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

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

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.

Sure, there is a reason that in Germany they moved from "any mask" to "medical" mask to requiring FFP2/(K)N95 masks.

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...

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

> 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...

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 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.

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."

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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…

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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".

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

But you knew that already.

[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...

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%?

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

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.

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

This is not a conclusive settled fact.

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.

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...

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

> 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.

Another one ...

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/

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

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

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_...

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.

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?

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.)

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...

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

"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.

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

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

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).

Vs

Telephone call in reporting from the paper you linked.

Which one is more scientifically reliable I wonder?

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 :))

> 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

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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 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!

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. )

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

That seems a decent summary of all studies ...

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.

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

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.

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.

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 ...

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.

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.

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 leaving your house also might help people.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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."

> 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?

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."

> 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...

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.

> 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.

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.

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)

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/

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...

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

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.

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)

* 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.

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

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

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.

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

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)

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.

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."

(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?

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.

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.

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 legal responsibility 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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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

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...

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".

There are at least five mechanisms by which a filter can stop particles from getting through. Only one of them depends on the gaps being smaller than the particles.

Briefly,

1. Big particles don't fit between the fibers of the filter. Think fish in a fish net. This is called sieving.

2. Particles too small for sieving but heavier than the surrounding flow don't make the turns as well as the surrounding flow when the flow goes around the fibers. The particles can get embedded in the fibers. This mechanism is called inertial impaction.

3. The smallest might be too small to actually be affected much by the flow of the surrounding fluid through the filter. The move by diffusion, and many will randomly hit the fibers and get stuck.

4. Particles too big for diffusion but too light for inertial impaction still can run into fibers and get stuck. This is called interception.

5. Some filters have an electrostatic charge which can help trap particles.

The effectiveness of sieving, inertial impaction, and interception all follow S shaped curves that start out low for small particles, then at some point start rising, and then level out. The sieving curve's rise is almost vertical. The rise for inertial impaction is steep but not nearly as steep as it is for sieving. The curve for interception's rise is much more relaxed.

The effectiveness for diffusion goes the other way. Much more effective for very small particles, then above some size drops down and is low from then one.

When you put all these together, you get a curve that is effective at the small end, and at some point as size goes up effectiveness drops, reaching a minimum, and then rises again to reach high effectiveness for particles above some certain size.

More detail here [1].

[1] http://donaldsonaerospace-defense.com/library/files/document...

and got downvoted into oblivion. No meta comment, just the facts on mask ratings.

Says a lot about hn.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

edit: typo

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?

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?

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

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

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.

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”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

Remember the Hunter Biden's laptop story?

And it works.

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.

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?

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

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.

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

Why not just view this as moderation?

This viewpoint makes it a lot less sinister, in my opinion.

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

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.

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

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.

Here's the full video:

https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/1424399282447298563

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

The major underlying factor behind the deaths (apart from just old age) is obesity, secondly probably air pollution, but these factors are ignored.

Why not forget about the future and younger generation - they don't matter - we need to save the people that are going to die soon anyway at _all costs_! \s

I think you protest too much about simply wearing a mask or getting a shot.

Go ahead and check the pre-vaccine data - there is no indication that the extreme mitigations did anything.

And you do realize that in the past month Florida has 3x as many deaths as California, while being a much smaller state.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/05/18/coronalinks-5-18-20-wh...

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261286v...

https://www.ft.com/content/6bd88b7d-3386-4543-b2e9-0d5c6fac8...

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

My point was just about putting a contextless “600k omg” in perspective

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/0...

The pandemic creates challenges that are uniquely tuned to impact the American "rugged individualism" approach to problem solving that works well in most circumstances. Pandemic mitigation is a serious collective action problem (at the limit, it wouldn't take more than total isolation for four weeks to completely burn the virus out... And that's never going to happen in the United States, nor should anyone expect it to).

I would love a source for this, because "rugged individualism" is the reason why US has the worst healthcare and homelessness of developed nations.

That's false by a large margin. The US rate of homelessness has been massively reduced over the past 20-30 years and is comparable to Austria.

The US homelessness rate is far below Sweden, France, Britain, Australia, Canada. It's also below the Netherlands.

The housing first program by the US worked exceptionally well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeless_...

If you're at serious risk of death you want to be in a US hospital. I hate the trend of conflating "access to affordable healthcare" with the actual healthcare itself.

It does seem to do a decent job of encouraging and rewarding entrepreneurism.

