Coronavirus - the new strain XX

[k90tour]

'What the experts can’t ever do is tell you if it’s right to introduce vaccine passports or compulsory vaccination, or to close the borders, or to enforce masking up by law. For that, you need another type of person, an intellectual.'

Doesn't these decisions require a further level of expertise, rather than an 'intellectual"?

 

[mandryka]

mandryka,

That's like saying that experts can tell you that human activities have resulted in CO2 emissions that are leading toward catastrophic climate change, but they should stay clear of commenting on what we should do to mitigate the existential threat.

Joe

I’m not saying they should steer clear of commenting on what we can do to mitigate the threat. What we should do to mitigate it is quite another thing.

 

[farfromthesun]

Yes, maybe Gove was right when he said that people in this country have had enough of experts. When I wrote that I was thinking of things I've read by Huxley, Russell and Shaw. But that was a long time ago and Gove may have had his finger on the pulse for all I know.

No, Gove is always wrong.

 

[Joe P]

My wife is an epidemiologist, but her department is filled with all sorts of experts who interact and collaborate regularly — statisticians, sociologists, demographers, economists, dieticians, occupational and physical therapists, medics, behaviourists, health communicators, etc.

It's not as though experts in public health work in a vacuum or that when their advice is given to politicians it's from a single discipline or perspective.

Joe

 

[mandryka]

They can indeed ‘make the vaccine’ which is a process (along with discovering how to make existing vaccines in a better way, developing a production process, finding out if the vaccine is safe enough to inject into humans, working out how to test the vaccines, tracing hospital staff how to test the vaccines, collecting accurate data, testing the data, writing it up accurately…) that is so complicated that I could type here for a week and only cover half of it.

Epidemiologists can indeed tell you if it’s right to do all those other things about transmission within a population in order to save the most lives. Politicians can them either take or ignore that advice, while the experts get lined up to have brickbats thrown at them by those who - and this is not a criticism - do not understand the knowledge and dedication required to be able to get the job done.

My wife is an epidemiologist, but her department is filled with all sorts of experts who interact and collaborate regularly — statisticians, sociologists, demographers, economists, dieticians, occupational and physical therapists, medics, behaviourists, health communicators, etc.

It's not as though experts in public health work in a vacuum or that when their advice is given to politicians it's from a single discipline or perspective.

Joe

I think if we were face to face we’d find ourselves rapidly in complete agreement, and somehow this medium serves to amplify conflict,

 

[Debs]

Oh FFS! This is an airborne, lethal virus that spreads through droplet transmision, contact transmission (from droplets of mucus landing on hard surfaces) and, most importantly, aerosol transmission. If you stay away from people you reduce the transmission rate - hence the lockdowns.

We will not reach 'Herd Immunity' until we have at least 80% of the Community vaccinated.

WTF is wrong with people who are arguing the science?

I have a scar on my left upper arm from having the (compulsory) Smallpox jab - oh **** me the vaccine eradicated Smallpox.

I have a scar from the (compulsory) Diptheria jab. Oh **** me we no longer have that disease in UK.

I have a scar from the (compulsory) TB jab.

I had the Polio vaccine.

Grow up people, vaccines work.

When I started my BSc nearly 40 years ago a co-student in my Microbiology class walked with calipers and canes because he had had Polio as a child.

Grow up people and get vaccinated and stop being Internet 'Experts'. You do not know what you are talking about. You are merely showing yourselves as uneducated idiots.

 

[Sonority]

Quite possibly the very last thing I would grant this government is being even remotely intellectual. Yet they are granted permission to pass laws.

 

[tiggers]

The vast majority of 'experts' on here and in the wild have no such association that I have observed (although maybe Debs could stay away from the caps lock, she surely knows her stuff).

.... and therefore steals a certain attention seeking person's limelight which is what really irritates said person!

 

[Joe P]

mandryka,

somehow this medium serves to amplify conflict,

I have noticed that. Fortunately, this forum has skilled — dare I say expert — moderators who can Trek the crap out of any thread to get it back on topic.

Joe

 

[Cav]

Oh FFS! This is an airborne, lethal virus that spreads through droplet transmision, contact transmission (from droplets of mucus landing on hard surfaces) and, most importantly, aerosol transmission. If you stay away from people you reduce the transmission rate - hence the lockdowns.

We will not reach 'Herd Immunity' until we have at least 80% of the Community vaccinated.

WTF is wrong with people who are arguing the science?

I have a scar on my left upper arm from having the (compulsory) Smallpox jab - oh **** me the vaccine eradicated Smallpox.

I have a scar from the (compulsory) Diptheria jab. Oh **** me we no longer have that disease in UK.

I have a scar from the (compulsory) TB jab.

I had the Polio vaccine.

Grow up people, vaccines work.

