O/T:- ⚠️Impressed with the leadership [The UK Party Politics Thread]

[jackal2]

Broadly speaking I backed the Government's initial lockdown because it seemed to be the approach recommended by the 'majority of experts', but after a few months there did come a point where many people were questioning whether it had gone on too long and could have been eased more quickly.

I was still willing to give the policy the benefit of the doubt given the apparent conviction with which a Conservative government was willing to advocate such an un-business-friendly policy, but when you see videos like this, not to mention Matt Hancock's snogfest in his office, it proves beyond doubt that government insiders and civil servants self-evidently did not consider the 'Covid risk' to be as great as they were telling the public. They might have been right or wrong in that judgement, but the fact that their private actions didn't match their public message is where public trust was lost.

There's been a lot of talk about lies, which is a bit of a red herring because most of the public know politicians on all sides tell lies or at least are 'economical with the truth'. The thing the public really don't like is the concept of politicians telling them "Do as I say, not as I do". That kind of hypocrisy is far more likely to lose votes.

[Jampie]

The truth about covid is that countries that largely kept it out of their populations and then massively vaccinated had fewer than half the deaths of countries that failed to manage it.

The notion that Boris Johnson is a zero-integrity charlatan should be a surprise to nobody and has nothing to do with science or medicine.

[PedroTheFisherman66]

The truth about covid is that countries that largely kept it out of their populations and then massively vaccinated had fewer than half the deaths of countries that failed to manage it.

The notion that Boris Johnson is a zero-integrity charlatan should be a surprise to nobody and has nothing to do with science or medicine.

Any news on the long term side effects courtesy of the untested Vaccine as yet ? or are they hiding this from us because we wont like what we hear ????
its probably the only last legacy that Boris has left which will also crumble to dust like his Got Brexit done when the truth comes out !!

[Jampie]

Any news on the long term side effects courtesy of the untested Vaccine as yet ? or are they hiding this from us because we wont like what we hear ????
its probably the only last legacy that Boris has left which will also crumble to dust like his Got Brexit done when the truth comes out !!

The vaccines were tested and now there have been many billions of doses given.

No long term negative effects have been identified.

[PedroTheFisherman66]

The vaccines were tested and now there have been many billions of doses given.

No long term negative effects have been identified.

Nudge Nudge , wink wink !
yes I agree

[upthemaggies]

Having "trust in" something is faith. When you're not allowed to question "the science", that is not science, it's a religious cult.

"Unexplained" ongoing excess deaths in heavily vaccinated countries across all age groups tells you all you need to know and this is just the start. They lied about it staying in the injection site (as they did about it preventing spread, Biden literally told the American public they would not get Covid if they got the vaccine), it broke the blood brain barrier, it's been found everywhere, liver, heart, reproductive areas and brain. Heart issues today will become cancer issues tomorrow. It's an unmitigated disaster.

The good news is that not all batches were the same dose, so it was basically a health lottery in reverse.

[Newish Pie]

I think on any subject you need to have discussion and debate, which provides a choice for the public to make. Otherwise you don't have a democracy. You're just leaving the decisions to a bunch of unelected, self-appointed 'experts' and keeping the public out of decision-making, which might be regarded as good politics in North Korea but I wouldn't recommend it here.

A lot of the time, the public will eventually side with the view of the 'majority of experts', but that doesn't mean there isn't in value in having a thorough and ongoing debate, with all views articulated by publicly elected representatives interpreting the evidence as they see it, where the public has a choice and can even change its mind if new evidence comes to light or they lose confidence in the 'expert' view.

There have been many occasions in history when the "majority of experts" in a field have proven over time to be wrong, or where the evidence on reflection proved to be far more nuanced then first thought. And that's not to mention the fact that the very definition of who is an 'expert' is subjective anyway - the question of who you count in or out of your pool of experts, and who makes that decision, may well define what the 'majority view' ends up being.

I think with COVID, one of the major challenges was that - at the start - no-one knew very much at all. It's about how you deal with uncertainty... experts don't know either, but they're far more likely to be correct (or at least become more correct over time as evidence emerges) than people with no expertise. Or with expertise in a different field.

