Seems appropriate for this topic. See article below.
"Are you one of the “lockdown sceptics”? They are a vocal but largely inexpert minority of commentators who argue that Covid lockdowns are doing more harm than good, or don’t work at all. But is to believe that really to be sceptical?"
Fon, I would hope that any plan to manage this risk would be less convoluted but fear as with all bureaucratic nonsense they will use 50 words when 1 will do. It would probably be a waste of time anyway as they will throw it in the bin when something new comes along, just as was done last year with the existing plan that was admittedly only 70 odd pages long with circa 100 recommendations. But at least those did not ruin, the economy, people's lives and allowed us to only do those things expressively allowed in law!
And thinksaboutit that is why I am, using the modern sense of the word so clearly explained in the article you cite, sceptical about my governments response to this pandemic including the majority of measures lumped together when people refer to "lockdown" . And that article, usual bias generally found in that publication. "inexpert....commentators" , all those once highly regarded academics with over 30 peer-reviewed papers are not experts? Well I would propose they are as much experts in their field as those advising policy, Ferguson, SAGE et all, and "supposed evidence"? Not half as supposed as those discredited projections hey? Again one set of rules for those in agreement and another for those not convinced and associated derogatory labelling. Why do you have to be an expert in anything other than your own thoughts to have an informed opinion anyway? At least people here write bollocks for free 🙁
"Are you one of the “lockdown sceptics”? They are a vocal but largely inexpert minority of commentators who argue that Covid lockdowns are doing more harm than good, or don’t work at all. But is to believe that really to be sceptical?"
Are you one of the lockdown fetishists? They are a vocal, but largely inexpert, majority of commentators who argue that Covid lockdowns are doing more good than harm, and work very well.
There - fixed it for you 🙂
But in all seriousness it's an interesting take on things. Before 2020 nobody thought lockdowns were an appropriate, or sensible, response to a pandemic of this nature. The WHO didn't. The UK government didn't. And they considered potential pandemics much worse than covid in their planning.
Did the experts who crafted these plans suddenly lose their expertise in 2020 and become cranks and science deniers?
It's a very curious thing indeed this complete reversal of previous best advice and scientific opinion.
Furthermore, the UK government finally, after months and months of ignored requests and pleading, finally and seemingly grudgingly released some sort of cost-benefit analysis. No surprise they found a small overall benefit to lockdowns, but it wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement of lockdowns - and largely rested on the main article of faith of the lockdown fetishists : "things would have been much worse".
But this is simply an article of faith. It's a belief, no more. It's a speculation, a hypothesis. Speculations and hypotheses are essential in science - but ultimately they must stand the test of experiment. What can we say about the things would have been much worse hypothesis?
The data here does not really support this hypothesis. There is very little difference in outcome between US states that locked down or didn't lock down. At this stage lockdown fetishists are left scrabbling for supplementary reasons, excuses if you like, for why the hypothesis is still true but didn't quite work out in the US.
This re-branding of conventional scientific advice pre-2020 (no lockdowns or masks) as belonging to a minority bunch of inexpert and vocal weirdos is an interesting manipulation which really doesn't hold up under analysis (as is also the case for so many of the claims made by lockdown fetishists).
