Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who is also a medical doctor, isn't one to mince words. He certainly reminded all of Twitter of that on Saturday with a tweet that basically called on YouTube to kiss his a**. Sen. Paul was temporarily suspended from the platform in August for supposedly violating "misinformation" policies about the Wuhan coronavirus. As Leah reported earlier this month, he's made it a New Year's resolution to quit the platform.
The tweet, which questioned "Does this mean snot-nosed censors at YouTube will come to my office and kiss my … and admit I was right?" shared Apoorva Mandavilli's article for The New York Times, "The C.D.C. concedes that cloth masks do not protect against the virus as effectively as other masks."
From Mandavilli's article:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday clarified its stance on various kinds of masks, acknowledging that the cloth masks frequently worn by Americans do not offer as much protection as surgical masks or respirators.
While this disparity is widely known to the general public, the update marks the first time the C.D.C. has explicitly addressed the differences. The agency’s website also no longer refers to a shortage of respirators.
...
According to the C.D.C.’s new description of masks, loosely woven cloth products provide the least protection and layered finely woven products offer more. Well-fitting disposable surgical masks and KN95s — another type of respirator mask — are more protective than all cloth masks, and well-fitting respirators, including N95s, offer the highest level of protection.
The agency urged Americans to “wear the most protective mask you can that fits well and that you will wear consistently.”
As is mentioned in the excerpt above, this has pretty much become common knowledge.
Last month, Spencer covered how Dr. Leana Wen, a medical analyst for CNN, said "don't wear a cloth mask — cloth masks are little more than facial decorations — there's no place for them in light of Omicron" when discussing holiday celebrations.
Paul, who made such a point back in August, has just been ahead of the curve.
In the three minute video, which has always been available on Rumble, Paul cites a Danish and Vietnamese study raising concerns about the efficacy of masks. He did, however, emphasize that N95 masks do work, pointing out that doctors and nurses wear such masks.
It's taken the CDC over five months and the mutation of the highly transmissible Omicron variant to acknowledge as much, though.
Soon after his suspension, Paul held a media call where Townhall asked if he saw such censorship as a pattern.
From my August reporting:
During a Tuesday morning press call, Townhall asked if Sen. Paul saw such suspensions as "a pattern," to which he responded "without question." He explained that the pattern is "basically Google and YouTube are becoming an arm of the government" and that "this is where there's a question of whether the First Amendment actually ought to apply."
Sen. Paul said "for the most part the First Amendment doesn't apply to these entities." Earlier in the call, Paul acknowledged that as "a Libertarian-leaning senator," he thinks "private companies have the right to ban me if they want to."
That isn't the end of the conversation, though. Because, Sen. Paul pointed out, "if they become an organ of the government, if they are taking CDC pronouncements, which I think there is science on the other side of it, to argue against the CDC, which has become very politicized, if they are taking government edicts and then enforcing them, are they a private entity any longer, or are they becoming an organ of the government?"
And, it's a concerning pattern which, "whether or not it offends the First Amendment or not" is "terrible for the idea of speech and the idea that we can get to truth by hearing more points of view, not less."
Democrats have called for more censorship, though, with Paul at the time also raising concerns about the Health Misinformation Act introduced in July by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), which would hold social media companies accountable for allowing the spread of "health-related misinformation" on their platforms during "public health emergencies."
Even President Joe Biden wants social media platforms to be stricter.
Also in July, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki confirmed they are working with Facebook. "We're flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation," she shared during a press conference.
More recently, during remarks the president gave last Thursday, Biden renewed his call to social media platforms. "I make a special appeal to social media companies and media outlets: Please deal with the misinformation and disinformation that’s on your shows. It has to stop," he said.
Our friends at Twitchy had a particularly fun time highlighting Sen. Paul's tweet.