YouTube Removes a Second Video from U.S. Senator Rand Paul, Suspending Him Over Alleged #COVID19 Misinformation

Big Tech is behaving badly. Again.

YouTube has suspended Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky for seven days for saying what even President Joe Biden’s former COVID-19 adviser says about the efficacy of cloth masks against the coronavirus.

“Most of the masks you get over the counter don’t work,” the Republican senator said in a three-minute video published this week on Google's video-sharing platform. “They don’t prevent infection.”

He added, “Saying cloth masks work when they don’t actually risks lives as someone may choose to care for a loved one with COVID while only wearing a cloth mask. This is not only bad advice, but also potentially deadly misinformation.”

YouTube quickly removed the video, which Paul’s office later shared on a rival website.

The senator’s video violated YouTube’s policy on COVID-19 medical misinformation, a company spokesperson told the New York Times. It’s true. YouTube’s policy explicitly bars users from sharing videos that promote the notion “that masks do not play a role in preventing the contraction or transmission of COVID-19.”

Paul’s careful distinction about cloth masks is being ignored here.

“We apply our policies consistently across the platform, regardless of speaker or political views, and we make exceptions for videos that have additional context such as countervailing views from local health authorities,” the spokesperson said.

The weird thing isn’t that YouTube is enforcing its policies, but that it characterizes Paul’s remarks, and all such comments challenging the efficacy of cloth masks, as “misinformation.” It’s weird because epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, who serves as the director for infectious disease, research, and policy at the University of Minnesota and served previously as Biden's coronavirus adviser, said the same thing about cloth masks in an Aug. 3 PBS interview with journalist Christiane Amanpour.

“I have had concerns, dates back to April of 2020, about the concept of masking,” the epidemiologist said. “I think we’ve all done a disservice to the public. When you actually look at face cloth coverings, those cloth pieces, uh, hang over your face. They actually only have very limited impact on reducing the amount of virus that you inhale in or exhale out. And, in fact, in studies that have been done show that if an individual might get infected within 15 minutes in a room, by time and concentration of the virus in the room, if you add a face cloth covering on, you only get about five more minutes of protection.”

He added, “I’ve been really disappointed with my colleagues in public health for not being more clear about what can masking do or not do.”

Glenn Greenwald, journalist and co-founder of The Intercept, blasted YouTube for suspending Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul over his video “disputing” the “efficacy” of “cloth masks,” and warned “we’re now at the point” almost “no dissent is allowed.”

“Amazing: Google’s YouTube suspended @RandPaul — a US Senator and a medical doctor — for disputing the efficacy of cloth masks,” Greenwald tweeted Wednesday in a lengthy Twitter thread. (RELATED: Rand Paul Calls On Citizens To ‘Resist’ Mask Mandates And Lockdowns)

“JUST LAST WEEK: Biden’s former COVID adviser, the epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, told @camanpour exactly the same thing,” he added.

“Here’s what DR. Osterholm, not just an epidemiologist but the Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and Biden’s own former COVID adviser, said on PBS. Read this: you can’t say this on YouTube.”

Greenwald’s post highlighted remarks from Osterholm’s appearance on PBS in which he stated “we’ve all done a disservice to the public” because face cloth coverings “actually only have very limited impact in reducing the amount of virus” a person inhales in or exhales out. (RELATED: Glenn Greenwald Blasts Brian Stelter Over CNN’s Low Ratings)

Greenwald included Osterholm’s comments on “CNN saying exactly the same thing that @RandPaul just got suspended from YouTube for saying,” and asked “Why can [you] say this on CNN or PBS but not YouTube????”