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Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

The actual science on the effectiveness of masks is mixed. While they can reduce the risks of viral transmission in certain limited circumstances there's no scientific consensus on masks as a widespread public health measure. If anyone believes the science is settled then please read this article.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/93803

While Google (YouTube) is a private company and can censor whatever they want for any reason (or no reason at all) it is highly concerning that their near monopoly status gives them the power to shut down public debate. Even if you think Sen. Paul is wrong on this particular issue, how will you feel when YouTube decides to censor a political viewpoint that you support?

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Rand is also a doctor and mentions peer-reviewed studies in the video in question. It's not a lunatic ranting point of view.

Pick up a history book. When has the side that's for censorship of opposing views and burning books EVER been the good guys?

YouTube is in the wrong here.

Rand may be a doctor (opthalmologist). But he is a politician first and foremost. He has consistently played semantics throughout the pandemic to try and win political points.

In this case, he is arguing that cloth masks don't work. If he wasn't playing politics, his argument would be, "we need to get n95 masks into the hands of the public". But he is pretending that option doesn't exist and keeps arguing that "masks don't work" just to contradict public health officials.

This is a cynical take. Rand Paul is a libertarian-leaning conservative who is deeply concerned with government overreach. It makes perfect sense that he would criticize the effectiveness of masks in the context of mask mandates, none of which (to my knowledge) require n95 masks. The only thing worse than government overreach is government overreach that doesn't serve its stated purpose.

So he is right to criticize mask mandates because they aren't specific enough? If that is the case, maybe he should ask that they make the mandate more specific. Of course, what he is really saying is, we should not have mask mandates anywhere regardless of whether it could save lives or not.

Many people that listen to Rand come away thinking masks don't work at all. But the fact is that n95 masks work pretty well. He's using misdirection to argue his point that governments shouldn't mandate masks, no matter what.

> So he is right to criticize mask mandates because they aren't specific enough?

why do you think this is a legitimate comment? we're talking about medically prescriptive legislation intended to save lives. the fact that the laws arent specific enough is central to paul's problem with the federal government in the first place.

> But the fact is that n95 masks work pretty well.

as if to prove the point, you go straight to n95s. id wager the highest % of n95s worn by americans was <25. the cdc started by telling americand not to wear masks at all ffs.

> Many people that listen to Rand come away thinking masks don't work at all

...yeah thats kinda the point. limited efficacy in narrow circumstances. hardly seems worth the resources spent, including government reach.

Find me a comment or proposed amendment from Rand Paul that says we should be wearing not masks. I sure can't.

It's obvious, bad faith handwaving.

Cloth masks don't work cough as well as n95 masks cough. So we shouldn't ask people to wear masks at all!

> Rand is also a doctor and mentions peer-reviewed studies in the video in question. It's not a lunatic ranting point of view.

I wonder if the problem isn't that he's not from the correct end of the political spectrum.

Remember how you would get banned from Facebook for suggesting that the lab leak theory was a possibility? Then major social networks reversed their positions. What changed in the meantime, other than the president?

>I wonder if the problem isn't that he's not from the correct end of the political spectrum.

Well... of course that's the problem. A politician posting an unsupported video about how we need to wear masks even at home and outside to 'pull together and beat this thing' would not have their video pulled, because it's the _approved_ kind of nonsense.

I agree with Rand Paul.

For context, typically, I don’t go to YouTube for my public debate. I go to it for mindless entertainment and music, so my point of view might be alien to you.

I give money to politicians like Rand Paul, that I agree with, specifically so they can publish their views without being beholden to giant corporate sponsors. I feel he ought to publish this on his own website with the campaign funds that I gave him.

If he is somehow doing this in his capacity as a Senator, then he ought to use government funds to do the same.

I don’t think government officials should be allowed to strongarm or browbeat private citizens (i.e. YouTube) into giving them free publishing and promotion.

YouTube, LLC is a Delaware limited liability corporation, not a citizen.

> While they can reduce the risks of viral transmission in certain limited circumstances there's no scientific consensus on masks as a widespread public health measure.

It is hard to get good data to support a scientific consensus on how policy changes affect a large group of people. Running a controlled experiment is nearly impossible and looking at correlations is problematic because there are many confounding variables.

Masks could be very effective at controlling pandemic group (reducing R by 20% could change growth into decay); whereas masks not being effective would result in people being less comfortable and excess waste of masks. There are additional psychological effects of masks that are more majorly negative: encouraging people to social distance less, mask wearing as a political statement, etc, but if those were not an issue, the safe default would be to wear masks when infection a preventable possibility (interacting with people outside the home).

