on than make this > well-controlled experiment overturning consensus thinking

you can be famous!

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/10/22/national/scienc...

Check the video, people are trying what would be an experimental setup you would accept? That is also ethically OK.

We have both controlled experiments that have reduced validity in the real world because of the artificial conditions and we have some more messy real world evidence. Seems OK to me.

The people I see on the other side don't offer an alternative model. Also a lot of the criticism comes from people who don't seem to have virology /immunology etc background.

> Usually, it takes 2 -5 years to get a nature paper ready (at least for the labs I know).

Yes, my point was these papers are rushed. It can be bias, it can be also that reviewers have their expertise that tells them the paper fits the evidence.

Change happens over models/explanations. I don't see any new ones from the "Masks don't work" folks. Just criticism (that's easy ... I'm happy to point out all the flaws in any paper you present me. If you want to kill a paper in peer review it's super easy ...)

For policy decisions shouldn't you use the current scientific consesus,however flawed it is? Is there a better solution? Otherwise you are just relying on your gut feeling. Good luck.

forgot: here's the paper (it's just mentioned in Japanese in the video) https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mSphere.00637-20

your controlled experiment with Sars-COV-2 particles :)

from the paper (emphasis mine):

> Here, we developed an airborne transmission SIMULATOR of infectious SARS-CoV-2-containing droplets/aerosols produced by human respiration and coughs and assessed the transmissibility of the infectious droplets/aerosols and the ability of various types of face masks to block the transmission.

Mannequin heads in a box is perhaps evidence of something, but it has little to do with actual humans who don't live in tiny boxes with masks sealed to their real-world faces.

lol ... yes simulations and models are completely useless (wake up: ALL models are wrong, but some are useful). If you cannot come up with a better explanation why masks should not work, you are just somebody who's not accepting the current scientific consensus.

So where's your experiment showing the contrary? (With real humans and covid particles?) Where is your evidence?

So we have simulations, evidence that it controls community spread, etc. Every expert that I hear speak out says that masks work. Can you find any virologist working in a lab on COVID who claims masks don't work?

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2776536 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33431650/

Also they just tested one mask. In HK, Taiwan and Japan a lot of people are wearing 2 masks: 1 surgical mask and a cotton mask on top :)

Doesn't help at all (check Taiwan's and HK's numbers compared with Texas ... much higher population density).

we have the controlled experiments, correlations in infections and annectodal evidence in individual incidence: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7035e2.htm

what experiment setup that has not been done would convince you? please descirbe it.

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-mask...

Another one ...

> It's pretty conclusive. It's been conclusive for years and years

* Citation needed

Pro-maskers think that if they tell people they can fly it's others responsibility to prove that they can't fly.

The burden of proof is on the people claiming that something works.

Do you not understand how science works?

You're saying is 'conclusive' that masks work.

I'm saying you are disengenuouslty parroting media talking points and have to post a scientific paper to prove your claim.

Every paper you will find has flaws and contradiction and inconclusivities.

Texas lifted all Covid restrictions including masks and has lower infection rates per capita than states with mask mandates.

Clearly it's not conclusive.

> You will find literally zero papers credibly claiming otherwise.

Here's a paper that says cloth mask usage increases rate of infection.

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577

Here's a collection of studies refuting mask efficacy.

https://swprs.org/face-masks-evidence/

You're literally a vector for disinformation which is a bannable offense but only the Rand Pauls who go against the narrative get banned.

Your false information you just posted will be celebrated by the echo chamber members of the internet.

> Here's a paper that says cloth mask usage increases rate of infection.

> https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577

Using cloth masks only, increased rate of infection in relation to the control group. And the control group: "In the control arm, 170/458 (37%) used medical masks, 38/458 (8%) used cloth masks, and 245/458 (53%) used a combination of both medical and cloth masks during the study period."

So we can conclude that the medical masks, used in the control arm, worked better than cloth masks.

If you were trying to coyly imply that the study said that cloth masks increased infections compared to using no mask at all, you were being dishonest.

Read that paper again.

Cloth mask wearers had a higher rate of CLI than the control group.

The control group being may or may not be wearing a mask.

"""The control arm was ‘standard practice’, which comprised mask use in a high proportion of participants. As such (without a no-mask control), the finding of a much higher rate of infection in the cloth mask arm could be interpreted as harm caused by cloth masks, efficacy of medical masks, or most likely a combination of both."""

Point is: The CDC mask policy of wearing a dirty cloth rag on your face until the waiter brings the breadsticks is probably not ideal.

Indeed, I fear that we have arrived at the sad day where social science research is more conclusive than medical research!

We've arrived at the sad day that discussion is being surpressed on any of these subjects.

Galileo would have been de-platformed for stating views contrary to the narrative and spreading misinformation that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

So if I wear a cloth mask and never wash it and constantly touch it with my hands, does it reduce my chance of infection?

And are you 100% confident that your answer will cover all nuance and isn't misinformation, which should mean you are banned from HN for 7 days?

That is obviously a case of you not using the mask correctly.

If you choose to use the mask incorrectly, it can hardly be the fault of the person advocating the use of a mask.

However, if instead the information provided was you should never wash your mask, you should be constantly touching your mask, you should share your masks with friends and by doing this you will be kept safe.

In that scenario you should be banned for spreading misinformation.

It reduces your chances of infecting others.

> Masks (cloth or otherwise) do in fact reduce infectiousness

This has never been proven. Please find me an RCT that shows this. I'll wait.

BTW, this is a doubly wrong statement for cloth masks, since cloth masks have plenty of studies showing increases in self-infection, at least relative to wearing a surgical mask.

I just looked, found a whole bunch of stuff on CDC site showing RCT that demonstrates masks do work and that N95 are better than cloth.

Where's the RCT that shows they don't work? I couldn't find one.

What RCTs are you referring to? I’d like to take a look.

Ones showing don’t work:

DANMASK (sars-2 community self infection)

Macintyre et al (cloth masks vs “standard practice”, showed possible deleterious effect of cloth masking but did not compare to no-mask)

You had me up until the word "multiple". A more appropriate word would be percentage. I'm willing to cede ground that masks may reduce infections 5-20%. If it were more, there would be correlates in the real world. As it is, it's a statistical shit show to even show that masks have any effect at all, much less how much.

> it's a statistical shit show to even show that masks have any effect at all

It's also a statistical shit show to show that condoms have any effect (against unwanted pregnancies, or sexually transmitted diseases), in studies using RCT settings:

https://jech.bmj.com/content/65/2/100

Do you think this should make us conclude, that condoms may reduce STDs or unwanted pregnancies at max 5-20%?

That paper isn't about the effectiveness of condoms; it's about "Interventions to increase effective condom use...condom design, access to condoms, condom use behaviours and condom-related legislation."

In other words, it's a study about the effectiveness of policies, not the condoms themselves.

So, just like the mask studies mentioned.

That's the wrong discussion to have. What's unacceptable is that a platform in a free speech country edits speech to conform to an authority it doesn't have.

This article is about a private company enforcing rules on its own website.

Freedom of speech is specifically protecting people from the _government_ preventing their speech.

But you knew that already.

The tone of your last sentence is not compatible with you apparent lack of information (best case) or omission (worst case) about these companies juridically categorizing themselves as platforms, as opposed to publishers, so they are not just "their website enforcing its own rules"? [1]

[1] While the First Amendment generally does not apply to private companies, the Supreme Court has held it “does not disable the government from taking steps to ensure that private interests not restrict . . . the free flow of information and ideas.” which is precisely what they are obscenely doing.

https://www.city-journal.org/html/platform-or-publisher-1588...

Well... some researches do, actually, make the analogous argument (dubiously, IMHO) that people engage in riskier driving because of seatbelts (just like Paul is claiming for masks):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation#Seat_belts

Should I be suspended from HN if I say I don't believe in seat belts?

No. Cause in that case you're only expressing your own beliefs. But! If you have a position of authority in some Government agency and then broadcast loudly and frequently that seat belts to not work at all then yes, you should be temp-banned.

SOME masks (cloth or otherwise) reduce infectiousness. Many masks people buy so they do not feel like they are suffocating are not the type which reduce infectiousness.

Even if true, that is still no reason to remove any information stating otherwise.

I think promoting cloth masks is misinformation if you don't suffer from an acute respiratory disease. And in that case you should be the one to wear one.

Safety belts made out of office rubber bands probably won't help much and silencing people for pointing out that allowing them is bad regulation is self defeating.

My wife and I were looking into traveling from the US to Europe this summer, if the borders had opened up earlier.

At the time, Germany was not allowing cloth masks on public transport. N95, surgical masks, or stay home.

So here we have a sitting US senator being censored for agreeing with the German health authorities. WTF?!?

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 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.

From "Follow the science" to "Who cares if it works or not?" in 17 short months...

Rand knows this 100%, and I find it pretty fascinating from a creative perspective to watch him speak on these topics. He's a senator and an MD. He is well aware of how infection control works, but he also knows that his ultimate job as a politician is to make arguments that will resonate with his constituents. He knows exactly what landmines to throw into a sentence to make it mean one thing to an expert, but sound like the opposite when it's on the news. This is why he gets under the skin of people like Fauci so bad.

> he also knows that his ultimate job as a politician is to make arguments that will resonate with his constituents

Wider context check, his job as a politician is to serve his constituents by leading, even when it may be difficult. Pandering to the lazy and ignorant in a state of perpetual campaigning is an utter dereliction of duty.

As of May 2021 vaccine hesitancy by % of group is highest among PhDs: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.20.21260795v...

Funny how one's enemies are always the lazy ignorant ones.

Wearing a mask is inconvenient and much of the resistance is just people being lazy and then rationalizing it. Furthermore, people who go for the same old talking points without acknowledging counterarguments are by definition ignorant.

I'm no fan of the democrats either, and I'd say there is a lot of lazy/ignorant campaigning on their part as well. But on this topic at least the democrats acknowledged the pandemic and aimed for some type of response. There are actually conservative approaches to many of the problems facing our society. But rather than adopting those positions and making public debate be about the merits of conservative/progressive approaches, the republican party has chosen a path of simply denying that the problems exist at all. This cannot stand.

(a) it's August 2021 now. Lots of water under the bridge since then.

(b) that strikes me as a somewhat misleading reading of that data, which shows no _decrease_ of vaccine hesitancy from the previous month in PhDs while hesitancy for other educational buckets declined to some degree.

(c) what makes you think PhDs as a group are less likely to be lazy and ignorant than other groups? Do you have statistics on that?

You cited an online survey that people began completing on January 6. Here are the results of a survey that was conducted between June 7 and 23:

https://www.prri.org/research/religious-vaccines-covid-vacci...

"Americans of all levels of formal education are similarly more likely to be vaccine acceptant now than they were in March. Americans with high school degrees or less have shifted most (61%, up from 45%), though movement is relatively similar across other groups: Americans with some college experience but no degrees have increased to 70%, from 56% vaccine acceptant in March; Americans with four-year degrees have increased to 80%, from 70% in March; and Americans with postgraduate degrees have increased to 92%, from 79% in March."

Morally speaking, yes. But functionally speaking, the votes are what ultimately matters. Leadership might be a way to achieve votes, but it isn’t literally required.

Is it disinformation to say "the rythmn method is not an effective form of birth control"?

Or is it disinformation to say, "the rythmn method is an effective form of birth control"?

Context and intent is important. The CDC describes that method as "Least Effective".

https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/unintendedpregnancy/p...

If we had no other method, then it might be reasonable to call it effective, in comparison to doing nothing. Given that better options exist, it is not very reasonable to call it effective without qualification.

If someone chooses to intentionally reduce a conversation to an "effective/ineffective" dichotomy to deliberately mislead or obscure conversations, then it might be disinformation. Disinformation can consist entirely of factual statements.

Actually, a good case for banning ALL discussion of mask effectiveness on Twitter as being disinformation, since the character limit basically forces turning discussion into simplified dichotomy.

"deliberately" is the key word. Brevity for the sake of expeditiousness or practicality is different than brevity for the sake of deception or ulterior motive.