Another challenge is that we had whole load of different fields of experts - in how viruses act, in how air particles circulate, in how humans behave, vaccine development, in economics, in healthcare systems and provision, in public health, and so on. How they speak to each other, how expertise interacts, who gets priority, how they learn from each other etc.

Where I agree with jackal is that we don't want a tyranny of experts. With COVID, we couldn't just "follow the science" because science won't tell us what our priorities are, and ought to be. Whether to open or close schools was one of the most difficult, and while science will inform our decision, ultimately it's about priorities and balancing them. That's where we need to call upon our elected leaders, public discussion and debate, and so on.

Where I'd put things slightly is that although we absolutely need debate and discussion about priorities and about what we ought to do, we still need to privilege expert opinion over non-expert opinion so that we can have a solid base of facts on which to base our discussions, or as solid a base as we can. I agree that there are some fuzzy boundaries about who is and who is not an expert, but I don't think it's that subjective overall. What academic qualifications do people have, what's their job role, how much research have they done, has it been peer-reviewed?

There's too much false balance in the media... here's an expert with decades of experience, and for another view... and given equal weight and time... here's a crank with a podcast to publicise, or a paid shill for some shadowy 'think tank' spouting ideological nonsense or wishful thinking. Or someone who's famous for an entirely different reason, and tries to use that trust/recognition/credibility to disguise the fact that they don't have any relevant expertise.

A lot of people believe that the truth will always win out through debates, but that's only the case if both sides play by the rules. Experts will often be reluctant to commit because they're aware of the level of uncertainty, but the spoofers can just blithely assert nonsense. It's so much quicker to make up convincing-sounding falsehoods than it is to go out and debunk them. Many experts aren't - with all due respect - the most confident media or debate performers, because that's not their skillset. But sometimes they're up against people where that's precisely their job. This is one of the ways in which Big Tobacco suppressed evidence of links between smoking and cancer for decades.

The point about experts is that their chances of being right are so much higher than any given randomer who thinks that "research" means googling for information that already backs up what they want to think. It's certainly true that experts might not be right at the moment, but the point about science is that it changes as the evidence changes. To people who don't understand, that looks like flip-flopping and inconsistency, but it's not.

[BanjoPie]

Jesus, what s load of crap being posted about vaccines by the usual ‘know it all’s’

[upthemaggies]

The point about experts is that their chances of being right are so much higher than any given randomer who thinks that "research" means googling for information that already backs up what they want to think..

This implies experts agree and are in lockstep, which was certainly the impression the media has tried to present over the last three years but is simply not true. Spend a few months in a court of law and you'll soon come round to the idea that for every expert who says one thing with a convincing argument to back it up, there's another who will say the opposite with the evidence to show it's not true.

The public need to be treated as if they are sat on a jury and allowed to make up their own minds, not spoken down to as if they have the reasoning skills of a pre-**** sat in a Junior School classroom.

[Newish Pie]

This implies experts agree and are in lockstep, which was certainly the impression the media has tried to present over the last three years but is simply not true. Spend a few months in a court of law and you'll soon come round to the idea that for every expert who says one thing with a convincing argument to back it up, there's another who will say the opposite with the evidence to show it's not true.

The public need to be treated as if they are sat on a jury and allowed to make up their own minds, not spoken down to as if they have the reasoning skills of a pre-**** sat in a Junior School classroom.

It's certainly true that experts do disagree... but it's certainly not true that for every *genuine* expert who says one thing, another *genuine* expert will say another. Sometimes experts will radically disagree, but I think more often it's more nuanced than that, and they'll agree about much more than they disagree about. It's also true that they might agree about the science, but disagree about policy, about what ought to be done as a result.

Reasoning skills ought to be taught in schools. Everyone (experts included) is prone to a variety of different errors in thinking and reasoning, and understanding our own cognitive biases is important on reaching better conclusions.

Absolutely agree that public shouldn't be talked down to. But all the reasoning skills in the world won't help people reach the right conclusions if expert opinion is regularly presented alongside non-expert opinion on an equal footing. I'd also say that while shouldn't treat expert views as gospel truth, they're likely to be a much better guide to the truth/to the right course of action than someone who has no expertise whatsoever.

It's one thing to say "I don't trust experts"... it's another to then move to "...so I trust these guys on the internet instead."