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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 th

by Bud 5y ago

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.

superkuh 5y ago
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.
- rwcarlsen 5y ago
  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.
- __blockcipher__ 5y ago
  > 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/); 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 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
  - totetsu 5y ago
    Influenza rates reduced in New Zealand which never had wide scale community infection of covid19.
syshum 5y ago
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...
__blockcipher__ 5y ago
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/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4420971/, published April 2015, showed that: > 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. 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.
- zzzeek 5y ago
  > 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.
brighton36 5y ago
If he's an elected official, charlatan or not, he's the representative of citizens. I have no doubt you're right. But it's still legal to be wrong. (And still our legal obligation to let the wrong speak) don't forget that the history of science was paved with people who were wrong..
pupdogg 5y ago
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?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
gengelbro 5y ago
Do you hear yourself calling for muzzles to be put on people?
kypro 5y ago
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.
- telxoss 5y ago
  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.

by Bud 5y ago

superkuh 5y ago

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.

rwcarlsen 5y ago
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.
__blockcipher__ 5y ago
> 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/); 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 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
- totetsu 5y ago
  Influenza rates reduced in New Zealand which never had wide scale community infection of covid19.

syshum 5y ago

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...

__blockcipher__ 5y ago

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/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4420971/, published April 2015, showed that: > 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. 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.

zzzeek 5y ago
> 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.

brighton36 5y ago

If he's an elected official, charlatan or not, he's the representative of citizens. I have no doubt you're right. But it's still legal to be wrong. (And still our legal obligation to let the wrong speak) don't forget that the history of science was paved with people who were wrong..

pupdogg 5y ago

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?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

gengelbro 5y ago

Do you hear yourself calling for muzzles to be put on people?

kypro 5y ago

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.

telxoss 5y ago
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.