__blockcipher__

The issue is that as soon as you set that precedent, it’s only a matter of time before it extends beyond iCloud. That’s the problem with doing any device-level scanning. This is dystopian and scary. And yes I understand the technology in its current iteration. The current form has problems (weaponizing collisions etc) but the real issue comes with future developments.

No misconstrual needed. This technology is genuinely bad. It scans images against an arbitrary government-owned black-box database. There’s no guarantee that it’s only CSAM.

> in some cases even the defendant's lawyers don't usually see the images themselves in preparation for a trial, just a description of the contents

Man that seems horrible. So you just have to trust the description is accurate? You’d think there’d at least be a “private viewing room” type thing (I get the obvious concern of not giving them a file to take home)

There’s no such thing as an “unintrusive” list. They make the lists for a reason.

> The patriot act deserves another look and possible edit.

Boy, that was the understatement of the year.

The patriot act doesn’t need an edit or another look. It needs to be completely abolished, yesterday.

> Rand Paul needs to have a permanent muzzle installed until covid is extinct.

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

> Aerosols are composed of droplets

This is backwards. Aerosols are smaller than droplets. You can’t be composed of something bigger than yourself.

Aerosol essentially means it doesn’t fall to the ground like a saliva droplet does.

—

The “natural experiment” you linked is a great example of why RCTs are so important (particularly for anything you’re proposing mandating). Saying “after masking was adopted cases went down” isn’t proof because if you look at the non-mask areas, cases also went down during the period.

—

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.

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

Ones showing don’t work:

DANMASK (sars-2 community self infection)

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

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

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

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

How about you explain to me your proposal for SARS-2 eradication, and then I’ll explain why it’s unrealistic?

The contagiousness is irrelevant (I’ve heard the “it’s not exponential” talking point a million times in the last year, and boy am I tired of it), but you should know that all social behaviors are contagious, and social behaviors correlate with health outcomes like cardiac disease. If you smoke your friends are likely to start too. If you sit on a couch all day your friends are more likely to, etc.

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

To be clear I’m not saying there should be a centralized authority. I’m just saying that a “use citations” rule doesn’t get around the conundrum that somebody has to evaluate the citations.

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

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

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

> Stopping the pandemic doesn't require eradicating the disease. Malaria remains endemic and largely unvaccinated, but controlled.

I'm literally responding to a comment from somebody who is advocating for eradication. That's why I pointed out that eradication is not feasible. I am well aware of the whole mitigation vs containment vs eradication distinction, and I maintain, personally, that focused protection is and was always the correct strategy to follow.

I'm happy to get into the philosophy of this, but you should know that mechanistic studies in the absence of RCTs are as good as useless. I can show you how to kill cancer cells in a petri dish. I can't show you how to cure cancer. They're very different beasts.

BTW I noticed you mentioned "number and momentum of droplets", which seems to suggest you're still stuck in the old respiratory droplet transmission model and aren't aware of the overwhelming evidence that SARS-2 is transmitted primarily via aerosols, which even mechanistically masks can't do anything against?

> That's “non-zero”; not the same thing as abundant. How do you even know R>1? I'd say “found in wild animals” is the standard for “abundant animal reservoirs”; that's “some animals can catch it from humans” which we already know.

I literally linked you a study that alleged that the virus jumped back from minks to humans. There's far more studies on the animal reservoirs, I just don't feel like doing an exhaustive literature review for the purposes of this subthread. I would strongly encourage you to start researching it since you apparently don't seem to be aware of the fact that zoos around the country are vaccinating their animals against COVID, etc. (Which BTW I disagree with but unless you want to argue that they're just vaccinating them for no reason surely that implies that they're getting infected)

There's literally mountains of evidence for you to go look at

> Smallpox had cases in practically undocumented people. The last few smallpox infections were stamped out by pre-emptive vaccinations of everyone found in the vicinity; that doesn't require the subjects to be human in principle, even if they were in this case.

Okay, good luck vaccinating not just the entire global human population but also virtually every mammal out there. Good luck chasing down the smaller rodents. Better not miss a single spot!

