Do you think that at times what we have referred to as ‘the science’ has got it wrong?

[MarshaBradyo]

I’m thinking about the many times people said well it’s going to go badly wrong and the science backs this up

But a few times this hasn’t happened

July opening
Omicron and not doing ‘circuit breaker’ and not ending in lockdown
Not getting close to best case for omicron

And so on - maybe other examples

What do you think - was it unnecessarily pessimistic?

Today in the Telegraph, their Science Editor addresses what has become known as ‘following the science’.

She discusses ‘groupthink’ within the scientific community with specific reference to lockdowns.

She acknowledges the fact that many very eminent scientists believed and said that lockdown was wrong and that alternatives were possible, but because they lacked social media following their views were dismissed as fringe.

The Great Barrington nonsense was fringe, though.

Also, there were a number of anti-restriction groups and activists that were very well supported by right wing organisations and indeed by the government itself, that included U4T and HART etc. They had access to right wing media, including, for example, the Telegraph, that published a large number of articles quoting by (or written by) U4T activists.

I think the covid denier faction had a very loud voice, to be honest.

Science does its best with the info, finding and research it has at the time but this will by definition evolve through time. See advice on position babies should sleep in.

The Telegraph’s science and medical reporting has been a abysmal for years. Long before covid although admittedly their covid reporting reached new levels of lies and inaccuracy. it’s in the Telegraph there’s a very good chance it’s complete rubbish. If it’s in the Telegraph and it’s about covid it’s almost certainly wrong.

The most surprising thing is discovering they actually have a science editor.

@herecomesthsun

I absolutely agree we should have prioritised education more (and I strongly think we should have done before the pandemic too, funding in secondary schools has substantially fallen in the past 10 years).

However, I don't think this should have involved pretending there wasn't a pandemic and carrying on as if nothing were different.

Well yes. Easy to virtue signal "concern for children". Expecting that to be a conversation ender is a bit much though.

If schools had remained open - what then? With mitigations or without? Back in March 2020 the major advice was to wash your hands.

So schools remaining open without mitigations would have spread covid. We saw the impact of this on education Sept-Dec, and that was with bubbles, zones, staggered starts. Millions of kids missed school during that time.

As I said before, my DD's school was already closed by the time they closed officially, due to lack of staff.

I also said that schools were emptying. Parents were pulling their children out. Children with underlying conditions - particularly asthma. We now know that that isn't a factor, but we didn't then.

So what for those children? Fines to get them back into school when their parents were terrified? Or would there have been an about-turn and we would have been told to provide an education for those (voluntarily, not isolating) at home too? How, when we were busy firefighting what was going on in school?

If they were supposed to be in school, would the efforts be directed at getting them into school, rather than e.g. providing those at home who needed it with FSM/remote learning, enabling them to stay at home?

Those vulnerable children who need routine and stability would not have found it in schools where teachers were off, children were disappearing and everyone was worried - we've seen the impact of that particularly since Jan this year with the insane infection rates.

And the vulnerable children who people insist would have been in school were it not for school closures - is that true, if they weren't in when schools were open to vulnerable children? If abusive parents were looking for an excuse to take kids out of school to hide abuse, they had one even before schools closed.

I would like to see how Sweden dealt with all those problems. I hope they didn't just turn a blind eye.

@Flyonawalk

If you agree with very right wing politics, than the Telegraph represents those views.

I staunchly don’t - and I’m still trying to see how some of the views expressed here/against ‘the science’ deviate from what you might read in the Telegraph.

I’m trying to understand whether it’s genuine, heartfelt concern about the needs of children - or whether some - potentially - are ‘using’ the needs of children to push a right wing agenda.

I sincerely hope it’s the former, but when I hear the Telegraph being quoted - and Telegraph views bring broadly inline with some sentiments here - it concerns me.

Emergency I’m surprised you can’t tell.

And thinking the same about such staunch pro lockdown to the left views that you can’t tell.

On papers I found The Guardian unhelpful in most cases - very pro lockdown with scant regard to harms.

Labour similar.

The best resources for me throughout was R4, expert views and rational analysis.

The Guardian has been pretty good on the science of decision-making around covid. It usually is in line with the scientific and medical consensus as represented by the majority of articles in the best medical and scientific journals.

The Telegraph has a pretty good scientific team actually and has produced some thoughtful and well-informed articles (although the readership doesn't appreciate this much, from the comments!)

Radio 4 also pretty good, though there have been some articles on the BBC website that seemed a bit dumbed down.

I remember reading a good article from The Guardian that didn’t use numbers as spin and it made a refreshing change. On Covid it was all pointed towards pro lockdown stance.

The main issue was that once we decided on suppression and restrictions all messaging helped with compliance

In terms of getting behaviour you needed you couldn’t do daily tallies of harms, economic costs etc as you needed people to be fearful enough to listen. You couldn’t ask people to isolate or keep dc home at the same time as informing them it would cost £X in living costs for years / mh crisis / lost education and so on as they’re less likely to do it. This meant daily tallies of Covid related stats - deaths, cases and so on and all else suppressed.