>Brevity for the sake of expeditiousness or practicality is different than brevity for the sake of deception or ulterior motive.

How are you supposed to tell which is which without reading minds?

This simply moves the argument from "accurate vs concise" to "concise for good reasons vs concise for bad reasons"

Well we could start by seeing if they have a history of being "concise for bad reasons" instead of endlessly re-legislating the point every time it comes up.

Because in the same way we can rely on health sciences to explain how masks work, we can rely on political science to tell us how senate elections work. :)

You certainly don’t win senate elections by telling your constituents that they’re wrong. You start with the preconceived views of your constituents and work your way backwards to an argument.

I'm not sure this tack is sufficient to defend YouTube's policy. This is quite close to arguing that a sitting senator shouldn't have opinions on what government policy is meant to be achieving.

Rand Paul is (1) elected (2) holds a medical license. YouTube is suspending him because (1) he is disagreeing with government policy and (2) they don't like his medical opinion. I think it is fair to say you are defending (1) here?

He is far more qualified to decide what the public discourse is than you, I and YouTube's censorship team.

Not objecting to or defending the policy, just pointing out that Rounding 99% down to “doesn’t work” is a common disinformation tactic to be aware of when you hear it.

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 mandate whatever it wants to benefit the public (the source of its power) so long as such a mandate is not prevented by a higher law.

The courts have found that these laws are constitutional:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Atlanta_Motel,_Inc._v...

> countered that the restrictions requiring adequate accommodation for African Americans were unquestionably related to interstate travel and that Congress, under the Constitution's Commerce Clause, certainly had the power to address such a matter in law.

Apparently, all the US government would need to do is argue that YouTube, as a multi-state corporation, is subject to interstate commerce regulations, which is very precedented.

I'm speaking in the present sense, you are speaking in a hypothetical sense.

YouTube doesn't have any legal responsibility to the public discourse.

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.

> If the government can require private media to carry government messages, the first amendment is toast.

Currently, the government is directly involved in Facebook and Twitter's moderation decisions, by their own admission, and the Supreme Court is doing nothing, so I don't see your hypothetical as being very realistic.

> YouTube doesn't have any responsibility (especially legal) to the public discourse.

Well, for starters I'd be the first to argue that YouTube shouldn't have any legal responsibility for the public discourse. But the opinion that matters on that topic is YouTube's, and they believe they _do_ have a responsibility for the public discourse. That is why they are engaging in this program of censorship.

What I'm arguing here is that their plan to police misinformation is impossible and, consequently, can't work. And that they are showing an outrageous political bias and anyone with even a slight right-lean of opinion should get out now and find a different platform. Here today we see another example where it isn't working well, as YouTube starts clamping down on what are politically mainstream.

This isn't Alex Jones, this isn't Trump. This is now a doctor offering an opinion on medical practice that isn't his exact speciality. YouTube can't be consistently right on this stuff and they are throwing their weight around politically.

His qualifications are irrelevant if he's deliberately putting out misleading information in pursuit of a political goal.

Also, a medical license doesn't qualify a person as an epidemiologist or any other such expert, especially given that his license is in opthalmology.

Let's also not forget that he created a bogus certification board, started by family members, to certify his ability to practice. He's not currently certified to practice medicine by any legitimate medical organization.

Rand Paul was hired of the people of Kentucky. He had no qualifications to public discourse outside of Kentucky and DC.

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.

> ineffective government mandates

There's the bait and switch.

You see, cloth masks aren't as effective as N95 mask, that doesn't mean they aren't effective. Nor does it mean that the government mandates to wear masks are ineffective.

Frankly, you can look at nearly every other world government that issued similar guidance to the CDC and in all cases those countries did better than the US. Why? Because it wasn't a political issue. The countries that faired the worst all turned COVID into a game of the left vs right.

You can't say masking and social distancing don't work or are ineffective when 40% of the population goes out of it's way to not wear masks, wear them under their nose, and decides to hold big rallies and gathering to celebrate how much they hate wearing masks.

You want to argue that Covid results are due to politics?

Then maybe you can tell us why blue states NJ, NY, and MA have the highest death rates in the US?

Just because a state is red or blue, does not mean that everyone in that state is a democrat or republican. It's not binary.

And, in particular, with infectious disease a few bad apples spoil the bunch.

Can you tell us why the current delta deaths are pretty much entirely the unvaccinated? Care to take a stab at what the #1 predictor of vaccine status is? [1]

Also, maybe a shocker to you, but densely populated states (such as NJ, NY, and MA) tend to do poorly when a communicable disease hits. It spreads fast and the hospitals are overwhelmed.

[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Density gives a great boost to infection rate.

The 20 states with the highest recent COVID-19 death rates are Louisiana, Nevada, Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Alabama, Kansas, Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Idaho, South Carolina, Georgia, Utah, Wyoming, Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html

One of the reasons for that just resigned.

> Frankly, you can look at nearly every other world government that issued similar guidance to the CDC and in all cases those countries did better than the US. Why? Because it wasn't a political issue. The countries that faired the worst all turned COVID into a game of the left vs right

The per capita US death rate is in the middle of the UK, Italy, Spain, and France (which together have about half of Europe’s population). The only country that did substantially better was Germany.

Are you saying masks were politicized in all of those countries besides Germany?

It's misinformation because of the implication it carries.

The vaccines are 95% effective, yet someone who has not yet seen the studies showing their 95% efficacy would be told "The vaccine won't stop you from getting COVID" will understand the statement as meaning that they're worthless.

It is absolutely misinformation, and no playing coy and claiming "But it's only 95%, not 100%, so the statement is still true!" is going to change that. It's nothing more than a technically correct "WELL ACKSHUALLY", except in the case of COVID, it's not just a distraction, but a dangerous statement that is literally costing lives.

Except cloth masks are total shit and vaccines aren’t. I’ve been yelling at people to wear an N-95 for months. “Mask mandates aren’t worth it because people just wear shit Etsy masks” is a completely fair point.

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.

The term dog whistle is regularly used as a covert form of Ad Hominem that I find logically annoying, basically "ignore everything this person said because" insert assumption of what was meant and derogatory term about political affiliation. We see this lots in our media and it seems they are trying to do our thinking for us, rather than letting us draw our own conclusions.

Face to Face, and in the past, we were much more civil to one another.

>The term dog whistle is regularly used as a covert form of Ad Hominem that I find logically annoying, basically "ignore everything this person said because" insert assumption of what was meant and derogatory term about political affiliation.

Agreed. "Dog whistle" basically means "I can't find something to attack in what ideological opponent said, so I'm going to pretend that what he said actually means something else, and attack that instead".

> 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.

It's his prerogative to take whatever position he wants to take. He's a physician and an elected member of the United States Senate. I for one want to hear his expertise, even if it disagrees with the conclusions you've already made.

Fortunately, you can. He's provided a list of alternate locations for his video. They just aren't YouTube.

>>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?

Youtube is a monopoly. Monopolies must not be allowed to infringe on our rights.

So if some restaurant business says X (gays, christians, asians etc) not welcome we don't want to host them, that's fine too?

The groups you cite are civil rights relevant. Do you think Rand Paul's thoughts are an expression of his religion or evidence of a handicap?

> Do you think Rand Paul's thoughts are...evidence of a handicap?

They could be. Or do you just mean physical handicaps?

Mask opinions are not a protected class

Yes, if you're actually a libertarian -- like Rand Paul claims to be -- that is in fact fine. People can vote with their feet.

edit: typo

We make a distinction between characteristics/traits and actions, generally. It's generally wrong to discriminate based on traits and fine to discriminate on actions.

So; if YouTube said "we don't allow Christian white men" or whatever, absolutely, that's terrible and shouldn't be allowed. If they say "we don't allow people to say things that are actively harmful" that's quite different.

If you go into a restaurant and insult the servers, or start bothering other patrons, they'll ask you to leave. That's perfectly fine.

How about if a man and woman kiss and are left alone but when two men kiss they are asked to leave for public indecency?

"Kissing" is the behavior, it should either be allowed or not. It's clearly wrong to have different rules depending on the gender of those involved.

This just seems very dismissive. Maybe you're right that Youtube's speech policies aren't an issue of earth-shattering importance, but that wouldn't mean it's somehow impossible to say that I don't like them and wish they would change.

Partially I'm serious, but I'm also channeling the politics of Rand Paul - a libertarian who doesn't believe in "rights based on your behavior" - which to him I suppose means the "behavior" of being gay or trans, rather than the behavior of saying idiotic things about covid.

> 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.

Because the criticism is bollocks. "I want to hear particular views on a particular website" isn't an argument.

Yeah, except that isn't actually the argument.

Tell me more about his career as a physician specializing in infectious disease.

Sure. As an ophthalmologist certified both by the American Board of Ophthalmologists and the National Board of Ophthalmologists, Rand Paul is both an expert in general medicine as well as ophthalmology. Given that it's fairly safe to assume that he knows more about practicing medicine than either one of us, is better prepared to read and understand medical research better than either of us, but most importantly, that he knows a lot more about medicine than most of the rest of our elected officials. Hence, if he has a disagreement with an overtly politicized CDC, he is uniquely qualified to speak on it as a senator to the American people.

> National Board of Ophthalmologists,

which Rand Paul personally invented, and he wrote the cerificarion exam that he took.

Right. He was originally certified by the ABO which speaks to his eminent qualifications as an ophthalmologist and as a doctor. He had a disagreement with them regarding some rule so he created the NBO. I'm not sure why that would lessen anyone's confidence in him as a doctor. To me it makes him a badass who is willing to roll up his sleeves and do hard, boring, administrative work to create a new institution that is more in line with his principles. I have a lot of respect for that, but even if you don't, it doesn't revoke his ABO certification.

> Given that it's fairly safe to assume that he knows more about practicing medicine than either one of us, is better prepared to read and understand medical research better than either of us, but most importantly, that he knows a lot more about medicine than most of the rest of our elected officials. Hence, if he has a disagreement with an overtly politicized CDC, he is uniquely qualified to speak on it as a senator to the American people.

Senator John Barrasso has a medical degree from Georgetown and a medical residency at Yale. He advocates for wearing masks.

Is he not uniquely positioned to tell Americans what to do?

>> His statement was a dog whistle to his base. > Maybe it was. So what?

It means he is being intellectually dishonest. He has a long history of such behavior, and worse, he should know better.

You have assumed negative intent and damned it in the same sentence. You should conclude by agreeing with and patting yourself on the head.

> He's a physician and an elected member of the United States Senate.

He's non-practicing physician, but a practicing legislator. His job is to legislate, which includes determining the budget and operating model for the CDC.

Why does a legislator feel the need to circumvent his duty regardless of his prior private area of expertise? If he truly has physician expertise that is somehow superior to that of the CDC why isn't he working to convince his legislator colleagues to direct the budget and operating model of the CDC, as opposed to trying to circumvent due process and rile up his base.

I think you know the reason why.

> He could have, but he didn't. You're not his editor.

You're right, in a separate video [1] he said "We will not wear masks!". He isn't saying "cloth masks suck, I'd be ok if we did better masks" He's saying "cloth masks suck, we should not wear any masks". Directly. No editorializing needed.

> He's also a physician. He might know something about infectious diseases that you don't.

Dr Oz is also a physician. He constantly tells people to buy dumb shit like green coffee to cure cancer.

The fact of the matter is, Paul was an Ophthalmologist. Do you take infectious disease advice from your dentist? The fact that he can say he's a medical doctor is true, but his field is completely unrelated to the field of infectious disease.

The actual experts in the field are telling us to social distance and wear masks. Paul is telling people to rise up, take off their masks, and ignore these plain sense precautions [1].

> I for one want to hear his expertise, even if it disagrees with the conclusions you've already made.

Hear what he has to say, but frankly, he's as big a hack as Dr Oz.

[1] https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/1424399282447298563

Edit: Phil->Oz

Dr. Phil (McGraw) isn't a physician. He was a psychologist.

I'm thinking Dr Oz. I get my bullshit daytime tv doctors mixed up.