> I maintain we could do it.

Again, we can't. We can't even get close with our current capabilities. I agree there's a hypothetical universe where with teleportation and an infection-blocking vaccine - neither of which we have - as well as some sort of all-seeing eye, we could do it.

Yes, I agree, and that's the world I want as well. One where we don't have this notion of centralized authorities who serve as sources of truth.

People travel from all around the world to obtain US healthcare. Say what you will about affordability (I would contend that the main problem is that we don't have a free market for healthcare, we have an unholy crony capitalist hybrid system), but the quality of the healthcare itself is unparalleled anywhere in the world.

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.

There's no convincing evidence the mitigations made a real difference, especially in the long-run. I'd expect to see bodies in the streets in Sweden given that they largely avoided the ritualistic behavior that the rest of the western world engaged in.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

The problem is that you still need someone to evaluate the research. I can find a citation that says thing X, and then a different citation that says !X.

This is twice as much of a problem when public health authorities like the CDC will issue statements or guidance that is directly contrary to the clinical research, as has been done repeatedly in claiming that masks work to slow community transmission of SARS-2 despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary

Masks haven't been shown to reduce transmission, they have abundant deleterious effects upon wearing them, and they could even worsen transmission by increasing the net release of aerosols (due to the larger net volume of air moved as a result of the user inhaling air that has relatively more CO2 and therefore relatively less O2 than a normal breath; that's without accounting for the possibility that masks actually nebulize what would have been respiratory droplets into fine aerosols as the plosive force forces the droplets through the mask fiber mesh)

So even if you don't accept that we shouldn't try to fight the inevitable (which you should accept, but I don't feel like going back and forth about it), recommending mask mandates as an intervention is a foolish strategy. They've never been shown to work in an RCT and they certainly haven't worked in real-world community settings.

> And letting it run its course is going to kill a lot of people

I think you missed the point. It's running its course either way. We had insanely high mask compliance in america, even in red states, we've had on-and-off lockdowns for a year in blue areas, we've had widespread vaccination, and it's still spreading to and from vaccinated people no problem.

Furthermore you seem to not understand that different members of the population are at different risk levels. For example, people in their 20s can acquire the SARS-2 infection, beat it off, and have robust, enduring natural immunity, which will prevent them from subsequent infection and especially from transmitting it. Vaccination alone does not achieve that result. Thus why you're fighting against quicksand.

> We know SARS-CoV-2 is abundant in humans, and we know it's related to viruses with abundant animal reservoirs, but do we know that SARS-CoV-2 has abundant animal reservoirs? I wasn't aware that it did, and I wouldn't expect it to have.

Yes, it has abundant animal reservoirs. The fact you're not aware of this suggests that you are lacking some essential background info, which would explain why you are so myopically characterizing my attitude as "defeatist" rather than "obviously true".

Here's just one study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8002747/

> There is intriguing evidence that farmed mink infections (acquired from humans) have led to infection of other farm workers in turn, with a recent outbreak of a mink variant in humans in Denmark

Now on to the "defeatist" point:

> They said it was completely infeasible to eradicate smallpox, but we did – because the people actually eradicating smallpox knew how to do it.

Smallpox had no known animal or reservoirs. Compared to the SARS-2 vaccines, smallpox vaccines at the time of eradication were far more effective.

Again, you clearly lack the most rudimentary understanding of this topic. I'm not saying that as an attack but rather as a statement of fact. I would suggest starting with the Wikipedia page on the topic:

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

> The targeting of infectious diseases for eradication is based on narrow criteria, as both biological and technical features determine whether a pathogenic organism is (at least potentially) eradicable. The targeted pathogen must not have a significant non-human (or non-human-dependent) reservoir (or, in the case of animal diseases, the infection reservoir must be an easily identifiable species, as in the case of rinderpest). This requires sufficient understanding of the life cycle and transmission of the pathogen. An efficient and practical intervention (such as a vaccine or antibiotic) must be available to interrupt transmission.

Reading even just the intro paragraphs of that article should make it abundantly clear why SARS-2 cannot and will not be eradicated.