You still need to be able to discuss harms v benefits to assess what was done. I get there’s resistance to that as messaging has been so one-sided but it should be looked into, by many.

The Telegraph has a pretty good scientific team actually

They must have been in hiding while the front pages have become a propaganda magazine for the GBD Hart lot.

Talking about one-sided messaging, the media on schools has been dire, particularly from Sept-Dec 2020 when no one wanted to publish the figures of kids missing school or the infection rates in children. Any school piece was accompanied by photos of a handful of kids in socially distanced classrooms, probably wearing masks which was basically a lie.

The closure of schools in Jan 2021 would have come as a complete surprise to anyone who hadn't been paying attention beyond the media.

I thought the Public Health messaging did a pretty good job of getting people to understand the need to change their behaviour, actually. it is really difficult to get people to change habits.

I also was amazed that people followed scientific advice to the extent that they did. (more so than some of their supposed leaders, it would seem).

Re the Telegraph, the scientific team produced articles explaining some of the changes in Government policy, at the same time that the Leaders and columns by Allison Pearson et al. denounced Government policy. They were very well informed, unsurprisingly, about rationales, and what the Government was going to do next. It was very interesting.

Of course it is hard. Which is why such heavy tactics were used.

It also means most people dismiss the harms of the actions too readily and resist looking at them.

This leaves groups such as children more at risk as adults are not informed based on facts but emotions heightened by messaging.

People not willing to engage with the harms to children beyond 'Schools closed bad. Schools open good' is particularly frustrating.

Schools open and the situation in them being dire isn't something people want to hear.

@MarshaBradyo

The main issue was that once we decided on suppression and restrictions all messaging helped with compliance

In terms of getting behaviour you needed you couldn’t do daily tallies of harms, economic costs etc as you needed people to be fearful enough to listen. You couldn’t ask people to isolate or keep dc home at the same time as informing them it would cost £X in living costs for years / mh crisis / lost education and so on as they’re less likely to do it. This meant daily tallies of Covid related stats - deaths, cases and so on and all else suppressed.

You still need to be able to discuss harms v benefits to assess what was done. I get there’s resistance to that as messaging has been so one-sided but it should be looked into, by many.

I do agree with you, @MarshaBradyo. The only thing I'd say is that those aspects really aren't in science's purview. They're social, behavioural and economic considerations, and taking them into account is important –vitally so – but it isn't the responsibility of epidemiologists and virologists to do that as it is policy not science.

Thing I completely agree, I think I’ve drifted away from original point a bit to include more as thread has gone on (eg harms v benefit)

There’s a couple of things in the mix - would need to split it out maybe later

The CMO (who is trained in economics as well) has said many times that we cannot ignore health and pursue economic goals in a pandemic, we absolutely have to take a balanced view.

if we did not have restrictions, we could not have ignored the health issues and continued business as normal.

I realise it is hard to get one's head around this.

@herecomesthsun

The CMO (who is trained in economics as well) has said many times that we cannot ignore health and pursue economic goals in a pandemic, we absolutely have to take a balanced view.

if we did not have restrictions, we could not have ignored the health issues and continued business as normal.

I realise it is hard to get one's head around this.

I presume by CMO you mean Chris Whitty. I thought from the beginning he was trying very hard to gently get across the message that his remit was disease control and that there were other factors, outside his area, that should be considered.

@herecomesthsun

The CMO (who is trained in economics as well) has said many times that we cannot ignore health and pursue economic goals in a pandemic, we absolutely have to take a balanced view.

if we did not have restrictions, we could not have ignored the health issues and continued business as normal.

I realise it is hard to get one's head around this.

Of course it isn’t hard..

Still possible to look at harms v benefit and assess

Obviously some won’t want that

I presume by CMO you mean Chris Whitty. I thought from the beginning he was trying very hard to gently get across the message that his remit was disease control and that there were other factors, outside his area, that should be considered.

True. He was always good at relaying that even though many didn’t hear it.

Whitty has apparently done a diploma in economics, a degree in law and an MBA in his spare time.

"in terms of his research, he covers all the disciplines: clinical medicine, epidemiology, health economics, social science. That’s really what makes him unique. He is the best man for the job, we are extremely lucky to have him.” - from a colleague

He has said (since 2020) "It is a balancing act between two harms: a harm for society and the economy on the one hand and a harm for health on the other hand."

and he has also said, in a number of clips which I've previously put on here, and interested parties can look up, that we can't ignore the health issues and just do things that would benefit the economy as large problems for the health service will then impact the economy as well...

He's a clever man, that's for certain. He gave talks to DD2's Masters course last year (control of infectious diseases at LSHTM, it's one of his many degrees) and she said they were fascinating.

I think that neither our politicians nor our media are capable or desirous of the nuances which Chris Whitty brought to the discussions – they want simplistic soundbite stuff which doesn't require much explanation, or intelligence.