But of course Covid is killing people, so we should abandon centuries of liberal democratic tradition and hard fought freedoms to continue the great work we've done stopping it.

I'm entirely confused by this sentiment. What's been abandoned? Serious question, I have no clue what people mean when they post stuff like this.

And yes, of course I suspected that was the case. But now I know. And this wasn't some kind of ploy—given my understanding of American history I genuinely do not know what someone (you) might have meant by "abandon centuries of liberal democratic tradition and hard fought freedoms". The pandemic response measures seems basically normal to me, in the context of how the US usually operates, in practice. Mild and tame, even. Progress we gain in fits and starts, regressions here and there, often pretty terrible for long stretches of time. Liberty-limiting measures during emergencies, including other pandemics, are typical. We evidently didn't abandon the project of liberal democracy any of those dozens of other, often worse, times when liberty's been more restricted and even heading toward, in the moment, being further restricted, if that project remains as something that can yet be abandoned, so what should I think is meant by that claim? It's either that the writer has a different understanding of the lay of the land, so believes all the above context is incorrect (why? Perhaps we've read entirely different history books? Who knows), or knows something about what's going on, that I don't. It looks like it's the former—unless the eviction moratorium was a bad example of the kind of thing you meant.

Regardless, call me a fanatic, but a big part of individual rights, and I believe liberal democracy, not just libertarianism, is not to be subject to other people's panic. Whether that is a border wall or its enforced mobility and gathering restrictions, there are things the government should just not be allowed to do, because they allow for a tyranny of the majority.

There have been discussions, long before covid and largely precipitated by Trump, about how our system only works if we all generally follow some norms and don't abandon them in some kind of populist panic. I would argue this is what's happened here.

It's not acceptable that there are magic words (science says, "public health is a real thing that matters" as you say) that anyone can say that allows government to bypass civil liberties and impose stuff on people. Freedoms only actually exist if there is weight behind them and they can't just be discarded when someone shouts that lives are at stake.

For me it's not a question of disagreeing with any science about how covid is transmitted or vaccines or severity. People should behave sensibly about it and do what they can to limit the impact. Giving power to government just creates populist measures designed to cater to the masses and make them feel good (exactly like a border wall). This is not a power government should have. Call me a fanatic (religious type as you say)

If you say instead that it is a legit function of government, but shouldn't be used in this case because on balance the risk is too small to sacrifice liberty for, that's certainly a discussion that could be had.

As a libertarian I wholeheartedly reject this fig leaf of "freedom" touted by anti-maskers. Freedom is an ability to choose the right thing, not simply being a contrarian for contrarianism's sake. I think hard drugs should be legal, but I similarly wouldn't support people becoming junkies to spite society.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

If something is 10 times less effective, it’s basically not even effective in comparison to what’s possible.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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?

Wearing masks is usually only a minor inconvenience. I'm gobsmacked how it's become such a battleground.

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!).

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.

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.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/nhcs/intubation-ventilator-...

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.

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?

Maybe it is minor inconvenience for you but for me its a huge inconvenience.

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.

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.

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.

That to me suggests you've made that position part and parcel of your identity.

> 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)

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'.

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?

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

How is increasing the odds of my infecting my immunocompromised mother doing me a favour?

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.

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")

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.

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.

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.

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

Exactly. We're lacking a crucial number. So wear a mask.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Not true.

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

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

The government has been telling them to censor or else.

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.

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 ?

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.

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.

Allowing them to suspend people at their discretion is far better than the alternative.

So, who is really in charge?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We are reaching/past the point where open speech is no longer allowed. That makes next steps scary.

(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...)

They're not banning a political party at all. They are banning some individuals for breaking the terms of service.

Do masks stop the spread of bullets? If not, you are spreading misinformation and need to be banned.

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

Have a look at Fig 3.A from this study:

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/36/eabd3083

Don't defend racists by pretending they are just thinking outside the box.

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

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.

Edit: there is a lot of pseudo-science on all these matters motivated by biases.

> 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.

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.

> 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:

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

—

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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 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?

Indeed, his own licensing body (which to be clear has not been accepted by any organizations) utilizes a certifying exam _written by_ Rand Paul, and is open book. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this exam, he did pass.

Oh, he was also the first member of Senator to test positive for COVID. And after being exposed, and tested, continued to attend Senate events and lunches and use Senate facilities including the gym because in his "expert opinion" it was "extremely unlikely" he had COVID.

