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Monday 5 July 2021

Why not today?



COVID-19: Almost all coronavirus rules - including face masks and home-working - to be ditched on 19 July, PM says

Boris Johnson sets out the details of his planned unlocking for the fourth and final step of his roadmap on 19 July - but he warns people in England not to be "demob happy" and to think it is "the end" of COVID-19.

Why not today? To make it absolutely and abundantly clear that this is a concession which may be withdrawn at any time. A move in the game.

4 comments:

Sam Vega said...

Science is great, isn't it! There are so many different opinions, models, inferences, disciplines, and schools that a clever politician can pick whichever bunch of them suits his purposes. And the public, of course, are told that it's - wait for it - "science", so there is instant trust.

Note how whenever Boris says the end of the lockdown is in sight, the BBC and other media run a story from a bunch of doctors, scientists, academics or other professionals who reckon that it ought to go on for longer. More masks, no travel, testing everyone, whatever. It's not enough to cast doubt on the main narrative, of course, but enough to allow a complete backtrack if it becomes politically expedient to do so...

Anonymous said...

One thing I have noted, the further left the more hysterical about disease, of course we could posit about the best way to destroy caplitalism, but they do miss the point of what happens when their magic money tree falters

DiscoveredJoys said...

Anyone can take a contrary stance when there is no penalty for getting it wrong. The current government is not popular with the established experts (note the lower case) and so is an easy target, right or wrong.

I've noted that when polling companies started to be judged retrospectively by their accuracy (or not) most were inaccurate and some were badly wrong. The polling companies have since worked hard to improve their accuracy.

Perhaps we should formally record the 'expert' views for later review? It would weed out the poor experts and perhaps make the rest more careful in what they say.

A K Haart said...

Sam - even a tiny bit of government influence attracts the wrong kind of people, but for government and the media they are just what is wanted. Flexible exaggeration makes stories and bolsters policy.

Anon - they seem to think the magic money tree is real and in a temporary sense it is because it takes ages to strip it.

DJ - yes and at the moment many experts seem immune to consequences which ought to follow from failed predictions. As if the time between prediction and failure has to be short, otherwise it is forgotten. The media usually go along with this forgetting because they used the predictions for their stories.