Dr. Phil isn't a doctor. He has a Ph.D. He had a license to practice psychology in Texas that he voluntarily surrendered because of some complaint or something, I'm not going to read the details. Jill Biden isn't a doctor either. Neither is Julius "Dr. J" Erving. People can call themselves doctors without being doctors. Rand Paul is a doctor.

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.

He may not have a bachelor's but he does have an MD, which is a higher degree and one that confers some expertise on medical matters last time I checked.

> asking a random computer science graduate to tell you how to fix your Windows domain

A random computer science graduate who does a bit of research should be able to tell you everything you need to know about your Windows domain. Certainly, they'd be better suited than asking an accountant.

An MD is a generalist's degree. It doesn't confer anything but that he graduated from med school and knows a bit about human physiology. Infectious diseases are AT LEAST as far out of his wheelhouse as Windows domain servers are to computer science graduates, aka, anything that he even pretends to know about the subject is something he read online.

Do you think a computer science graduate cannot be an expert at Windows domain management as well?

Do YOU think that a CS grad can call upon his CS background and magically be an expert on Windows domain management on par with people who do it for a living? Because THAT is what we are talking about here.

Rand Paul is an eye doctor, not an infectious disease specialist, and not an epidemiologist. The experts on this topic have spoken AND written AND researched the subject. Any credible information about it would have come FROM them, and THEY say that masks are something that we should do to stop the spread of an infectious disease.

He is an opthalmologist not an optometrist. A md degree gives you the ability to practice medicine. Paul will have been trained on the whole body. The eye speciality is an added specialization. As an MD he should be able to do everything from basic first aid to general diagnosis to delivering a baby in a woman even with major complications should he have to. He may have to do some research and reading but he is authorized to do such things

That's like pretending that the lead developer on MS Word and John Carmack are equally qualified and capable to speak on 3d graphics algorithm optimizations because they both know computer things. The best Paul can hope to do is to read the results research that these experts ACTUALLY PERFORMED.

He's not on their level and his opinion on the matter has zero importance other than his vote in the Senate.

If the lead MS word developer listens to Carmack's thoughts and points out problems, he's more than qualified.

"listens to Carmack's thoughts"

Because hearing a high level overview is anything even remotely like having foundational knowledge, much less a deep expertise.

I said equally qualified. You don't get to have the argument you want by disregarding the core of it simply because it disagrees with your politics.

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.

No your not, re infection is happening. At our current rate maybe we'll reach immunity about the time Zeta rolls around.

Well, that's how I'm thinking about it and that's how I'm acting. I'd rather die from a severe breakthrough case than go through another last year.

> He could have, but he didn't.

That is exactly what I am saying. He knows quite well that N95s are effective, for instance. But that is not the context in which he frames the argument, intentionally.

I addressed much of this in a sibling comment below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28144209

TL;DR: Rand knows what he is doing. He’s not dumb, he knows his base, and he’s simply playing politics.

This, he doesn't care about the science or saving lives. He cares about maintaining and growing his power and he thinks the way to do that is with these sorts of dog whistles to his base.

There are a set of politicians who believe that long term the best option for getting their preferred policies into law is by doing everything possible to get and keep their party in power. I assume they have the best of intentions, but the end result is that anything is permissable if they think it will lead to that outcome. I'm sure we can all (left or right) think of some who fit this description.

Yep: https://www.bamn.com/

They want to discredit mask mandates. Pointing out that they won’t work in practice, because people will mostly use these cloth masks that work poorly, is a perfectly legitimate basis for discrediting mask mandates that is also based on the science.

It’s like pointing out that an assault weapons ban won’t meaningfully reduce homicides because the vast majority of homicides are committed using handguns. That’s a perfectly legitimate argument.

Have you watched the video? He's not making a nuanced argument about mask mandates being undermined by people using ineffective masks.

The quote mentioned that store-bought masks don't prevent infection. He didn't say that they work poorly. The recommendations suggest that having any mask is better than having no mask.

Whether there is any difference between those two assertions depends strongly on your implicit cost-benefit outlook. Liberals typically subscribe to a “any measure even one with a small benefit is worth it.” Conservatives usually feel the opposite.

That is false. He is not arguing, "they don't provide enough benefit to justify inconveniencing people". He is saying they are ineffective, which is an intentional sleight of hand argument that focuses not being effective in blocking the virus from being inhaled while ignoring that they are effective at reducing the velocity of airborne particules when exhaled and distance at which the virus can be transmitted to others. Which, on the aggregate, is effective.

It is grossly dishonest and as a surgeon, he knows this. It's filthy, disgusting political strategy that is killing people to try work a wedge issue for '22.

https://www.paul.senate.gov/news/dr-rand-paul-introduces-leg... is further proof that he is not entering the public debate in good faith and in service of public health. We have not reached herd immunity, and had not at the time he introduced this. As a member of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pension as well as Homeland Security and Government Affairs, there is no doubt he had access to to better data on this than the general public.

I would love for him to say "I am a conservative and I'd rather some people die than to even allow the mildest mask laws" so we could have an honest debate. He wants to frame this as an individual freedom question, and wants to deny the deaths/illness that are the consequence because it harms his rhetorical position - or really, his future career in politics. That might raise the idea of an individual's right to not get sick and die as a result of someone else's decisions. We do not allow people to drive intoxicated in the US for this reason, as well as a host of other regulations.

This whole dog whistle thing is just a way to put whatever interpretation on someone's words you feel like.

Well, that’s the entire point of a dog whistle. They’re intentionally vague enough to encourage listeners to draw their own conclusions.

They’re not hard to identify if you understand the viewpoints of the listeners or even just observe their reactions. If two groups like a statement, but they both thought it meant a different thing, that’s probably a dog whistle.

Take for instance:

“Vote for kube-system, he’s one of us. He thinks congress should do what’s right for Americans and their families; end the dishonesty in Washington, and protect the rights and values you deserve.”

What demographic am I talking to? Who are the dishonest politicians? What rights and values? Could be anyone!

That’s ambiguity.

Yes, dog whistles are ambiguous by definition. That is the entire point. What makes it a dog whistle is the intent of the speaker. I assure you that politicians don’t make ambiguous statements like the above because they have poor speaking skills. They do it intentionally to appeal to more groups of people. And they hire teams of well-paid writers, strategists, and psychologists to write these statements. These words are chosen very carefully. There’s no accidental ambiguity in a well funded political campaign speech.

Have you ever paid attention to the way candidate change their phrasing on the same topic throughout an election cycle as they speak to different audiences? It’s like clockwork. A candidate who is talking to a special interest group in the primaries will say something like “I support a woman’s right to universal access to abortions”, and then in the general election on CNN they’ll say something like “I support woman’s reproductive rights”. The entire point of doing this is to get the moderate pro-life vote who thinks to theirselves: “oh yeah I support women’s rights too”

I find mentioning dog whistles as an argument to discredit someone unconvincing. It’s a way to twist someone's words to whatever you want. Dog whistle = Someone said something but since I can read minds I know he/she meant something else.

Yes, in times like this, other's apparent power to read minds is simply amazing. What I would give to have such ability!

I am pretty sure a large number of people on "your side" (for the record I am on Rand's side on this) want to prevent it

We have evidence of this

First you said "2 weeks to flatten the curve" we did that, and flattened the curve hospitals were saved ... but you were not appeased

then you said "a few months to reduce the deaths" we did that and death rate dropped... but you were not appeased

Then you said "a few more months to reduce the infection rates" we did that and the infection rate dropped ...but you were not appeased

Then you said "a few MORE months to the vaccine" we did that and got the jab ...but you were not appeased

We have now come the conclusion that you will accept nothing less than a complete eradication of COVID which by all expert account is impossible. I am unwilling to cede anymore of my freedom to your demands.

> we did that and got the jab ...but you were not appeased

No, not enough of us did that.

For measles and polio we did. No one is asking you to wear a measles mask, and measles is very contagious.

Thanks for admitting that you are treating this like Polio, and not like the Flu...

Treating COVID like polio is foolish, and naive. All indications are COVID will be an annual thing like the flu, chances are mutations will be more transmissible but less deadly (and the data is bearing this out)

Chances are we will need annual "booster" or other vaccine just like the flu... We do not mandate people get the annual flu shot, nor should we mandate people get the COVID vaccine.

So the question is do you support mask mandates, lock down, and economic destruction for the annual flu? I do not.

The question is how to get the fraction of people vaccinated high enough, so that costly mask+behavior mandates are obviated.

Mask wearing and behavior changes last year were massively effective against flu, by accident.

Flu is usually much less deadly than COVID. That factor matters in how we treat it.

(edit: added data) The 2017-2018 flu season was an historically bad one in the US, resulting in an estimated 30,453 hospitalizations the whole season.

The 7 day moving average for new COVID hospital admissions is 89,977 today, and peaked at about 260K in a single week in January.

>>Mask wearing and behavior changes last year were massively effective against flu, by accident.

This is assuming facts not in evidence. there are other factors at play

1. Many people avoided seeking medical treatment that normally would have for the flu this year due to covid, this do not mean they were not infected just it was not recorded

2. There are indications that some people testing positive for COVID could have been flu patients, as some PCR testing has been found to show positive for some flu [1]

3. It is unclear if behavior or mask were more effective, personally I believe Behavior modifications where more effective, a lot of which did not need to be mandatory at all and some of it was not at all (such as increased hand washing, no shaking of hands, etc which I believe it pretty effective at flu mitigation as well)

>>flu is usually much less deadly than COVID. That factor matters in how we treat it.

I did factor that in, The original COVID was much more deadly, the new variants do not seem to be, and new variants + vaccine means I have a pretty low likelyhood that I will have a serious COVID infection thus I really don't feel the need to mask or cede any freedom, regardless of the vaccination status of others around me.

>>The 7 day moving average for new COVID hospital admissions is 89,977 today, and peaked at about 260K in a single week in January.

Where are you getting this data? Ourworldindata[2] has the US at 60,000 Total People in the hospital for COVID, down from a peak total hospitalization of 120K people

This is the TOTAL number of people in the hospital at a given time, not a per day total of new admissions, there is NOT 90,000 new people being admitted to the hospital daily in the us

Further the CDC reports that the 2019-2020 Flu season saw 405,000 hospitalizations and 22,000 deaths[3] and 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths for 2018-2019 Flu [4]

[1]https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/letters-health-care-prov...

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-hospitalizations

[3]https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2019-2020.html

[4]https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html

I'm vaccinated, but still wear a mask indoors in public for a simple reason. The virus can colonize the mucus membranes of even healthy vaccinated people. I'm scheduled to go on a Caribbean cruise next month. If I test positive on the dock, they won't let me get on the ship.

Going back to find the references, I see I got both key numbers wrong. Thanks for challenging me on it.

2017-2018 saw an estimated 710,000 hospitalizations, the worst year on record.

CDC Flu: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2017-2018.ht...

The COVID numbers I cited are weekly reported cases, not hospitalizations. I added a retraction message above.

The total US deaths reported by CDC today are 616,459 over an 18 month period, which is more than 100 times the fatality-rate of flu in both the years you cite.

CDC COVID: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailytrends...

The vaccine uptake means we should not see the awful rates of early 2021 again. We should focus on getting more vaccine uptake rather than mask debates.

>>We should focus on getting more vaccine uptake rather than mask debates.

I agree, though I suspect we will disagree on how to go about that.

> The 7 day moving average for new COVID hospital admissions is 89,977 today, and peaked at about 260K in a single week in January.

Self-reply: these are both wrong. I read the data badly.

On Flu

2017-2018 saw an estimated 710,000 hospitalizations, the worst year on record.

On COVID, these are the CDC numbers for new cases, not hospitalizations.

I dunno how I got this wrong. I give the citations below, along with additional data on the relative death rates of flu and COVID.

> complete eradication of COVID which by all expert account is impossible.

Several countries succeeded in elimination of community transmission, some more than once. Sadly, global coordination is just never going to allow for that at scale.

Are surgical/N95 masks used correctly, though? Most people do not seem to be aware that 1. they last a few hours, 2. you shouldn't remove/touch/wear them again and 3. they are not re-usable.