So let's perhaps dial back your appeal to authority some.

My Master's degree in Biomedical Science would probably beg to differ with you, but anyway.

I don't claim equal KNOWLEDGE to a physician. Let's be clear on that. And given that this is my first post on this article. What's being stated here is not that Paul is necessarily "factually incorrect", it's that he is, to his own benefit, spinning and "refactoring" studies to imply they showed results that they didn't. And given, according to you, that he has this knowledge, he should be aware of concepts like reducing transmissability, or that a study that talks about the ability of a virus to live ON or IN the material of a mask says very little about said mask's ability to mitigate infection from person A to person B or vice versa.

The fact that you're supportive of stifling a scientific discussion and supportive.of censorship makes me think youre a fascist and wonder about your credentials.

Science is all about questioning. Arrogant assholes that believe they know the absolute truth are often wrong(and fascist).

And the fact remains...usage of masks is not settled science by any stretch of the imagination.

And for you to claim such and support stifling a conversation about it is disengenuous and makes me think you probably have more of a Masturbation degree in the Biological sciences than a Master's degree.

And if anyone should know that it’s a fucking MD.

So take your personal attacks and fuck off with them.

A discussion about an inconclusive subject=willful misrepresentation to you?

Barry Marshall, Semmelweis, and Galileo would like to have a word.

Fascists are not interested in the scientific process of discussion or democracy.

Over half the country thinks a policy of wearing a dirty rag on your face until the waiter brings the breadsticks is stupid and unscientific.

Over half the country has not had the full vaccine. If it was a vote it would have lost.

But fascists aren't interested in democracy or discussion. Fascists are interested in demonizing and suppressing their opponents.

No. This is a disingenuous depiction at best.

Study: "Do masks hold the virus in the cloth/material and can it survive on that cloth/material".

Rand Paul: "Studies (points to the one above) show that masks are unable to prevent the spread of COVID and doesn't stop it".

That's not inconclusivity - we don't know "everything" about COVID. That's describing a very limited study as having extremely different conclusions. And what you do learn or should learn in college-level science is that the scope of such studies is specifically limited. Rand Paul, as a physician, should understand that concept. But, needing it to fit a different agenda, he takes the time to make a professionally produced video that repeatedly describes a study that does not say or attempt to say anything close to what he says it does.

Again, that's not "open discussion of inconclusive subjects", that's misrepresenting other people's work to meet your political needs.

Numerous studies DO show that masks are unable to prevent the spread of COVID and stop it.

Here's a publication stating that cloth Mask usage INCREASED chances of infection.

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

Here's a collection of studies showing the ineffectiveness of face masks.

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

This is still an open discussion but the people like you continue to suppress dissent and demonize the opposition because either your ego is so big or your virtue signaling is so strong, that you can't admin you might be wrong.

If Galileo was around right now he would have been deplatformed for trying to tell the world that the Earth revolves around the Sun which was counter to the narrative.

Study: in simple terms, "can COVID live on and in masks"

Rand Paul: "this study shows that these masks don't prevent COVID".

I'm not talking about other studies. I'm not talking about anything else. There are plenty of inconclusive and concerning studies.

But Rand Paul, who as you keep reminding us, is far more educated than all of us fascists, wilfully and repeatedly held up the specific study above as being "undeniable proof" of masks being a problem. They may be a problem. But that study doesn't show it. It doesn't imply it. It does nothing other than talk about the ability or lack thereof of the virus to grow and survive in the material of the mask itself.

And he knows that, as an educated scientist.

And he doesn't care. He also knows that people will see keywords and draw matching conclusions to the factually incorrect statements about the study that he makes, repeatedly.

That's why he got banned.

Your martyrdom is unbecoming. And your assumptions of my beliefs on the matter are entirely broken because you're too focused on foaming at the mouth about fascists demonizing you while comparing yourself and Rand Paul to Galileo.

I work in EMS as a critical care paramedic. Every year I get the flu vaccine because I'm around vulnerable populations a lot. My girlfriend and my step daughter don't get these vaccines, and rather than suppressing and demonizing them, I think that's entirely reasonable, because they're not around those populations as I am.

I also have never said - because I don't believe - that every person needs to be vaccinated for COVID.

For someone who has spent a large chunk of these discussions building up these strawmen, your radar needs a lot more calibration.

He's right.

