Chris Whitty/Patrick Vallance

[BonnieDundee]

In the light of the inaccurate graphs used to justify putting England into lockdown last week, do you still trust these 2?

YANBU of course I trust them. It was justified and they are trying to do the best for.the country

YABU No. How can you trust professionals who manipulate statistics to suit their own agenda

I Trust them, they've got a lot more right than Boris and his crones.

Whitey on record saying he wasn't happy to use the graphs.

@AlexisIsMySpiritAnimal

I Trust them, they've got a lot more right than Boris and his crones.

Could you give some specific examples of what they've got right?

I've seen their predictions of what might happen with no actions taken but what have they predicted that can concretely be proved to have happened?

@midgebabe

Whitey on record saying he wasn't happy to use the graphs.

Did he say this before or after being told off by the the UK Stats Authority?

And if he wasn't happy, why did he go with it?

I don't know, I'm tired of the lack of consistency from the government, I think Whitty and Vallance get misused tbh, wheeled out to cover for government failures.

YABU

YANBU

Yes I do. I think they are there own men and doing their best. It is up to the government to listen to their advice but look at the broader picture too (jobs, harms due to lockdown etc)

@satnighttakeaway that is the whole point of a prediction! It may or may not happen. Whatever they said was simply a forecast, based on data known at the time and extrapolating into the future.

Whatever Whitty/Valance uttered were not certainties set in stone. Too many variables like human behaviour, Govt interference, possible virus mutations etc etc

I just think their remit is the health of the nation and primarily COVID-19. They don’t have a balanced view and they don’t consider the economy and impact of lockdown, that’s not their job.

I don’t know how to respond. I don’t think they are untrustworthy they are just not paid to look at the bigger picture so we need counter balance.

I can't see any voting buttons

No I dont trust either of them and I'm worried that they have too much influence

Well I guess he was outvoted by the other people planning the briefing ?

And the whole thing with models is that all models are wrong, but some are useful. Not one model of what was likely to happen showed everything getting substantially better without further action.

Covid, like climate change is one of those things whereby if you wait till it's provably shit , you are in a deep in the shit

I think their view is one eyed. Covid beyond all considerations. Nothing matters to them except that, including the economy, society, the future, care for the elderly, safeguarding of the vulnerable and children and babies, education, and people's mental wellbeing. They will also now be concerned about their academic reputations and careers.

No I don't trust them.

[quote Amrapaali]@satnighttakeaway that is the whole point of a prediction! It may or may not happen. Whatever they said was simply a forecast, based on data known at the time and extrapolating into the future.

Whatever Whitty/Valance uttered were not certainties set in stone. Too many variables like human behaviour, Govt interference, possible virus mutations etc etc[/quote]
That's my whole point!

The poster I was quoting said they'd got things right, I was asking for examples of what they've got right as obviously we can't include predictions.

I haven't been able to keep up with the news recently and am interested in what things @AlexisIsMySpiritAnimal is referring to. When I was following the press conferences I don't remember them saying anything but predictions which frankly we could all make.

I don’t trust them at all. Their predictions have been wrong and the data used discredited. 4,000 deaths per day? I think that is three times Brazil at their worst, with a population three times larger than the UK. And if I remember correctly they forecast 65,000 deaths in Sweden where they had far fewer, maybe 6,000.

Basically nothing they have said has materialised. Definitely not to be trusted or believed.

@HesterShaw1
You're wrong. Please read this interview with Chris Whtty, it's really clear he thinks about much not than 'just covid'. And I say this as someone who's not been a huge fan of his throughout the pandemic.
It's a sign of the times that I highly doubt you'll read it or allow it to shift your views one inch.
www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4235?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_term=hootsuite&utm_content=sme&utm_campaign=usage&s=08

I'm a Van Tam girl myself but yes so trust those 2

@BonnieDundee

In the light of the inaccurate graphs used to justify putting England into lockdown last week, do you still trust these 2?

YANBU of course I trust them. It was justified and they are trying to do the best for.the country

YABU No. How can you trust professionals who manipulate statistics to suit their own agenda

Never have trusted either of them from day one. If I had to trust either of them with a fiver, it would be Whitty.

Does anyone else find it inappropriate that Vallance owns £600,000 of shares in a firm likely to produce future vaccines? Isn’t this a clear conflict of interest which should be discussed more than it is?

I've seen their predictions of what might happen with no actions taken but what have they predicted that can concretely be proved to have happened?

Models present scenarios, not predictions. It even said at the top of some slides that they were not predictions.

In any case it's perfectly possible to be critical of data transparency and presentation, etc while still acknowledging that action was needed. As David Spiegelhalter (Statistician and Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge) points out:
www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/07/england-lockdown-needed-graphs-mess-statistics-guru-covid?

www.itv.com/news/2020-11-07/covid-dramatic-action-was-needed-to-slow-spread-of-coronavirus-professor-says

I trust them.

Yes I trust them, particularly Whitty who I know more about.

Good grief, people still saying that because predictions based on people not doing anything haven't come true anywhere that the perditions were wrong

Yet all over the world, even in Brazil and Sweden, people massively changed their behaviours and governments everywhere took action

It's like saying if we don't hit the brakes we will crash into the wall
Everyone hits the brakes
We miss the wall
Some bright spark says look we didn't need to use the brakes at all, as we didn't crash

I think the decision was made without relying on the 4000-a-day prediction, wasnt it. That prediction was one outcome of a range of models and was a 'low confidence' prediction. I was uncomfortable with hearing it repeated on every bbc news update on the radio- I think it was a pr not scientific decision to foreground it. I still think we should have locked down based on the numbers as a whole. I'm pretty sure Chris Whitty already explained this in that awful interview where the interviewer clearly didnt listen or understand. Perhaps that's why they dumbed it down and went for the shock factor.