Masks are great if used correctly, otherwise they are massive vector of the virus and everyone is taking it with them.

The idea that my N95 doesn't work after a few hours is ridiculous.

If you do wood working you know this. Even a few hour hold mask makes an AMAZING difference. I've seen doctors wear masks for full 12 hours shifts.

The only things that hear dog whistles are dogs.

The German health authorities were making the argument that cloth masks weren't good enough if you thought that wearing them meant that you could increase your risk exposure.

He's arguing they just don't work and nobody should bother with them at all.

The German authorities would agree that if you have to go out to buy food you're better off wearing a mask than none at all. Rand Paul would disagree.

Those are two different arguments about the efficacy of masks.

> He's arguing they just don't work and nobody should bother with them at all.

Are the virus particles significantly smaller than the holes in a cloth mask — nevermind the gaps typically present around the wearer’s face — or not? If they’re smaller, how effective can the masks possibly be?

Another poster explained this. The physics around this is not as simple as you might expect.

Droplets

In practice people still use cloth masks and nobody checks this. Doesn't excuse the censorship at all.

> Seeing platforms control the narrative to this extent is truly fascinating. I never thought it would be as overt as it is.

Remember the Hunter Biden's laptop story?

You mean the one where Rudy Giuliani sat in front of a camera with a "Macbook" purported to be Hunter Biden's even though it was an LG and ole Rudy just wasn't smart enough to know the difference?

> sat in front of a camera with a "Macbook" purported to be Hunter Biden's

I heard they'd been provided with a copy of the hard drive; and have not seen an assertion that they had anything more or claimed to.

Nope. Rudy isn't smart enough to know the difference. He sat on one of Crowder's shows and literally held up an LG and then said that it was one of the hard drives.

Just watch this little link for a few seconds:

https://youtu.be/GureRbH-_Xs?t=346

Now, what use would be shoving a Macbook drive into an LG computer?

That clip isn't the smoking gun you think it is. He doesn't claim that is Hunter's laptop; when asked if he's seen the pictures, he says "this is the hard drive they're on". It could simply be the laptop his copy of the pictures are on.

He probably employed a forensic technician to investigate the laptop, and said technician sent him a copy of the pictures.

Rudy Giuliani and Tucker Carlson claimed to have first-hand access to the information; Tucker Carlson also said that he doesn't wish to reveal any further information because he didn't want to kick a man who was already down.

I remember when people were saying The Intercept was censoring Glenn Greenwald at the publication he co-founded for not jumping on the Hunter Biden story. In retrospect they made the right call to avoid joining their outlet's credibility with the fact that Fox News personalities could, at any time, just decide not to release information on the alleged basis of not kicking a man when he's down.

Since when did any political operative not kick someone from the other side when they were down? When they're down is when you stomp on their face.

I remember the outlets screaming about censorship promising smoking guns REAL SOON NOW and then... quietly letting it fade away. Which isn't a convincing way to prove censorship or media manipulation. Looks more like they jumped the gun on some BS.

I don’t think they jumped the gun. I think they knew they had nothing, but that big outraged headlines and promises of future goods would drive a lot of clicks and make them a lot of money.

> Tech companies feeling competent to dictate truth is scary.

What's scarier, the fact that tech companies feel competent to dictate truth or the fact that we let them?

Let them? First rule of internet is don't trust things on the Internet. Cross reference and double check. Everyone makes mistakes or lies.

How can you cross reference and double check if only one side is presented and the internet is the main means by which one double checks? This is the conundrum I haven't figured out.

Go to the library. (Hopefully you still have one.)

No the democrats shut mine down and are taxing us for them anyway

Can you write to your local representative?

After several calls with my Oregon house representative, she no longer responds to my e-mails or calls. Can't contact her via social media because I've been blocked there.

I've thought about going to her office but those are closed down too.

Of course, if you just block constituents you can just ... do nothing and in Oregon, you'll be re-elected because there's a big D next to your name. Of course, there's also no non-D candidate running, because it's a one party state. I imagine this is what it must be like to vote in North Korea. Oregon law mandates that one must run under the purview of a political party. Forming a party requires a large set of requirements that means only the democrats can run in many places because there's simply not enough of an opposition to form a cohesive opposition. This prevents independent candidates from running.

There is no incentive for my representatives to change the status quo.

Eventually, I'm guessing I'll vote with my feet, but I don't understand why I should have to move to an area in which the GOP runs unopposed in order to experience the 'other' side. I mean... it's not like the GOP is perfect and a uni-party GOP jurisdiction would be much better. What I want is actual politics with people competing for my vote, instead of people who assume they'll get it.

"The internet"? It's just YouTube. He's a senator, he has one of the biggest and most un-cancelable platforms in the world.

What platform is that?

They can call a press conference whenever they want and get national news coverage. They can write down anything they want and hand it to the clerk for inclusion in the Congressional Record. They have email and physical mailing lists. The CAN-SPAM act doesn't cover political calls or texts, either.

That doesn't justify selectively banning him at all. We could agree if we ban everyone with a political mandate perhaps. Fair and square.

Wouldn't support it intrinsically, but at least we could rid of these weasel excuses for why such measures are allegedly justified.

> only one side is presented and the internet

Wait, only one side is presented ... on the internet? I must be misunderstanding you.

Unless you're being snarky, or referring to the Internet 'as controlled by google/youtube', and the fact that they're cancelling everyone that disagrees with them.

When the whole hydroxychloroquine scandal was going on, I tried to cross reference and double check. Unfortunately, this meant I had to use DuckDuckGo rather than a Google product, since they were burying anything that spoke of it positively, including some of the original research papers.

It's hard to cross reference when one of the lines of the cross has been deleted.

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.

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

What's exactly wrong with mass civil disobedience? If anything, it shows that you have problems with your political system; and that the current ruler has lost the narrative.

Are we still supposed to be 'Resisting' or is that over with now?

Yes resist! Do you want wear a mask for the rest of your life? Do you want annual mandatory injections of pathogens into your body? Do you want to check-in/check-out with your QR code ID wherever you go, that comes with an expiration date, enables mass surveillance, and can be disabled at a whim? A dictated narrative, censorship of opposition, rationality forbidden? Or do you think you are fine with this and want to live in permanent cognitive dissonance?

You act like this is the first time in the history of the planet a country has enacted measures to stop the spread of disease. It's not, we've done it before, and the world didn't collapse because people were inconvenienced temporarily.

https://healthblog.uofmhealth.org/wellness-prevention/mask-r...

Kind of like how the Europeans have been routinely performing mass civil disobedience against Covid restrictions over the past several months?

Just about every other day I see a new protest against Covid restrictions involving tens of thousands of people in a random European nation (Spain, Italy, Britain, France, etc). Or how about the giant anti-lockdown protest in Sydney in July.

Rand Paul should be calling for civil disobedience. The authorities have been wrong over and over and over and over again about Covid. They've lied, over and over and over again. They're not worthy of being trusted. And the typical cloth mask most people are wearing doesn't work for shit against Delta, it's entirely a sick joke on the public at this point. And lately the grotesque political elites have been telling the public to do one thing, while they party at large gatherings entirely without masks, blatantly mocking the public.

Totally agree, YouTube is in the wrong here. They are no arbitrator of truth or facts, leave that to the courts and allow 'real free speech' in online platforms.

So 'real free speech' is about requiring private companies to carry the message of a politically powerful agent of the government?

that's your definition, for me it is allowing anyone to speak their views without putting a "extreme left" sensor and calling it fake.

lol. the idea that masks reduce infection rates is not leftist.

That's exactly what a leftist would say.

view ≠ facts. "extreme left" ≠ untrue.

s/politically powerful agent of the government/person/ , yes.

That is nothing like how free speech generally works in the US. Compelled speech is the exact opposite of free speech.

Is there any "real free speech" that you think YouTube should be allowed to block?

People advocating for shooting the president?

People describing how to make a nuclear bomb?

People advocating for killing cops?

People sharing people's social security numbers?

People explaining the best suicide methods?

People trying to organize terrorist attacks?

People threatening violence on other people?

Anything?

In the end, the revenue stream dictates the content. The revenue stream is ads. Advertisers don't want to be involved in some Wild West of content, as has been proven several times now. I don't think Youtube would survive as an ad free paid service.

If advertisers don't want to be involved (presumably because they think it would be bad for the brand), YouTube themselves might not want to be involved for the same reasons.

You seem to be implying that YouTube themselves -- shareholders, executives, employees -- has no moral compass, but the advertisers do. And (I guess) the advertisers only do because their potential customers do.

I'd say a more likely case is that morality (or "aversion to Wild West content" or "aversion to unnecessary deaths" or whatever) is something spread fairly evenly among humans, whatever role they have.

Seems rather simplistically cynical to assume that YouTube is the only entity that doesn't actually care about anything but money.

In my opinion, they should be allowing anything they are not required by law to remove.

Which will result in them getting regulated. After being dragged before Congress over and over and being asked "why aren't you doing something about this?"

And by the way, not sure what you mean by "required by law." Does that include when corporate lawyers say "if we leave this up, we are at risk of a judge fining us (or awarding someone suing us) a billion dollars."

The law isn't crystal clear and black and white, until you end up in front of a judge or jury. The legal system in the US isn't all statutory, it is left for courts to decide based on precedent and, when there is none to draw from, higher and higher courts.

It all seems simple until you actually think about these things.

> And by the way, not sure what you mean by "required by law." Does that include when corporate lawyers say "if we leave this up, we are at risk of a judge fining us (or awarding someone suing us) a billion dollars."

I was thinking more along the lines of removing posts when ordered to by the government they are incorporated under or by one in whose country to they do business. And if someone finds child porn or something on their servers, point them at the user that posted it. Which might work if they didn't mess with user's posts unless they absolutely had to.

They are only in this current mess because they voluntarily curate, often aggressively.

> They are only in this current mess because they voluntarily curate, often aggressively.

Does "make videos with lots of upvotes more visible" count as voluntary curation?

Even in the absence of that, hopefully you can see why they'd want to remove content as described in the points I listed above.

I'm not all the comfortable with all curation/moderation/censoring/etc being based on "government orders." That means that government will get more involved in this process, and corrupt governments will have more ability to control the narrative. Not sure you've thought this through.

It also is a very costly process currently for YouTube and facebook (etc). Do you want taxes to pay for that?

> They are no arbitrator of truth or facts, leave that to the courts

Not sure this is a good approach either.

Discerning truth and separating fact from fiction isn't a skill that some people have and other's don't. It is a process that requires one to embrace free speech rather than assigning the role of truthsayer to any particular person, group, or institution.

Here is John Stuart Mills rationale for free speech:

..the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error.

>if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error.

Except that doesn't happen. As the saying goes, a lie can travel around the world before the truth laces up its boots. Where is the "clearer perception and livelier impression of truth" being produced by all of the disinformation being spread? Surely, since disinformation is spreading so rapidly and colliding so furiously against truth in the marketplace of ideas, truth should be prevailing everywhere.

No, of course it isn't. Why would it? Both you and John Stuart Mills skipped over the part where embracing free speech actually leads to discernment. It's like people just expect truth to win for reasons.

What's happening is that people don't know what to think, or who to believe, and are being bombarded with far more claims and counterclaims than they have time or ability to thoroughly test. Absent trust in any institution, person or group in which to truest, people are left only with their own uninformed intuition and emotion, which disinformation and propaganda far more effectively feed upon.

And so what do you conclude? You seem to be saying that instead of unfettered speech you prefer that some authority step in and pick and choose what speech is to be allowed?

And who gets to be in that privileged position of determining what discourse is permitted by everyone else?

>And who gets to be in that privileged position of determining what discourse is permitted by everyone else?

Ok. This exact argument has been rehashed on HN a trillion times already, so what's one more?

Whomever owns the platform decides. Freedom of speech doesn't obligate every possible platform has to be forced to publish your speech - that would be coerced speech, which is a violation of the freedoms of the platform owners. Rights don't exist in a vacuum, they have to be balanced against other rights. You have the right to free speech, but you still have to convince people to listen to you.