When I started my BSc nearly 40 years ago a co-student in my Microbiology class walked with calipers and canes because he had had Polio as a child.

Grow up people and get vaccinated and stop being Internet 'Experts'. You do not know what you are talking about. You are merely showing yourselves as uneducated idiots.

No vaccination is compulsory in England for the general population.

Just to be clear, so as not to be shouted at, I support vaccination for all who want it.

I suspect most here have had the Covid jabs.

As someone said earlier, scientists advise but politicians decide.

 

[Debs]

No vaccination is compulsory in England yet, IF you read history, Smallpox, Diptheria, BCG (Tuberculosis), and Polio vaccines WERE compulsory.

 

[Cav]

No vaccination is compulsory in England yet, IF you read to history, Smallpox, Diptheria, BCG (Tuberculosis), and Polio vaccines WERE compulsory.

Please don't patronise me. Yes, I know vaccines WERE compulsory, but they have not been compulsory for decades, as you should know.

 

[Debs]

OH DO one you muppet. If you cannot understand Public Health you have no place here.

 

[PsB]

What the experts can’t ever do is tell you if it’s right to introduce vaccine passports or compulsory vaccination, or to close the borders, or to enforce masking up by law. For that, you need another type of person, an intellectual.

No, you need an experienced decision maker backed by a political mandate.
An exaggerated example: my former philosopher teacher was certainly an intellectual, but he would be the last person I would like to see in charge of these sorts of decisions.

 

[Joe P]

Please, can we dial this down a notch ... again?

Joe / moderating

 

[mandryka]

Please don't patronise me. Yes, I know vaccines WERE compulsory, but they have not been compulsory for decades, as you should know.

As far as I know only smallpox was compulsory in the UK - and that for children.

 

[Sean K]

I confess I get irritated by the confusion some have between what scientists are and what science is. I.e., A lot of the the anti science stuff I come across in my field seems to regard scientists as though they are part of some lobby group or political party, vying for dominance, e.g., those b**tards in the lab coats, telling us what to do again.

It doesn't seem well understood that science is a set of procedures to assist us to make reliable predictions, rather than fooling ourselves into seeing patterns or relationships that might not be as strong as we think c.f., Deb's reference to the technical meaning of associations.

(I'm currently three days into a a new Level-4 lockdown in NZ. I wish I'd bought some paint and more timber; in retrospect, I could have predicted this would happen).

 

[Sue Pertwee-Tyr]

Has anybody on here actually said they don’t want the vaccine? Maybe I’ve missed it, but it feels like somebody is picking a quarrel where there isn’t one to be had, a state which is rare enough on here as it is and should be celebrated, not poked with a stick.

 

[Seanm]

I suspect your conclusion is not supported by statistical significance. The vast majority of 'experts' on here and in the wild have no such association that I have observed (although maybe Debs could stay away from the caps lock, she surely knows her stuff).

Experts are an absolute pain until you need one to - for instance, to pull an example out of the hat - save a few million lives. Then, wouldn't you know it, several turn up at once and line themselves up for a good shellacking by those who may or may not know better and use words like 'strong association' as if they fully understand the term in a scientific sense.

Strong, specific, consistent association between expertise and sense of humour bypass on this thread .

I honestly don’t know how you’d read my uh contributions to this thread and conclude I’m anti-expert. I’m very pro-expert: we’ve never needed them more. What I’m against is, amongst other things, accusing experts you disagree with of being Tory shills, of colluding with the government to suppress data, of performing unethical experiments on children. I’m against calling the public idiots, against denigrating interested amateurs and dismissing their knowledge as “belief”, against gatekeeping, against amplifying fake news - against scientific populism in general. And there has been a lot of that on this thread, from experts. Work away like, it’s not all that’s happening, but it is genuinely happening, here and across all media.

 

[Seanm]

Oh FFS! This is an airborne, lethal virus that spreads through droplet transmision, contact transmission (from droplets of mucus landing on hard surfaces) and, most importantly, aerosol transmission. If you stay away from people you reduce the transmission rate - hence the lockdowns.

We will not reach 'Herd Immunity' until we have at least 80% of the Community vaccinated.

WTF is wrong with people who are arguing the science?

I have a scar on my left upper arm from having the (compulsory) Smallpox jab - oh **** me the vaccine eradicated Smallpox.

I have a scar from the (compulsory) Diptheria jab. Oh **** me we no longer have that disease in UK.

I have a scar from the (compulsory) TB jab.

I had the Polio vaccine.

Grow up people, vaccines work.

When I started my BSc nearly 40 years ago a co-student in my Microbiology class walked with calipers and canes because he had had Polio as a child.

Grow up people and get vaccinated and stop being Internet 'Experts'. You do not know what you are talking about. You are merely showing yourselves as uneducated idiots.

Award for public communication of science heading your way Debs!