Oh, and BTW, even if we did eradicate it, which we can't, it would still exist in the bioweapon labs of every major country in the world. All it would take is one bad actor intentionally releasing it, or alternatively an accidental lab leak (which has happened with SARS-1, and SARS-2 is even easier to leak). Again, you simply haven't thought this through.

I agree :) As always, I'm replying to their absurd comment in the hopes of enlightening a more neutral bystander. I have no illusions of being able to change their mind. They seem perfectly content to make unsourced claims that go counter to everything that's ever been discovered about immunology and virology without even the slightest hint of regret.

I agree but the issue is no such study exists. Which is why I told them straight-up that their claim is not in good faith. Masks have never been shown to stop community transmission of respiratory viruses.

In fact if we back up for a bit and look at the immunology and population dynamics involved it's not even clear that we should want to slow the spread of SARS-2 or other respiratory viruses in the general population. We literally did a "stop, drop, and roll" of almost the entire global economy, got vaccines out in record time, and what do you know, SARS-2 is still ripping through the population just like it was always destined to.

We're fighting against quicksand.

Every year, ~647,000 Americans die from heart disease alone. Even if the COVID death numbers aren't over-inflated, I guarantee you that if I were to time-travel to 2019 and ask you if you think that it would be worth precipitating a global supply chain disruption, missed schooling and medical appointments for children around the globe, both first and third world, and the greatest erosion in civil liberties in Western society since at least WW2 (since we've already eclipsed 9/11 in loss of liberty, shockingly)...all over 4 million and change deaths globally, you would think that was crazy

> But if you look at how influenza stopped spreading almost completely the last year and a half you have to conclude that either unfit masks with gaps do help significantly versus respiratory viruses, or, sampling for influenza cases has been borked due to the overloading need to test for sars-cov-2.

I think it's three effects:

(1) Acute infection with respiratory virus X is protective against respiratory virus Y. This is because of the cellular interferon response (see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/778995/); basically the non-specific component of the immune system gets "revved up" and thus subsequent pathogens don't stand a chance. This might be further accentuated by the fact that SARS-2 specifically can acutely downregulate interferon response (see https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.16.252973v1), presumably to suppress the immune response against it, which would/could lead to a rebound upregulation in interferon after the initial phase of SARS-2-mediated interferon suppression

(2) Some people who actually had Influenza would have tested for COVID first, and been PCR positive because the PCR tests in the real world can stay positive for a couple months after resolution of the infection (due to the absurdly high cycle threshold that is often used). This is what you said, I'm just elaborating a bit more on how it actually happens

(3) Influenza spreads less easily than SARS-2, so it's possible the NPIs had some effect. This is my least favorite theory because the NPIs were so poor against SARS-2 and measures like school closures haven't been shown to reduce Influenza. My guess is stuff like people avoiding family members during 2020 holidays etc did decrease the connections between social nodes a bit, so there was some effect but not a huge one from the altered behavior

You are actively spreading disinformation. SARS-2 ("covid") will never be extinct. It is completely infeasible to eradicate a highly infectious zoonotic respiratory virus w/ abundant animal reservoirs.

> but cloth masks work very well for reducing the likelihood that a covid-positive person will transmit the virus

You cannot possibly honestly make this statement in good faith, considering that there has only ever been one RCT done on SARS-2, and it showed no significant difference for its primary endpoint (self-infection). It didn't measure community spread, presumably because actually measuring that is extremely difficult, which is exactly why no study exists to confirm your statement.

Indeed, all the studies on masking for transmission of respiratory viruses more broadly - for example, Influenza - were quite clear that masks are ineffective in healthcare workers, who have better compliance and skill than random members of the public when it comes to wearing these things. In particular https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4420971/, published April 2015, showed that:

> 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.

This is a false narrative. Both Elastic and Amazon are making a killing.

> Elastic (NYSE: ESTC) ("Elastic"), the company behind Elasticsearch and the Elastic Stack, announced strong results for its fourth quarter and full fiscal year (ended April 30, 2021). Total revenue was $177.6 million, an increase of 44% year-over-year, or 39% on a constant currency basis.