"unfettered" freedom of speech has never been a right in any society or on any platform. If you want to publish to Youtube, you have to play by Youtube's rules. If the government takes over Youtube, it's a public platform and you have to play by the government's rules. But there will always be rules and limits to what can and cannot be published. You can create your own platform and have everyone play by your rules, if you like.

Youtube can only control what happens on Youtube. Facebook can only control what happens on Facebook. Twitter can only control what happens on Twitter. None of these platforms can moderate or censor content outside of their platforms, and none of them act as arbiters of truth for the entirety of society by doing so on their own platforms.

My conclusion is that platforms being allowed to moderate their own content - even when their decisions are biased or questionable - is preferable to platforms being forced to host content against their will, and definitely preferable to the government taking ownership of social media platforms (as would happen with the repeal of Section 230 protections) and making decisions about what can and cannot be published across the entire network.

We are talking about two different things.

Platforms should be able to have an editorial policy. That doesn't magically make their policy immune from criticism.

YouTube or Facebook presenting their editorial choices as "truth", dissenting opinions as dangerous falsehoods, alternate thoughts as offensive hate speech, and different conclusions as "misinformation" is dangerous to our public discourse.

If YouTube users were moderating YouTube and the reason that a video was flagged was because a non-paid member of the community initiated the action, would that still make YouTube in the wrong? Would the "mod" be to blame?

What if it was a up/down-voting system, and the community just down-voted a video to the point where it was "dead" for normal people? Would YouTube be in the wrong?

It seems strange that there is no expectation of these companies to moderate content that they are hosting, if they perceive it as being bad for their user base.

When I was much younger, I used to get upset when I was banned or squelched from IRC channels for saying things, and I would berate the moderators for being overzealous. In reality, I was just saying things that were perceived as not being conducive to the discussion in these channels, and I was not aware enough to understand that what I was saying was not welcome in that setting.

This thread feels like a game of broken telephone: you're literally quoting a quote of a quote. Rand Paul's overall stance is basically "let's revolt against masks because freedom". Whether Rand Paul's carefully cherrypicked arguments are technically medically/factually correct doesn't really matter, you need to consider the narrative as a whole. Youtube deemed that promoting his overall message is a threat to public health, regardless of whether he made factually correct statements or not.

It strikes me as unfortunate that the rationale Youtube gave tried to add legitimacy to their decision by quoting Rand Paul as "evidence" for their case (under the presupposition that a "bad" position must necessarily be supported by factually incorrect arguments), when they could just have said that his anti-mask position goes against CDC guidelines or something along those lines that is easier for a non-expert to verify.

If anything the lesson here is for Youtube to be careful of snake talk that employs half truths as weapons. In other words, if they are not experts enough to determine whether specific quotes are factually true, then don't base decisions on your ability to determine accuracy, and instead defer to the language of the official guidelines.

You realize you are advocating thought policing here, right?

I'm not advocating for anything though? I didn't even claim to agree w/ Youtube in the first place. I merely said that the way they went about this specific case could've been far less controversial if they deferred explaining rationales to the proper health authority rather than taking it upon themselves to decide what "evidence" is factually correct.

Besides, thought, speech, broadcasting and individual rights on private and public spaces are all very different things. At the end of the day, Youtube's platform is their own turf and they ultimately have the physical power to take down whatever the heck they want. Twitter, Facebook and self-hosted wordpress instances all exist as alternatives for Rand Paul, and he'll certainly be back on YT with his same agenda next week. Countries can (and do) hit Youtube with whatever fines they think are appropriate. Rand Paul's constituents will be Rand Paul's constituents. Every party in this saga is basically just doing whatever they want. Where does thought policing fit into any of this?

> Whether Rand Paul's carefully cherrypicked arguments are technically medically/factually correct doesn't really matter, you need to consider the narrative as a whole. Youtube deemed that promoting his overall message is a threat to public health, regardless of whether he made factually correct statements or not.

These couple of sentences came pretty close in my opinion. They read to me as advocacy for the censorship of factual information if you happen disapprove of an opinion the person might hold.

I have to wonder if the people who made this decision even have a medical degree. Software engineers banning doctors for making medical statements seems wrong.

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.

There are new ones made with nanofiber instead of the typical ones made of meltblown fiber. The nanofiber ones are more breathable, check out AirQueens, rated kn95.

Isn't it amazing that medical professionals can work 12 hour shifts in N95s without having difficulty breathing and don't feel like they're going 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.

The USPS had a plan in place to do just that. The Trump White House stopped it: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2020/09/18/usps-covid-...

Could argue the Trump administration is directly responsible for killing tens of thousands of Americans through that act alone.

> Could argue the Trump administration is directly responsible for killing tens of thousands of Americans through that act alone.

Well then why isn’t the Biden admin doing it?

You mean why didn't they go back in time and do it when it could have made a difference? Masks are ubiquitous now, and have been entirely politicized by the GOP. The abject refusal to assign blame to the most malicious administration in this country's history says a lot about many in this community.

Except they are effective. They are not as effective as a N95 mask but all scientific data shows they are still effective and reducing transmission rate in a population.

Why haven't we seen significantly better outcomes in states with mask mandates vs. those without?

That's not how this works. You can only compare with the future that wasn't. People may decide all by themselves that wearing a mask is a good idea, mandate or not, and then there is the point that not all masks are created equal, which is the subject of this thread.

Is your argument that outcomes of different policy decisions cannot be compared across different jurisdictions?

Not without carefully controlling for all kinds of variables, demographics, geography, internal and external connectivity and so on. No two areas are closely alike in all those respects.

Do you similarly feel that comparisons across different populations are invalid for arguing the affirmative?

e.g. arguments like "we should try masking / UBI / $15 minimum wage / free healthcare / universal pre-k because it worked well in ${location}" are also "not how this works" because we can "only compare with the future that wasn't?"

Do such arguments need to control for the infinite number of confounding variables before having any value?

There has been data showing areas with greater mask compliance have slower infection rates.

I'd bet that areas with greater mask compliance also have greater compliance with social distancing and other, more effective mitigation measures.

Do you realize you are now arguing against yourself in the same thread?

I’m curious how so?

We either should take all variables into account or we shouldn't you can't have it both ways. Or was that not what you meant?

As a single data point: despite a universal mask mandate that was enacted early on (May 6th 2020) along with a very high compliance, Massachusetts had the 3rd highest COVID death rate in the US (as of Aug 9):

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covi...

A little over 20% of Massachusetts deaths occurred before May 6th, 2020. Another 20% occurred in the 3-4 weeks immediately ofter which are likely largely attributable to people who got COVID before early May.

If you compare Massachusetts deaths after that point to other states they come out somewhere near the middle.

Did the mask mandates change in MA across these time ranges?

Not significantly, it came into force May 6th indoors and outside if you couldn't maintain 6', but most cities in eastern MA had 100% outdoor mandates too. I think it was Nov 6th when they made it 100% outdoor statewide regardless of distancing. The mask mandate wasn't lifted until May of this year.

what "scientific data" ?

Are they though? I wear a mask and don't have much of a problem with doing so (although it is no longer required where I live), but at this point I do it because of social pressure, not scientific evidence. So far as I can see, the cloth masks most people wear are of minimal benefit compared to social distancing and avoiding enclosed spaces with inadequate ventilation.

Are [gaiter masks] effective?

On the other hand some researchers think cloth masks, specifically gaiter types, are worse than nothing. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/36/eabd3083

> A bigger droplet scatters more light than a smaller droplet. This insight is important to interpret the result of the neck gaiter. The neck gaiter has a larger transmission (110%; see Fig. 3A) than the control trial. We attribute this increase to the neck gaiter dispersing larger droplets into several smaller droplets, therefore increasing the droplet count. The histogram of the binary diameter for the neck gaiter supports this theory (see fig. S5).

---

disclosure: I think people should wear masks, even gaiter types. My point is that skepticism shouldn't necessarily be banned. Saying a mask works or doesn't is an incredibly complicated thing and more probabilistic than anything else.

If the question is presented as whether or not a mask would guarantee you being protected from COVID-19 particles, then the answer is much closer for "no" than "yes" for non-KN95/N95 masks.

If the question is whether they offer "some protection" then the answer is basically yes as long as you have anything in front of your face.

https://medical.mit.edu/covid-19-updates/2020/08/neck-gaiter...

The study was not about testing masks, it was about developing a new cheap method of testing masks. They only tested each mask once, because the question was whether they could get data from the technique, not to actually study each mask type.

Cloth masks are effective in preventing covid in the same way that "the rhythm method is effective at preventing pregnancy." Which is to say it reduces the probability a small amount, but not nearly enough to justify a person treating it as an effective prophylactic. So it depends on what your definition of "effective" is, but it seems to me more like disinformation to call cloth masks or rhythm method "effective" than to say they are not effective.

just how small is that small amount for a group of people in a small room for an hour at a time?

You're leaving out over half of the truth, here. The idea behind universal masking is that EVERYONE is wearing the masks. In other words, the person who might infect you is masked (and cloth masks DO work very well to prevent that person from spewing droplets everywhere), and also, you are wearing a mask too. You are leaving out that first part of the equation, which is the most important part.

It's also the part that "Rand" Paul is undermining.

> and cloth masks DO work very well to prevent that person from spewing droplets everywhere

But Covid doesn’t spread exclusively through “droplets”, it’s aerosolized. It’s present in an infected person’s breath, which will escape a mask.

There’s your answer in the question, why you used the word “exclusively.”

Most people aren't going to be willing to wear masks forever. Compliance is already quite low in most places. Especially in private homes where much of the viral transmission occurs.

Well the problem is that people who are purveying information in this country at large - but especially between Paul and his base - is a lack of nuance. Calling cloth masks or "OTC" masks ineffective, esp. w/o pointing out that n95 masks are effective is over the line between disingenuous and lying imo.

Yeah, it really doesn't seem all that plausible that cloth masks do much at this point. Not only was there never good evidence for them working, the best ones only block something like 90% of virus-bearing particles. To put this in context current estimates seem to be that people infected with Delta produce 100-1000x the amount of virus that previous variants did; the effect of mask wearing is absolutely miniscule compared to that.

How is blocking X% of the virus particles less impactful if there's more of them? Fewer particles admitted means reduced chance of infection, no? Always better to less virus particles than more.

But almost no one is wearing the best sort of mask. They're wearing porous cloth masks that stop next to nothing.

> next to nothing.

Not true.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

Are cloth masks any good? CDC says yes. BMJ says maybe, if you get the right masks. France says no and you should be wearing medical masks. DANMASK-19 says less than 50% effective and no significant difference in infections among populations who wear and don't wear masks. Who's a fellow to believe?

- https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n432

Fewer particles admitted means reduced chance of infection, no?

The thing to keep in mind is that blocking 50% of the particles does not mean a 50% reduction in infection. It may mean a 50% reduction in infection -- or it may mean a basically zero percent reduction. It depends on the exposure.

Say that in a particular covid-filled room you have a 50% chance of being infected after 5 minutes and a 99.9% chance of being infected after an hour. Under a simple model, if you wear a mask that blocks half the particles, your chance of getting coronavirus in 5 minutes would be reduced to 25%, but your chance of getting it after an hour would be 97%. So if cloth mask is your primary defense against covid, you are eventually going to get covid if you are trying to live anything close to a normal life. Blocking 50% of particles is like wearing an condom that only blocks 50% of the sperm or an umbrella that blocks only 50% of the rain.

I don’t think anyone is advocating for masks as your only line of defense, just one of a few (vaccines currently being the best)

Pregnancy is boolean. A person's viral load is not a boolean value.

The umbrella is a better comparison. My umbrella doesn't prevent 100% of the rain from coming in contact with me. This is good enough that the umbrella is still standard practice.

Are you referring to the theory that the severity of covid has a dose-response relationship with the infectious inoculum? It's an interesting theory, but I think it is far from proven. It's a shame that it's not studied, because if true it might actually make sense to just give everyone a very small infectious inoculum as a form of vaccination.

