Coronavirus - UK
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To quote Taupin & John 'Sorry seems to be the hardest word'
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I actually thought he (Dawkins) came out of that as quite measured and reasonable, as did the interviewer despite his clear slant on things. Dawkins main point is that in such a short space of time within a period of great turmoil it is rare for science to provide a clear cut answer. The counter to that was to give the population the truth - ie we don't know and let them make up their own minds and to this I would say two words to you.
Boaty McBoatface.
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@Catogrande said in Coronavirus - UK:
I actually thought he (Dawkins) came out of that as quite measured and reasonable, as did the interviewer despite his clear slant on things. Dawkins main point is that in such a short space of time within a period of great turmoil it is rare for science to provide a clear cut answer. The counter to that was to give the population the truth - ie we don't know and let them make up their own minds and to this I would say two words to you.
Boaty McBoatface.
The tweet which was referenced was from Spring 21
He'd had enough time to get off the bandwagon by that point in time
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@Catogrande said in Coronavirus - UK:
The counter to that was to give the population the truth - ie we don't know and let them make up their own minds.
Ironically given what we know now this probably would have resulted in better outcomes for most.
Unless of course we're all comfortable with the greatest wealth transfer of money in the history of the world from poor people to rich people - in which case carry on then.
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Ironically using the “given what we know now” stance actually supports his statements.
As to the “better off” and “biggest transfer of wealth “ statements, any actual assertations, measurements, numbers, facts? Or is it just opinion?
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@Windows97 said in Coronavirus - UK:
Ironically given what we know now this probably would have resulted in better outcomes for most.
Hindsight again. Leaders just didn't have that option. They needed to balance decisions & statements against their effect on public perception and behavior. If they were brutally honest and said "we don't know", there would likely have been panic - a point Dawkins makes really well.
Could things have been handled better? Absolutely and probably will be if we get another pandemic.
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@Catogrande said in Coronavirus - UK:
Dawkins main point is that in such a short space of time within a period of great turmoil it is rare for science to provide a clear cut answer.
Yep. I clearly recall Vallance & Whitty - both eminent men of science - making that point time and time again during the pandemic. When everyone in the media was raging about bad the UK death rates were, they were cautioning us to look at long-term excess death rates -which would take years to quantity accurately
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@Victor-Meldrew said in Coronavirus - UK:
@Windows97 said in Coronavirus - UK:
Ironically given what we know now this probably would have resulted in better outcomes for most.
Hindsight again. Leaders just didn't have that option. They needed to balance decisions & statements against their effect on public perception and behavior. If they were brutally honest and said "we don't know", there would likely have been panic - a point Dawkins makes really well.
Could things have been handled better? Absolutely and probably will be if we get another pandemic.
Not if that fuckwit menace Ferguson is anywhere near the discussion
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My big takeaway from the pandemic - and the 'climate emergency' - is life mandated by the models and the modelers is a recipe for disaster
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@Catogrande said in Coronavirus - UK:
Stochastic modelling = current best guess*
*may be liable to multiple changes
Chicken Little's best guess
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@Victor-Meldrew said in Coronavirus - UK:
@Windows97 said in Coronavirus - UK:
Ironically given what we know now this probably would have resulted in better outcomes for most.
Hindsight again. Leaders just didn't have that option. They needed to balance decisions & statements against their effect on public perception and behavior. If they were brutally honest and said "we don't know", there would likely have been panic - a point Dawkins makes really well.
Could things have been handled better? Absolutely and probably will be if we get another pandemic.
Leaving them free to make different mistakes
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@canefan said in Coronavirus - UK:
@Victor-Meldrew said in Coronavirus - UK:
@Windows97 said in Coronavirus - UK:
Ironically given what we know now this probably would have resulted in better outcomes for most.
Hindsight again. Leaders just didn't have that option. They needed to balance decisions & statements against their effect on public perception and behavior. If they were brutally honest and said "we don't know", there would likely have been panic - a point Dawkins makes really well.
Could things have been handled better? Absolutely and probably will be if we get another pandemic.
Leaving them free to make different mistakes
Probably - as the variables will have changed too.
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@Catogrande said in Coronavirus - UK:
Ironically using the “given what we know now” stance actually supports his statements.
As to the “better off” and “biggest transfer of wealth “ statements, any actual assertations, measurements, numbers, facts? Or is it just opinion?
A simple google search should help you out there and you can draw your own conclusions. But a few examples are below.
Pandemic boosts super-rich share of global wealth
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The share of household wealth owned by billionaires has risen by a record amount during the pandemic, with millionaires also coming out of COVID-19 ahead, a study found on Tuesday.
Jim Cramer: The pandemic led to 'one of the greatest wealth transfers in history'
"I think we're looking at a V-shaped recovery in the stock market, and that has almost nothing to do with a V-shaped recovery in the economy," the "Mad Money" host said.
Look at how the 1% are doing right now, and tell me the system isn’t rigged | Nesrine Malik
The world’s super-rich have amassed so much wealth since the pandemic that even a Tory minister can see something is amiss, says the Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik
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@Victor-Meldrew said in Coronavirus - UK:
@Windows97 said in Coronavirus - UK:
Ironically given what we know now this probably would have resulted in better outcomes for most.
Hindsight again. Leaders just didn't have that option. They needed to balance decisions & statements against their effect on public perception and behavior. If they were brutally honest and said "we don't know", there would likely have been panic - a point Dawkins makes really well.
Could things have been handled better? Absolutely and probably will be if we get another pandemic.
Who actually created the panic however?
People went to extraordinary lengths to make covid out like it was a killer virus akin to the one out of Stephen King's "The Stand".
Most of the justification was based on predictive models that turned out to be hopelessly inaccurate and seemingly never updated with real data to determine the accuracy there-of, or if the responses based off these increasingly inaccurate models were proportionate.
In short people over-reacted and panicked and this kicked off a chain reaction.
What's most odd about it is that we supposedly live in a world where "social justice" is top of mind...
So for the people adversely effected by covid are there going to be reparation's for them, some form of social justice in restoring what they lost, apologies for the rights that got taken away?
Yet people don't seem to care, or it's brushed away as hindsight.
None of this makes sense to me, the response, the lack of adjustment based off data, the lack of empathy when proven "they were wrong" and the fact that many, many people got incredibly rich of the enforced suffering of others.
None of this seems right or just.
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100%
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Covid killed almost 7 million people (so far) and continues to kill - even with the vaccines & measures that people called draconian and unnecessary. I shudder to think what that total might be if people's rights hadn't been temporarily restricted.
People in power had to make rapid decisions to save lives with minimal data and the need to manage public behaviors. They got some things wrong (and many right) and overall have nothing to apologise for.
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One minor quibble, how much do you trust that number? Two things to consider, first is that the reporting in the US was over reporting Covid deaths (for funding reasons). If you had covid and died in a car crash, it was reported as covid death.
Second, I've seen reports showing flu death comparisons. Flu was zero, Covid was similar to the previous flu reporting (slightly higher).
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Aren't you conflating two different things here - wealth inequality and the ability of bigger business to survive economic shocks - in this case Covid?
And the Oxfam report has been debunked so many times it's embarrassing. Anyone on the average wage in NZ or the UK is in their top 1% or global elite according to them.
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According to *The Economist'*s analysis, the true Covid death rate is much, much higher at 23m.
"We find that there is a 95% chance that the true value lies between 17m and 30.4m additional deaths".
Ten richest men double their fortunes in pandemic while incomes of 99 percent of humanity fall | Oxfam International
The pandemic’s true death toll
