Boris is a skilled politician; he’s been the Mayor of London, the Prime Minister of the U.K. and an MP going back to 2001. With a background in writing and editing, he knows how to spin a yarn or two.
What many of his points meant in his testimony wasn’t obvious – so-called Boris Speak.
Translation: The Royal Society review was based on poor-quality observational evidence, and after three years we have no idea whether NPIs work.
Translation: The people in the room weren’t up to the job and weren’t representative of society.
Translation: My advisers had already made up their minds about the policies before the meetings to discuss them.
Translation: My top advisers were panicking and freaking me out.
Translation: Yep, they weren’t up to the job.
Translation: No one had a clue what was going on.
Translation: Even if I could remember, I’m not telling you.
You may want to review the transcript yourself to spot more translation issues. But what matters is not what people say but what they mean.
Prof. Carl Heneghan is the Oxford Professor of Evidence Based Medicine and Dr. Tom Jefferson is an epidemiologist based in Rome who works with Professor Heneghan on the Cochrane Collaboration. This article was first published on their Substack, Trust The Evidence, which you can subscribe to here.
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