The infectious dose of viruses is usually not (never?) a single particle. Depending on the virus, it may be tens or hundreds of particles required to infect a person. We don't know an exact number for COVID, but we know that it's likely some number that's greater than one.

Whatever that number is, if we limit the number of particles in the air, we decrease the statistical probability that a person will come in contact to a number of particles exceeding that number.

It's a "solution to pollution is dilution" issue.

> it might actually make sense to just give everyone a very small infectious inoculum as a form of vaccination.

The biggest issue with this, as I understand, is straddling the line between causing an immune response and hurting the patient. There are live vaccine viruses, but most (all?) attenuate the virus to prevent the latter.

A model with misleading values can easily reach misleading conclusions. If there were any places where the chance of infection reaches even 50% after an hour, there would be huge, obvious outbreaks associated with people going to those places. The actual observed spread of SARS-CoV-2 has been much slower than this; a basic reproduction number of 7 together with a duration of two weeks means that the average infected person behaving like an average American in 2020 will infect 0.5 persons per day (I'm being generous). This counts situations like e.g. someone becomes infected and goes home to their family and literally lives there. Even in those situations it moves slowly.

Or, to put it more on the nose: the half-life for an American getting CoViD under ordinary conditions seems to be longer than a year. Using your linear model, a 50% mask would make it more than two years! So half-life exhaustion doesn't seem an appropriate counterpoint.

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.

> An imperfect mask is surely going to result in a borderline contacts with infection being non-infections.

Not necessarily. The mask blocks the virus going both ways, so maybe only 10% of the virus particles get inside the mask, but 90% of those that would be exhaled also stay inside the mask.

This is not an opinion on whether masks work, just an illustration that it's plausible they don't.

Napkin math would be:

90% of infected person virus stays in

90% of virus does not get in for a healthy person

So 1% (10% through * 10% through) of final particles will be inside the mask. Hence roughly 0.9% of particles (90% stays inside of the mask of the healthy person) would stick around by this logic

Vs 100% of particles that could enter will enter without any sort of mask

Even for napkin math we'd need reasonably good approximations, but we're missing a crucial number (how many virus particles are normally exhaled?) and I don't know if 90% blockage is accurate either (I'm just using it as an example because other posts in this thread have used that number).

> but we're missing a crucial number

Exactly. We're lacking a crucial number. So wear a mask.

Or refuse, and enhance the herd immunity, which is the only thing that will ever really slow the virus in the first place. (Like the flu and colds, this virus will be with us forever and cannot be eradicated, because unlike smallpox and the like, this one has both animal and human hosts...)

I rather think "let's go for herd immunity" is something we need to collectively decide. It's a huge decision and impacts everyone. Like many decisions with collective impact, we rightly restrict the rights of individuals to go their own way on it.

Obviously there isn't collective agreement for a mandate. Are you saying the government should impose a mandate without collectively deciding, or even debating?

That points to a tricky, general problem in political theory and one we've struggled with for millenia. I don't have an answer but I do think there's a middle ground between "authoritarian diktat" and "everyone does what the hell they want".

Haven't you just agreed with me?

The debate is whether they help by 0.001%, 99% or some number inbetween.

And until there's strong evidence then we're back to the precautionary principle (or as I like to put it "just shut-up and where your damn mask")

I agree with you in that I believe they work and, as a matter of personal choice, I followed the precautionary principle and wore a mask until I was vaccinated.

But I don't agree that "the precautionary principle" is sufficient justification for a government mandate. Clear evidence should be required to impose the mandate.

And my previous post was not agreeing with you; it implied that masks may work or may make things worse by trapping more virus particles inside the mask.

Another post here linked to a study that showed that certain kinds of masks can sometimes be worse than no mask, even ignoring the "trapping" factor, by actually increasing the droplet count in the air.

> But I don't agree that "the precautionary principle" is sufficient justification for a government mandate.

It is in many other realms. Why raise the bar for this?

This whole thing feels like whatever the equivalent is of "virtue signalling". Why have some groups decided to be so stubborn about this particular thing? It smacks of some identity thing.

I can't answer your very leading question, but there are PLENTY of people who wear masks, are vaccinated, and are scared of mandates, and are consistent about "raising the bar" across the board (For things besides COVID). They just don't get as much media coverage, because that position doesn't fit into a digestible narrative in today's zeitgeist.

Fair points. But some of this appears to be somewhat US specific. In other countries, the mask debate is more of a fringe issue compared to other broader aspects of COVID restrictions. From an outside perspective, masks seem to have taken on an unwarranted significance that might be peculiar to the US political discourse.

It's bizzare to me that it hasn't in other places. When you issue a mandate, it's automatically politicized. In a parallel universe this could have gone so much differently if, trump say, said "I'm not going to force you to wear masks, but please wear them".

To me it feels a bit like "I'm not going to do this thing because you've told me to. If you hadn't have told me then I might have done it but I'm damned if I'm going to now".

Which is fine when the public demonstration of a point of principle isn't as important as the thing itself. Otherwise it's a collective act of cutting of one's nose to spite one's face.

But maybe this is the part that is somewhat US specific. The relationship of the people to the government seems to have an almost mythic role in political identity - rather than a somewhat more pragmatic one that I recognize in the UK.

For obvious reasons US does have more of a 'uh we bootstrapped from from first principles' approach to political theory, the UK explicitly does not. I would argue that there are good and robust ways to do things in the former sort of a system, possibly ways that are even better than the latter, but I think the US polity has basically been a 250 year struggle to figure that out. I dunno, the US is not doing terribly, there have been some horrible mistakes, but that's to be expected, there are no sinless governments and societies as far as I can tell.

>Wearing masks is usually only a minor inconvenience

Maybe it is minor inconvenience for you but for me its a huge inconvenience.

Why is your experience so different to mine?

Because not everyone the same, do you expect everyone to have same experience ?

I have to confess I suspect our experiences aren't that different. In the same way people can choose to be offended, people seem to have chosen to find this a huge imposition.

I actually really dislike wearing a mask and sometimes have a mild panicky feeling of suffocating and have to move to a window. (I get a similar thing snorkeling).

But it's no big deal. I'm a grown up and I deal with it because it's a good thing to do for other people. I understand some people might have really strong psychological reactions and that's why we have mask exemptions.

But I don't think that applies to the majority of the people that are claiming wearing a mask is a massive problem for them. I really don't.

>But it's no big deal.

It's no big deal for you, fine. I acknowledge that but It is a big deal for me.

>I'm a grown up and I deal with it because it's a good thing to do for other people.

well not to me, when you wearing mask when interacting with me you are not doing a good thing for me.

I'm much prefer for you to not wear mask when you interact with me but still I wouldn't force you.

Its also one of the reason for me to not wear mask when interacting with other people, its a good thing to do for other people.

> well not to me, when you wearing mask when interacting with me you are not doing a good thing for me.

Yes I am. I am reducing the chance of infection passing between us. The degree to which I'm reducing the chance is uncertain (which is the original point under discussion).

I think we probably won't get any further benefit from this discussion. I've lost patience with a lot of people over this. I find it slightly depressing that this has become the identity issue it has.

>Yes I am. I am reducing the chance of infection passing between us.

No, you think you are doing good for me but reducing the chance of infection passing is not a concern for me at all so its not doing any good for me.

>I think we probably won't get any further benefit from this discussion. I've lost patience with a lot of people over this. I find it slightly depressing that this has become the identity issue it has.

Not surprising because you dismissing other people concern and treat it as 'not big deal'.

> but reducing the chance of infection passing is not a concern for me at all

You've lost me here. Really? Is this the part where I discover you have a completely different view on the whole topic and this discussion was pointless from the beginning?

>You've lost me here. Really?

Yes, among all other thing I concern about, reducing the chance of infection passing between us is the least of my concern.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against reducing the chance of infection. I support reducing the chance of infection but not with mask.

Because mask has more downside than its ability (if any) to reduce the chance of infection.

>Is this the part where I discover you have a completely different view on the whole topic and this discussion was pointless from the beginning?

I don't know about you but I do not found this discussion to be pointless

Sounds to me like you're the one who has made it an identity issue.

Other than an off the cuff insult, what do you mean by that?

In this thread you've repeatedly demonstrated you're not willing to consider other peoples concerns about it then declared you're "running out of patience" with people who aren't on the same page as you.

That to me suggests you've made that position part and parcel of your identity.

There's a difference between not considering other people's concerns vs disagreeing with their rationalizations of them.

> That to me suggests you've made that position part and parcel of your identity.

I genuinely feel like I'm making a fairly sober, rational and considered point. (Of course everyone thinks that of themselves but hey)

> Its also one of the reason for me to not wear mask when interacting with other people, its a good thing to do for other people.

How is increasing the odds of my infecting my immunocompromised mother doing me a favour?

Of course it's going to be not the same for everyone.

There are actually two questions: how much do masks prevent borderline contacts from being infected, and how broad a range of contact do they work over. As far as I can tell the two things are at odds with each other: the shallower the slope of reduced infection vs viral load, the broader the range over which masks can work. (Though of course either way there's still the possibility that most transmission happens outside the range where this has any effect worth mentioning.) The flu-based study some mask proponents were pushing had an order-of-magnitude decrease in viral amount giving maybe a 30% reduction in chance of being infected over the range where this was effective, and obviously very little outside that. That's... not great. Definitely much worse than current vaccines. Though of course Covid isn't flu and we don't have the same level of studies covering it yet.

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 able to see the facial expressions of their teachers or classmates (especially when learning how to read and pronounce words!).

I think I captured most of that in my use of the word "usually".

No the word "usually" does not capture that at all. I and a lot of other people spend a lot more time at the office, at the gym, at school, at entertainment venues with friends than we spend at grocery stores.

In this sense "usually" applies to enforcement which has plenty of exceptions for the cases you raise.

It obviously depends on country and region and the stage of the pandemic, but in the UK there's been plenty of wiggle room at various times.

Exactly. Nuance is always missing because making nuanced decisions is hard

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.

Most kids will not die from COVID-19, and most healthy adults won't be intubated.

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-...

You know what's really a "major inconvenience"? Getting in a car and getting hit by a trailer truck and getting paralyzed for life. Lets all stay in a closet at home forever...

It takes all of 2-3 workouts to get used to a mask. It is not a major inconvenience. It is minor.

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 useful under some limited circumstances to avoid overwhelming healthcare systems. But we need to think longer term than just the next few weeks.

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?

Smallpox was eradicated with a sterilizing vaccine. We don't have one of those for SARS-CoV-2, and there's no prospect of one any time soon. We also know that other mammals can get infected and pass the virus to humans. The bats or pangolins or whatever originally transmitted the virus to humans are still out there somewhere. It is impossible to vaccinate or cull all those animals. Thus it is impossible to eradicate the virus. We need to be realistic and accept that it's here to stay.

That's why we social distance and use other methods. It's defense in depth. Though it seemed that these days we mostly stopped social distancing.

You obviously can't expect people to continue social distancing. It's not sustainable, and harms mental health.

Killing your friends and family harms mental health a lot more.

Viral load during initial infection is also implicated in severity of illness. Blocking 90% of particles can be the difference between life and death for some people.

> Tech companies feeling competent to dictate truth is scary.

The government has been telling them to censor or else.

I would ideally like a little more justification for those statements, but right now it's not even possible to check if the video had any.

> I never thought it would be as overt as it is.

It has been known that they have been doing this randomly to multiple accounts every day and it is clear that YouTube will never change. They will point you to their guidelines and suspend your account at anytime.

> Tech companies feeling competent to dictate truth is scary.

These tech companies are not your friends and are on no-one's side other than the side of profit. They can get anyone and use their slippery guidelines as cover for their suspensions.

They are never going to change and it's only going to get worse.

I think (I hope) it’s a side effect of the legal system pushing them to do this.

These platforms are now basically the Internet. If they don’t police misinformation, maybe they’re worried the government will come after them ?

Maybe people who care about hosting alternative views should host their own websites? Like how the Internet was designed ?

> I don't think this is even misinformation!