Whether he's wrong about that one article or not (I'm not spending time looking into some technical little gotcha), there are numerous articles that corroborate his claim.

Fascists deny alternative ideas by any means necessary including technicalitys even if the spirit of the idea is correct.

It's what fascists do.

> It’s what fascists do.

Nick, you’d be wise to listen to your own advice.

It is a fact that masks reduce the spread of disease.

They are not a silver bullet, but a tool for mitigation. The idea is to layer multiple risk-mitigating techniques.

Masks on their own are not enough, but masks plus distancing plus hand washing plus travel restrictions plus vaccines plus whatever else is somewhat effective combines to be something much more effective.

In one comment, you say to “stop spreading misinformation” and in another you say “numerous studies show that masks don’t prevent covid” and follow up with the comments about fascists.

You’re literally doing what you say fascists do.

The scariest part to me is that there's not even a hint of curiosity in their minds about what they're putting in their bodies and the changes in society happening. If there was they would be a little more open to questioning the narrative because if they even did a little digging they would see things arent black and white as presented.

Bill Maher is liberal and HES questioning this stuff.

This kind of authoritarian mentality has always led to negatives places for humankind.

Less than 50% of people have taken the full vaccine in America.

If it was a vote it would have lost.

There's a lot of people who agree with us.

The majority of people in the better states are fully vaccinated.

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

> There's a lot of people who agree with us.

Yeah, and they're mostly poorly-educated people in lesser states. (The sort of people you'd find at r/NoNewNormal. Right, Nick?)

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

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

Not that you ignorantly called some states 'good states'.

Not that you cyberstalked me.

But that you're so arrogant that you can't even fathom over half the country...150 million people... disagreeing with you, so you demonize them as poorly-educated and dismiss them.

Democracy doesn't work for your wrongheaded views so your solution is to demonize,attack, and suppress the opposition.

Fascists are fascinating pieces of work!

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!?

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.

No, you're not. Go read the comment again.

Again, they literally said eradication (extinction) was possible. I said it wasn’t. I didn’t misread at all.

Would you go into surgery with a physician who wears the same mask on a daily basis?

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.

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.

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.

It's... a medical school. An elite one, no less, doing public outreach. Effectively that link is a review paper written for non-experts, it's certainly not "opinion journalism". I mean, it links to studies throughout the piece. It absolutely represents (and I don't understand why you think this is controversial) virtually uniformly held scientific consensus on this topic.

I mean, I don't know what to say. If you don't trust doctors about medical issues, preferring to read pieces from (literal) Swiss conspiracy theory sites and citing isolated single Vietnamese studies, then I guess I can't help you.

But yes: SWPRS and sites like that are LYING TO YOU. Very effectively, since now you trust them more than you do one of the best med schools in the country.

vs

An opinion piece.

The absolute state of Covid fanatics.

I went and clicked on the first two links in that collection, both claimed to show "little to no evidence for the effectiveness of face masks in the general population":

Both were studies of mask POLICY (i.e. does TELLING people to wear a mask work?) and not mask USE (do the masks actually work?). The first was just a historical review of previous pandemics with no ability to look at case studies.

The second looked only at Denmark, an environment where masks aren't common, and didn't even track whether or not the participants actually wore them. All they checked was if they were "recommended" or not. And the kicker? They ACTUALLY DID find a statistically significant benefit to mask recommendation, just not a large one. The inclusion in your magic "collection" is basically a lie.

Now I read two links carefully. Your turn: go back to that UCSF site and read some of the links there.

You mean epidemiological studies on communities?

Ok....

Masks may or may not work as a stop for particles but do they stop spread on a community level?

"Mask policy" - what a government organization (DOH, city council, what have you) states as its recommended behavior, action, enforcement practices.

And has _absolutely nothing to do with_ epidemiological studies on communities. Nothing. Whatsoever.

Policy: 'you should do X'

Epidemiological study: a controlled investigation into what happens when people do X, when they don't, including how many do, how many don't, and all the circumstances surrounding it.

The first three articles:

1. Meta analysis of mask usage

2. "''A Danish randomized controlled trial with 6000 participants, published in the Annals of Internal...."''

3. """large randomized controlled trial with close to 8000 participants"""

You clearly didn't click on the first two articles like you said you did.

You're a liar and a fascist.

I'm done here.

I'll thank you to keep your sloppy, inaccurate, careless personal attacks to yourself.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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...

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.