I'll tell you how it is. In one of those cosmic coincidences which prove 'politics makes strange bedfellows', it turns out that Devi Sridhar, the big-mouthed skinny queen of zero covid, is just as condemnatory of all government policy as the most surly sceptic, saying the ' British government has taken the worst path for handling Covid-19'.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/12/true-costs-britain-covid-public-health-report
She does a lot of hand wringing (to pad the word count out to the guardian's spec) then enquires
- how much does your government care for its people?
- How much do your leaders care about you and your loved ones’ lives?'.
These are exactly the question lockdown sceptics have wondered since the start.
Just as we do, she emotes over
- those who lost loved ones to Covid-19
- those who faced delayed care from the NHS because it became a Covid-focused service, and
- those who lost financially from prolonged restrictions...
- Anyway, so it goes, everybody sees the same problems, and nobody knows the least painful way to proceed in this adventure. So we slowly learn as we go. And only the most simple-minded cretins(I'm thinking of Devi) think they alone know how to do better than anybody else.
Dealing with these multi-faceted multi-layered problems while simultaneously managing an acknowledged global climate and population crisis in a nuclear-powered but starving world which has gone mad has proved to be beyond the clutch of every government in the world.
There are no experts or authorities in managing this. Only blind blundering fools, panicking, and shrieking. All the authorities have to exhibit is more hubris.
Like hope springs eternal in the human breast so does hubris. We have no shortage of hubristic experts who lay claim to great wisdom. But now we are way beyond the territory of authorities or experts, and back lost in the wild woods where we started out.
If we are to pick our way out of this morass, it I think must mean a return (at least temporarily ) to the convictions we held when the world was still sane. If we can get to that point, perhaps we can stabilise, find our feet and plan to do better in future. It's not much to go on, but it's all I've got. Good luck to all the sceptics. We're all sceptics now.
@ewloe - I concur.
The strange thing (for me) is that I almost feel sorry for Devi Sridhar when she starts her article like this:
Public health experts like me were baffled by government decisions.
Most everyone in NHS medicine knows that Public Health is a long way down the pecking order, always underfunded, and devoid of the most talented medics. As a consequence, they are perpetually baffled by almost everything that happens.
Covid-19 was the icing on the cake (or the iceberg that stuck above the surface). While SAGE Nudge Unit and the Behavioural Psychs was running the show, the few times they let the Medical Committee have a word in edgeways, it wasn't a word from Public Health.
While SAGE Nudge Unit and the Behavioural Psychs was running the show, the few times they let the Medical Committee have a word in edgeways, it wasn't a word from Public Health.
it looked for all the world as if they were testing the rigging, for when they really need to restrict freedoms, for when they turn and drop free market economics and Conservatism.
The thing with Sridhar is to remember who she is not what she claims.
If you treat what she says as coming from a *politician* you can understand her. She is not, as she claims, a public health expert.
She has no relevant qualifications in public health, epidemiology, virology or anything related (her thesis after an accelerated biology degree is a D. Phil on the role of the world bank on hunger in India). What she IS though is a very shrewd politician with big ambition.
She's very adept at seeing which way the wind is blowing and switching sides and opinions to always try to be on the winning team. Edinburgh is a stepping stone for her to get to higher levels.
Covid is her chance to get noticed and start crawling up the ladder.
.... she's also the "expert" that predicted Scotland would be covid free by the end of summer... Thats summer 2020...