Having watched the original, I would say there is a mixture of truth, twisted truth, speculation, and complete misinformation (which is basically what we should expect from any politician).

While it's clear that the messaging he was sending was BAD for people's health, because anything diverting airflow between a sick person and a healthy person helps the healthy person not become a sick person, I truly dislike the censorship being enacted.

people seem to forget that paul is a board certified surgeon (not just a canonical politician), and his post cited 2 peer reviewed articles that ostensibly passed muster. i don’t have expertise on the science, here, but people are making it out to seem that he’s some nut job science denier. i don’t think that narrative is fair

Except it is literally misinformation. "Most of the masks you get over the counter" ARE at least somewhat effective.

your use of the word fascinating is fascinating. sounds like you self censored.

fascinating is the nicest way I can imagine this being put.

He’s just polluting the airwaves to keep his voters wound up.

A single layer of cloth doesn’t stop it. There’s a reason why those scarfs aren’t allowed in airplanes (well they say that, still see them in use). But it can help reduce the distance it travels.

It’s semantic wank, which is all politicians are good at.

No what is scarier is that a Senator who's also a doctor would be putting out such dangerous misinformation about the pandemic. I used to respect Senator Paul before the Trump era but he's gone over the deep end. YouTube did the right thing here

They don't dictate truth and their job is not to spread truth. There job is to make money, and letting the loudest fringe people drive off lucrative sane people is against their best interests. Nobody has a first amendment right to have a WSJ OpEd column or a Youtube account. There are platforms that allow you to say anything as a policy, like 8chan, and they are cesspools because of it. Rand Paul can use one of those. Sociopathic liars love attention and are great at manipulating systems in ways to generate sympathy.

To downvoters, I'm curious who should force a platform what content they should be compelled to carry. Government? Should YouTube be compelled to carry anything permitted by law? They don't allow pornography, graphic violence, or hate speech. Should they be forced to carry those? What freedom does YouTube have to decide what sort of platform they have?

Allowing them to suspend people at their discretion is far better than the alternative.

Is the point to stop misinformation, or to silence people.

The masks aren't there to prevent infection, they are there to limit transmission. They work just fine for this objective, which is why the video was indeed spreading misinformation.

Indeed. Tech companies now silence politicians unilaterally, while governments made up of the same politicians do nothing to stop the widespread flow of toxic misinformation on tech platforms.

So, who is really in charge?

At some point, the adults need to be in charge. I for one applaud YouTube for taking this step, because it's not an easy choice, because they'll get pushback like this.

Misinformation about Covid is deadly. Rand Paul is spreading misinformation - masks stop the spread of everything because it prevents bodily fluid particles from getting on everything, and also stops people from touching their face. Both of these are key vectors for disease to spread.

If corporations are to be treated as people, then it's good that they behave as if they have a conscience, and show an unwillingness to sacrifice real people on the alter of libertarian free-speech political correctness.

If I worked at YouTube I would be proud of their stance.

Lots of misinformation on YouTube is bad for people and isn't stopped. And I would hardly call Google, YouTube's owners, a "company with a conscience" since nearly their entire business is based on predatory surveillance advertising.

In a democratic society, the elected leaders need to communicate their ideas, however wrongheaded. If they aren't allowed to communicate, how do they reach their electors and how do they tell potential voters they're right (or wrong)? When you are at the platform level like YouTube, you have a responsibility to carry information from the government even if you don't like it because you didn't elect Ron Paul, his constituents did.

YouTube is NOT the government. If Rand Paul was arrested for his speech, that would be a violation of his First Amendment rights and wrong. The right to speak does not compel a private platform to carry that speech.

Certainly Fox News gives RP and his ilk plenty of opportunity to spread their harmful propaganda. So it's not like, even in a practical sense, his ability to express himself has been curtailed.

> Certainly Fox News gives RP and his ilk

Tell us how you really feel about people on the right.

Something tells me you'd be singing a different story if it were someone you agreed with.

Lincoln was not even on the ballet In several states. That lead to a civil war.s

We are reaching/past the point where open speech is no longer allowed. That makes next steps scary.

YouTube doing the right thing and banning some stupid misinformation is nowhere near civil war.

Misinformation is the excuse. This is banning a political party on whatever reason they think they can get away with.

Rand Paul is the GOP now? You might want to tell Trump that.

Well, they're also banning Trump...

(Different "they", though - Twitter. But Twitter was Trump's main medium. Anyway, point is, once you raise the topic, yeah, it looks like treeman79 actually does have a bit of evidence on his side...)

he does not.

They're not banning a political party at all. They are banning some individuals for breaking the terms of service.

>masks stop the spread of everything

Do masks stop the spread of bullets? If not, you are spreading misinformation and need to be banned.

You have no right to use someone else's printing press. The government can easily create their own video hosting platform. Just like the NYTimes doesn't need to allow any politician to submit an oped.

We've lost the essence of journalism.

Instead of a venue where multiple options are presented for review by the reader (along with editorial comment, of course), we now have platforms which are nothing but editorial. Not only individual people but individual comments are called out for censorship. This is not how news reporting was done in the past.

It's sad because today, there isn't a single website where a curious individual can review all of the views on a subject (or all of the comments of opposing politicians, for examples) without the platform weighting or simply removing views it doesn't like. This is a loss of objective information and is detrimental to education and intellectual and social advancement.

Instead of journalism, each "platform" now picks and chooses stories and voices that amplify its overlords' goals and nothing more. There is no truth to be delivered, only "my" truth as seen by my platform owners.

It's a sad day.

In my lifetime, we never had the essence of journalism as you're describing it. Even before the internet, my hometown had the left-leaning and right-leaning newspaper (and I was lucky enough to live in a town that offered both!).

What do you think journalism was like in Zenger's time?

The tech companies may be trying to "control the problem" so that the government doesn't decide to legislate. Unfortunately for the tech companies, they're doing it so badly, so randomly, that they're probably making legislation more likely.

They don't work? This article is claiming otherwise:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8

So what? It's easy to find a million articles that say whatever you need them to say. The point is that Youtube has decided which articles are "right" and "wrong", when they have no business deciding such things.

My comment has nothing to do with whether Youtube should have the power to do what they've done. It has to do with the assertion in the GP that it's not misinformation to say unequivocally that cloth masks don't work. That appears to be nonsense since there's a handful of studies that at the very least leave open that question.

Have a look at Fig 3.A from this study:

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/36/eabd3083

Therefore they should lose sec 230 protections.

Losing sec 230 protections would mean more ban-hammer for lying politicians (about elections, vaccines etc.)

I'm fine with that. It would create an even playing field in theory and that's a hell of a lot better than what we have right now which is some politicans getting to lie with impunity and others having their content removed for wrongthink.

Hate speech is not "wrongthink".

Don't defend racists by pretending they are just thinking outside the box.

There in-lies the problem. "Hate speech" is just speech you don't like or choose to be offended by. You have no problem with "hate speech" that suits you and your political worldview.

Don't defend the current situation by pretending that it's only hate speech and racism that are getting removed.

It's quoting a whole lot of things, some of which are in support of cloth masks, but none of which are particularly conclusive.

It's worth noting that one of the randomized trials mentioned in that article ended up not being able to prove any significant effect. [1] It apparently had some problems getting published.

I've been unable to find the results of the larger trial by Christine Benn et al.

[1]: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817

It seems conclusive that cloth masks reduce the number of virus particles being inhaled and exhaled, and so theoretically they should work. See Fig 3.A here.

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/36/eabd3083

I understand we also want RCTs to show that they actually reduce infections in practice. But, I will note a few things here.

It's almost impossible to study via RCT whether their usage protects other people from infection, which is one of the goals of masks. The best we can do is go with our knowledge that it does block aerosols from being exhaled and use common sense to then assume that this means that it also will protect others from getting infected.

Also, it could be the case that while it may not prevent infection, it reduces the severity of the infection due to a much lower viral load being inhaled. This is a difficult question to study.

In all, we need to see larger studies done in locations where there's more cases. That one RCT in Denmark isn't enough.

Vaccines work really well, so well that we can show benefit even when confounded by hundreds of other variables both known and unknown. Obviously the universal mask mandate has not had such a strong success and it becomes really hard/impossible to measure effectiveness in the face of all these other confounding variables.

Edit: there is a lot of pseudo-science on all these matters motivated by biases.

Does it ? The article seems to be mostly conjecture or studies on properly worn N95 masks (whose efficacy is not in question here).

> Osterholm, in Minnesota,director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, wears a mask. Yet he laments the “lack of scientific rigour” that has so far been brought to the topic. “We criticize people all the time in the science world for making statements without any data,” he says. “We’re doing a lot of the same thing here.”

This is literally how the article ends. It ends with a general acknowledgement of lack of understanding on the topic. That masks make intuitive sense, but the quality of research wrt. to it is pretty shabby.

It doesn't help that the likelihood of getting covid in outdoor settings is significantly lower than those indoors. Unfortunately, the masks almost immediately come off the second we are in this low ventilation + easily aerosolize-able environment. Mandates that are unenforceable under the constitutional structure of your nation are pointless grandstanding. (I generally question the holiness of constitutions too, but that's a whole another discussion)

Additionally no one enforces them to be worn correctly and people abandon social distancing the second their wear a mask. So they become generic tools to target and slander people rather than offer any real protection. Reminds me of post-9/11 safety measures that were intrusive enough that they could always find a bullshit reason for stop a brown person at the security checkpoint. It became an excuse for targeting ones you already had in mind, rather than ensure any real security.

I would have actually supported mandates for N95 masks and support a requirement for vaccine/anti-body mandate. (As far as we know, getting covid gives a strong enough immunity) Both would be just as draconian as the other recommendations, but, neither are useful tools for polarization, so both sides of the establishment conveniently ignore it.

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 telling him that he can use someone else's platform to do so.

This is NOT an example of "tech companies dictating truth". And it's not scary, either. What's scary is the results of letting charlatans like "Rand" Paul speak on this in public.

An unfit mask with anything more than a single centimeter^2 aperture gap is effectively <N40. That means more aerosol particles are let out/in than are blocked. Unfit masks do a pretty terrible job but they do help a little bit.

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 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. It's probably the former.

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.

> 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

Influenza rates reduced in New Zealand which never had wide scale community infection of covid19.

Some Masks, Worn perfectly, in perfect conditions are effective in reducing viral spread by a few percentage points...

Rand would have been served to say mask POLICIES do not work, because humans are not perfect, do not wear them correctly, need to remove them to perform normal activities, do not sanitize them or change them properly, and about 1000 other things that make mask POLICIES ineffective

and the data absolutly bears this out, as very little has been proven that masking POLICIES have done anything to actually limit spread since most spread is being done by close contact in indoor spaces where people are more likely to remove the mask...

The number of times I have seen people walk OUTDOORS alone with a mask on then enter a indoor space with other people only to remove the mask is pretty high...

Masking policies do not work

Vaccines work...

You are actively spreading disinformation. SARS-2 ("covid") will never be extinct. It is completely infeasible to eradicate a highly infectious zoonotic respiratory virus w/ abundant animal reservoirs.

> but cloth masks work very well for reducing the likelihood that a covid-positive person will transmit the virus

You cannot possibly honestly make this statement in good faith, considering that there has only ever been one RCT done on SARS-2, and it showed no significant difference for its primary endpoint (self-infection). It didn't measure community spread, presumably because actually measuring that is extremely difficult, which is exactly why no study exists to confirm your statement.

Indeed, all the studies on masking for transmission of respiratory viruses more broadly - for example, Influenza - were quite clear that masks are ineffective in healthcare workers, who have better compliance and skill than random members of the public when it comes to wearing these things. In particular https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4420971/, published April 2015, showed that:

> This study is the first RCT of cloth masks, and the results caution against the use of cloth masks.

And lo and behold, you specifically called out cloth masks in your comment!

You don't know what you're talking about and you callously disregard the enormous implications of widespread big tech censorship. I hope you reflect on your views and come to see that they are completely backwards.

