Whitty and Vallance being grilled live

[Lis4Laughter]

www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html

I went on holiday to Rhyl years ago, it was lovely.
I was kind of hoping from the thread title that the pair of them were being barbecued live on TV. Now I’m sad.

I was pleased to see whitty get to explain why keeping COVID under control actually improves cancer survival not the other way round. Must drive him mad that one

@Chickenandrice it drives me mad, it also drives me mad that it seems to the be the only one mentioned.

I love the old top of the pops on BBC four Friday nights. Norman Cook aka Fat Boy Slim does tend to pop up a lot as he was involved in many groups end of the 80s early 1990s.
Anyway, as for our now famous scientists I think they do well explaining things even though it's not always easy for me to grasp. I would rather listen to them than the MPs or Boris Johnson , even though I know many don't agree with them.
It's been very strange living through History like this.

Yes confuseeed unfortunately I think the people who needed to listen to his speech probably weren’t actually watching though

Curious thank you.

I wonder who made them include that? So surreal.

Did they actually admit 4000 deaths wasn’t going to happen with no measures?

No. They explained it was a worst case scenario based on some different longer term modelling...They both did say they didn't like the slide, had never themselves used it and wouldn't, if given the choice, have included it!

Which tells you something more about the constraints they work under when speaking to us from those lecturns

Considering that no country in the world inc Brazil has had a per capita death rate like that, then no they shouldn't have used that slide and refused to do so.
It has caused an awful lot of fear and worrying, probably the aim.

They are scientists not mouth pieces for Johnson.

@Judashascomeintosomemoney

(OK paraphrasing....) So, Chris, what do you think about The (arrogantly named) Great Barrington Declaration?

For most diseases herd immunity does not happen.
And if it were to work, you would have to have up to 70% of them population infected. We are a long way from that, he says.
Second, he says, the plan involves shielding the vulnerable. But that is impractical. You could not do it year after year, he says.
And, third, he says this plan assumes that very many people would die.

Other than that, it no doubt has merits

Mic Drop.

very dry

@Judashascomeintosomemoney

(OK paraphrasing....) So, Chris, what do you think about The (arrogantly named) Great Barrington Declaration?

For most diseases herd immunity does not happen.
And if it were to work, you would have to have up to 70% of them population infected. We are a long way from that, he says.
Second, he says, the plan involves shielding the vulnerable. But that is impractical. You could not do it year after year, he says.
And, third, he says this plan assumes that very many people would die.

Other than that, it no doubt has merits

Mic Drop.

He’s great

I think you have misunderstood their position. They are the senior officers in their respective organisations. They represent the work of hundreds, thousands, of scientists

This.

And they should not be the ones making the decisions at a national policy level.

That is the job for people we elected. The problem is that the current government is utterly incompetent and actually doesn't really care.

And by the way, there seems to be wide misunderstanding of the ways that scientists work. Scientific data aren't ever absolutely in agreement - that is the point of proper science: researchers offer the best solution to explain the data as they exist.

But those explanations and deductions are always contingent, and open to interpretation (on a data-driven basis). It's a misunderstanding of scientific method that it aims to prove that something is right. Mostly scientists are working to see which theoretical model is the least wrong in accounting for the data (falsifiability).