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?!?
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.
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.
Funny how one's enemies are always the lazy ignorant ones.
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.
(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?
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."
Or is it disinformation to say, "the rythmn method is an effective form of birth control"?
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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
YouTube doesn't have any legal responsibility to the public discourse.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Then maybe you can tell us why blue states NJ, NY, and MA have the highest death rates in the US?
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...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
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?
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.
> 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.
Face to Face, and in the past, we were much more civil to one another.
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".
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.
That's fine. YouTube doesn't want to host it, because in their view it's harmful. What's the problem?
They could be. Or do you just mean physical handicaps?
edit: typo
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.
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.
which Rand Paul personally invented, and he wrote the cerificarion exam that he took.
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?
It means he is being intellectually dishonest. He has a long history of such behavior, and worse, he should know better.
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.
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
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.
> 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.
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's not on their level and his opinion on the matter has zero importance other than his vote in the Senate.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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!
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”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
I agree, though I suspect we will disagree on how to go about that.
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.
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.
Masks are great if used correctly, otherwise they are massive vector of the virus and everyone is taking it with them.
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.
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.
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?