> You are actively spreading disinformation. SARS-2 ("covid") will never be extinct. It is completely infeasible to eradicate a highly infectious zoonotic respiratory virus w/ abundant animal reservoirs.

misinformation. Parent poster did not state covid will be extinct, they said, until it is extinct. If that is in fact never, Rand's words not being amplified around the globe for 24/7 access is still advisable.

I know precisely what I am talking about, everything I said echoes the best public health guidance we have thus far, and I did not "callously disregard" anything. I have carefully considered the issue of whether YouTube should have the right to muzzle Rand Paul's idiocy, weighed the pros and cons, and I have decided that they should.

I'll thank you to keep your sloppy, inaccurate, careless personal attacks to yourself.

That study was measuring masks ability to prevent being infected with the virus, not spreading it, so not directly applicable to parent's claim

I agree but the issue is no such study exists. Which is why I told them straight-up that their claim is not in good faith. Masks have never been shown to stop community transmission of respiratory viruses.

In fact if we back up for a bit and look at the immunology and population dynamics involved it's not even clear that we should want to slow the spread of SARS-2 or other respiratory viruses in the general population. We literally did a "stop, drop, and roll" of almost the entire global economy, got vaccines out in record time, and what do you know, SARS-2 is still ripping through the population just like it was always destined to.

We're fighting against quicksand.

We are fighting against quicksand, but virtually anything that slows transmission makes it easier to stay afloat. And letting it run its course is going to kill a lot of people, and the measures that were put in place almost certainly saved a lot of lives. I personally think that anything that might reasonably be used to slow transmission should be used, if for no other reason that to make sure that hospitals can keep up, and that vaccination rates can reach a point where new variants are a minor annoyance rather than a massive health crisis.

Masks haven't been shown to reduce transmission, they have abundant deleterious effects upon wearing them, and they could even worsen transmission by increasing the net release of aerosols (due to the larger net volume of air moved as a result of the user inhaling air that has relatively more CO2 and therefore relatively less O2 than a normal breath; that's without accounting for the possibility that masks actually nebulize what would have been respiratory droplets into fine aerosols as the plosive force forces the droplets through the mask fiber mesh)

So even if you don't accept that we shouldn't try to fight the inevitable (which you should accept, but I don't feel like going back and forth about it), recommending mask mandates as an intervention is a foolish strategy. They've never been shown to work in an RCT and they certainly haven't worked in real-world community settings.

> And letting it run its course is going to kill a lot of people

I think you missed the point. It's running its course either way. We had insanely high mask compliance in america, even in red states, we've had on-and-off lockdowns for a year in blue areas, we've had widespread vaccination, and it's still spreading to and from vaccinated people no problem.

Furthermore you seem to not understand that different members of the population are at different risk levels. For example, people in their 20s can acquire the SARS-2 infection, beat it off, and have robust, enduring natural immunity, which will prevent them from subsequent infection and especially from transmitting it. Vaccination alone does not achieve that result. Thus why you're fighting against quicksand.

> You are actively spreading disinformation. SARS-2 ("covid") will never be extinct.

Sigh. THIS seems to be a deliberate misreading too.

Stopping the pandemic doesn't require eradicating the disease. Malaria remains endemic and largely unvaccinated, but controlled.

And cloth masks are a vitally important tool in making that happen. Claiming otherwise by arguing against a strawman is... yeah, disinformation.

OH MY GOD. After a year and a half, why won't you people just wear your masks?! Why!?

Do you think wearing the same mask every single day and being able to take it off when the waiter brings the breadsticks is an effective mask policy?

Would you go into surgery with a physician who wears the same mask on a daily basis?

> Do you think wearing the same mask every single day and being able to take it off when the waiter brings the breadsticks is an effective mask policy?

More so than not wearing a mask at all, yes. Are you arguing for more effective mask distribution and more stringent mask enforcement? I think I'd agree that is warranted at the moment. But you're not, you're just whatabouting.

Would love a citation for that.

Texas lifted all restrictions including masks and has lower infection rates per capita than most places with mask mandates and Covid restrictions.

So the statement you make with arrogance may actually be wrong misinformation.

> Would love a citation for that.

Are you living in a cave? How can you not have seen all this. UCSF has this amazing review, and it's right at the top of the google results page: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/06/417906/still-confused-abou...

You are claiming not to have seen this not because you have looked for this evidence and failed to find it, but because you have been CONVINCED BY YOUR MEDIA that this evidence doesn't exist.

You also cite lies. Texas is one of the worst areas in the country for both total infection count and current infection rate: https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=states...

> So the statement you make with arrogance may actually be wrong misinformation.

Ditto.

> Stopping the pandemic doesn't require eradicating the disease. Malaria remains endemic and largely unvaccinated, but controlled.

I'm literally responding to a comment from somebody who is advocating for eradication. That's why I pointed out that eradication is not feasible. I am well aware of the whole mitigation vs containment vs eradication distinction, and I maintain, personally, that focused protection is and was always the correct strategy to follow.

> I'm literally responding to a comment from somebody who is advocating for eradication.

No, you're not. Go read the comment again.

> Rand Paul needs to have a permanent muzzle installed until covid is extinct.

Again, they literally said eradication (extinction) was possible. I said it wasn’t. I didn’t misread at all.

> 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 was completely infeasible to eradicate smallpox, but we did – because the people actually eradicating smallpox knew how to do it.

> You cannot possibly honestly make this statement in good faith,

Citation needed. You've selected an apparently arbitrary standard for evidence, concluded that nothing you're aware of meets it, and therefore that nobody can possibly make a certain claim… but I note you're certainly not as stringent in your requirements for claiming the opposite.

> 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 characterizing my attitude as "defeatist" rather than "obviously true".

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

> There is intriguing evidence that farmed mink infections (acquired from humans) have led to infection of other farm workers in turn, with a recent outbreak of a mink variant in humans in Denmark

Now on to the "defeatist" point:

> They said it was completely infeasible to eradicate smallpox, but we did – because the people actually eradicating smallpox knew how to do it.

Smallpox had no known animal or reservoirs. Compared to the SARS-2 vaccines, smallpox vaccines at the time of eradication were far more effective.

Again, you clearly lack the most rudimentary understanding of this topic. I'm not saying that as an attack but rather as a statement of fact. I would suggest starting with the Wikipedia page on the topic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_dise...

> The targeting of infectious diseases for eradication is based on narrow criteria, as both biological and technical features determine whether a pathogenic organism is (at least potentially) eradicable. The targeted pathogen must not have a significant non-human (or non-human-dependent) reservoir (or, in the case of animal diseases, the infection reservoir must be an easily identifiable species, as in the case of rinderpest). This requires sufficient understanding of the life cycle and transmission of the pathogen. An efficient and practical intervention (such as a vaccine or antibiotic) must be available to interrupt transmission.

Reading even just the intro paragraphs of that article should make it abundantly clear why SARS-2 cannot and will not be eradicated.

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. All it would take is one bad actor intentionally releasing it, or alternatively an accidental lab leak (which has happened with SARS-1, and SARS-2 is even easier to leak). Again, you simply haven't thought this through.

> 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.)

> 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.

I literally linked you a study that alleged that the virus jumped back from minks to humans. There's far more studies on the animal reservoirs, I just don't feel like doing an exhaustive literature review for the purposes of this subthread. I would strongly encourage you to start researching it since you apparently don't seem to be aware of the fact that zoos around the country are vaccinating their animals against COVID, etc. (Which BTW I disagree with but unless you want to argue that they're just vaccinating them for no reason surely that implies that they're getting infected)

There's literally mountains of evidence for you to go look at

> 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.

Okay, good luck vaccinating not just the entire global human population but also virtually every mammal out there. Good luck chasing down the smaller rodents. Better not miss a single spot!

> I maintain we could do it.

Again, we can't. We can't even get close with our current capabilities. I agree there's a hypothetical universe where with teleportation and an infection-blocking vaccine - neither of which we have - as well as some sort of all-seeing eye, we could do it.

> I literally linked you a study that alleged that the virus jumped back from minks to humans.

I understand that. But unless each infected mink infects (on average) more than one healthy mink, mink populations are not reservoirs. (You don't need much animal-to-human transmission for it to count as a reservoir, so that's an almost irrelevant point and I don't know why you're focusing on it.)

> Good luck chasing down the smaller rodents. Better not miss a single spot!

They didn't eradicate smallpox by vaccinating every human. I'd encourage you to look it up… maybe start at that Wikipedia page you linked me?

How about you explain to me your proposal for SARS-2 eradication, and then I’ll explain why it’s unrealistic?

Why do you think I'd be any better at it than you? I'm saying it's within others' capabilities, but I'm not vain enough to believe it's within my own (without some training, at the least).

>considering that there has only ever been one RCT done on SARS-2, and it showed no significant difference for its primary endpoint (self-infection). It didn't measure community spread, presumably because actually measuring that is extremely difficult, which is exactly why no study exists to confirm your statement.

This argument only makes sense if you think it also makes sense to disregard all non-RCT evidence for transmissibility, such as the number and momentum of droplets expelled. As the joke goes, there are no randomized controlled trials of the effectiveness of parachutes in falls from airplanes.

I'm happy to get into the philosophy of this, but you should know that mechanistic studies in the absence of RCTs are as good as useless. I can show you how to kill cancer cells in a petri dish. I can't show you how to cure cancer. They're very different beasts.

BTW I noticed you mentioned "number and momentum of droplets", which seems to suggest you're still stuck in the old respiratory droplet transmission model and aren't aware of the overwhelming evidence that SARS-2 is transmitted primarily via aerosols, which even mechanistically masks can't do anything against?

>mechanistic studies in the absence of RCTs are as good as useless.

This is of course not true. You also neglect other forms of evidence, like natural experiments:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7877582/

Demanding RCTs or bust is basically poisoning the well. And for all your "happiness" your posts have no shortage of vitriol.

Aerosols are composed of droplets which can be caught in masks, also:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28144885

> Aerosols are composed of droplets

This is backwards. Aerosols are smaller than droplets. You can’t be composed of something bigger than yourself.

Aerosol essentially means it doesn’t fall to the ground like a saliva droplet does.

—

The “natural experiment” you linked is a great example of why RCTs are so important (particularly for anything you’re proposing mandating). Saying “after masking was adopted cases went down” isn’t proof because if you look at the non-mask areas, cases also went down during the period.

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I’m on mobile so can’t dig up the quote but I’d really recommend reading Medical Nihilism by Stegenga. You seem to have a backwards view of evidentiary standards. That is to say, most findings are false (Ionnidis has a famous paper on this too). That’s why RCTs and the like are so incredibly important.

I could be a novice in this subject matter so please correct me if I'm wrong but I think that a state board certified Ocular Immunologist with an active license to practice would know a lot more about masks than an Information Technology expert...which part did I miss? Are you letting your emotions get the best of you?

Do you hear yourself calling for muzzles to be put on people?

There’s a lot of people agreeing and disagree with your perspective here. Individual opinions on what Rand Paul said are frankly irrelevant to the underlying discussion here. There are many intelligent people on both sides of this debate and for either side to preemptively conclude that they are right and the other side needs to be silenced (by private for-profit companies) is incredibly naive thinking.

If an issue is hotly debated among the public you have to allow open debate on it. I don’t care how right you believe you are or how important you believe it is for people to agree with you, this type of thinking paves a road to hell.

If you give private companies the ability to silence others I promise you at some point they’ll eventually silence you and that’s really all that matters to this discussion. Who cares about Rand Paul’s opinion, what I care about is why some people feel a private company who runs an essential 21st communications platform should have the power to abuse that power and silence others who disagree with them.

Especially an elected official.

I am vaccinated and still wear a mask but censoring an elected official over this is just disgusting.

I don't know how anyone who cares about our democracy can be for this.

The article links to YouTube's copyright strikes policy, but the relevant one is this: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9891785?hl=en Content moderation is the default, expected behavior of any host. Unmoderated places turn into shitholes like 4chan that no one wants to visit, or used to coordinate violence like when Facebook wasn't moderating content in the Burmese language.

If someone posts something to my computer that I don't want there for any reason, including conscience, I will delete it. That's not controversial at all really.

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