I agree Google should not do this, but they're hardly shutting Rand Paul out of public debate. He is one of 50 people in the world with access to the floor of the US Senate, the authoritative forum for national public debate. He also has his own communications team and access to a dedicated press corps that only covers the US Congress. Google has no power to keep him from spreading whatever message he wants to spread publicly.

>I agree Google should not do this, but they're hardly shutting Rand Paul out of public debate. He is one of 50 people in the world with access to the floor of the US Senate, the authoritative forum for national public debate.

And you don't see how that's a much bigger reason that it's a problem, and not a reason it's ok?

100 people (senators)? Not sure where 50 comes from if I'm misunderstanding.

Perhaps 50 who are downplaying the risks of Coronavirus and the effectiveness of government mitigation strategies?

I think your assessment of fact is mostly reasonable, but claiming that Google has no power to censor him is a stretch. Google is a primary driver of information discovery, and this is an act not just of inhibiting discovery but one of making it unavailable. Rand Paul is an MD elected member of congress. Even if he were not an MD, his argumentation is representative of the people. This is egregious. I think anything said in congress should be retained, and I welcome any opposing argument.

You describe the science as "mixed", but I think you mean "lacking". Saying the evidence is mixed implies there are some studies showing that mask wearing is effective, and others that it is not.

That said, I think that article is expecting far too high of standards. Is there scientific consensus on any public policy measures at the level of rigor the author is asking for? What I find annoying about that article is that he doesn't even hint that it is possible to make a study to get the data we need. How do you plan on doing a randomly controlled study on mask mandates? How do you make a placebo mask mandate?

> can reduce the risks of viral transmission

My understanding is that even the hardest of the hardcore mask proponents agree that wearing a mask only stops you from transmitting it to others (if you already have it), not contracting it in the first place - that's why it's always been the doctors and nurses in the surgery room wearing masks and not the patient.

You don't think doctors and nurses wear masks to keep from getting what their patient has?

In infectious disease cases, medical personnel will absolutely don n95 respirators or better. Because they can absolutely protect you.

Medical staff wear surgical masks during surgery to keep from getting spittle in open wounds.

Regular cloth masks probably don't protect anyone that much. But the answer is not to say well, masks don't work. The answer is to tell everyone to get n95 masks or equivalent.

Your understanding is completely incorrect. N95 prevents you from getting the virus first and foremost. The only question was how well does the mask need to be put on, but that's a training issue, much like washing your hands properly is a training issue.

Let's not call it censorship, let's call it what it is, pushing their agenda. It's 100% fine for youtube to push an agenda, but calling it censorship misleads people to think that they are otherwise objective.

I think most people when they hear the word "censorship", at least in the US, understand that it's generally not objective and pushing an agenda.

would one say that fox news censors leftist viewpoints?

No. They have a selection bias because they're pretty anti-leftist but that's different than a purportedly open-platform (like youtube) selectively removing videos from one side of the political spectrum for whatever excuse they can muster.

i 'm sorry i don't see the difference, it's a false "holier-than-thou" narrative . It's akin to how some immigrants call themselves expats

Youtube is very evidently not an open platform, they just edit their programming post-upload (should call it post-gramming)

You don't see the difference between a news organization with a broadcast license (for those transmitting OTA), anchors, editorial, and research staff and a website that advertises that _anyone with a camera_ can upload content?

America's funniest home videos was similar to youtube. What i dont get is why YouTube is not required to have a tv license

AFHV had a robust editorial process. They only showed the clips that Bob Saget or his editors picked out.

You can upload a video right now to youtube and it is _immediately_ available to anyone who can access the site. It's also really hard to compare the two because one is a scheduled broadcast TV and the other is on demand.

The license isn't a function of random people submitting content it's a function of whether you're broadcasting to the airwaves on frequencies controlled by the FCC, which all the major networks do. Media companies that are cable-only or internet-only don't fall under the purview of the FCC.

That's why you can't swear on ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, etc but you can show gratuitous explicative-laden orgies on HBO.

youtube auto-identifies music and copyrighted material. It auto-demonetizes (meaning it makes them undiscoverable) a bunch of material from covid related to its favourite flavor of sexual activism, it removes a bunch of stuff after its own moderators review it, it removes another bunch of stuff that other users report, another bunch that various governments' trolls report, and i m sure i m also missing many other cases. Just because they offload a big part of their curation to users doesnt mean it isn't there. In no way can youtube be considered an open forum. There must be a hard threshold above which a platform stops being considered an open forum.

Indeed TV license is not the right word, i mean that they should be legally responsible for the content they broadcast the same way that classic broadcasters are. If not in the US, at least i would expect the rest of the world (which has stricter requirements for broadcast TV) to have done that already.

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