Coronavirus - Here come the variants

In this case both are true. They did need to scare people and the truth was scary.

But the government also needed to scare people. Because how else can you get people to behave in a way that is necessary for public health?

Again, I simply fail to see any problem here. In fact itā€™s exactly how I would have advocated framing public communication.

Have Gript answered how they would have framed public communication in this scenario were they an advocacy group or the government?

Presumably it would have been ā€œget the pints in!ā€?

Sure the only reason you think sheā€™s a head banger is coz you donā€™t agree with her

Its a pity you werent articulate enough yourself to put your LIDTF viewpoint on here.

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Definitely. I agree with some of his points disagree with others but at least heā€™ll provide balance. All the posters who make thousands of posts and think theyā€™re right on everything and never change their mind were on the one side at least they have a LIDTF equivalent now to keep them honest.

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Iā€™ve never been of that viewpoint, Iā€™m somewhere on the middle, have been from day one,
Thereā€™s merits in most arguments I find, people are affected in different ways and become quite emotional

I like reading good debate, there hasnā€™t been any here on this topic in many months

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Thereā€™s no such thing as truth. Certainly not in science anyway, thatā€™s not what science does.

While thereā€™s merit to your argument weā€™ve continually seen the goal posts being moved all over the place when we were getting the ā€˜truthā€™.

You simply canā€™t deny thereā€™s agendas among all the groups involved, then youā€™ve policitics with the other lot. Our lockdowns and restrictions were based on the fact that weā€™ve a woeful health service and inept political leadersā€¦ That has to be the starting point for any conversation, not science.

I gave up watching RTE last Mayā€¦ But how many alternative voices were sought for their nightly debates? How many alternative scientific Voices did the gov seek? Iā€™m sorry to break it to you but science doesnā€™t deliver truth, it gives us evidence which is deciphered and interpretaed by men. Your truth is merely one opinion over another.

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I canā€™t read your mind pal, but I think youā€™re being disingenious there saying youā€™re in the middle. There has been good debate on here for the last number of months maybe you havent been following it closely.

Even amongst the perceived OIUTF posters views on here, they diverge quite a good bit.

Agree with you re @Cheasty , its good to have him back.

One of the most interesting questions is why western governments didnā€™t take the threat seriously. The contrast between Asian countries that responded immediately and decisively long before being advised to by the WHO, and the western response is staggering. Europe, North America and South America utterly failed in their response, by March 15th when measures started to be taken, there were likely 2 million infected in the US and the same in Europe.

But you canā€™t attribute it all to Trump and Boris, as the answer to this question isnā€™t political ideology. Liberal and conservative governments were all guilty of the same inaction. The leading advisors in the US held a meeting in Colorado in mid February and Fauci was adamant that this was nowhere near the threat of flu and the American public should not take it seriously. He was on TV saying the same thing a week later, and resisted any efforts to shut down travel. All of the major US news outlets were warning not to take the threat seriously, the flu was worse. How did they fail to notice how Asia was responding?

I think the failure was mainly due to fear of being wrong, fear of losing credibility, fear of losing the next election, fear of public opinion turning against them. It needed a war time response, with generals in charge, and instead we have a bunch of academics who wanted everything modelled and proven before taking action. Looking back on it Mike Ryan was right in his impassioned speech calling for decisive action in early March, but nobody in the west was listening. Or maybe they knew at that point it was already too late.

Itā€™s been a monumental cluster fuck.

But itā€™s an undeniable truth that cases were rising very sharply in the pre-Christmas period.

Was that not scary?

Of course there are agendas involved. ISAG have an agenda. Gript have an agenda. Business lobby groups have an agenda. Doctors working on the front line who are interviewed have an agenda. NPHET have an agenda. The Government in their own way have an agenda. Posters here have an agenda. Everybody has an agenda.

Good faith debate will, or should, thrash out whose agendas are worth listening to most closely and whose should be listened to less.

Well obviously I disagree about the debate, but if youā€™ve found it to be worthy then who am I to disagree, itā€™s been very one sided.

I believe myself to be firmly in the middle, I see valid arguments for both sides, just because Iā€™m not entrenched in the OIUTF at all costs donā€™t take it that Iā€™m gone the other way

I know that you see the difference. Itā€™s not good enough that you think it coincided with the truth.

Iā€™ve posted an article from behavioural psychologist advising NPHET criticising them for relying on fear to engender compliance. I agree with her. I think itā€™s a good critique. This is one of the areas I think we could have managed a lot better by the way.

Hereā€™s another article that builds on the earlier one criticising the fear based approach to messaging, thereā€™s an article or you can listen to her talking to Matt Cooper at about 49 mins.

Edit: I donā€™t read gript as Iā€™m sure you know. The example I gave didnā€™t come from gript.

Thereā€™s a reporter from southern California who has been writing for the past year and really struggling to try and understand how SoCal did so well and then got overwhelmed in the fall/winter wave. She spoke to the head of the Immunology department at UCSD (San Diego) and asked him what in his opinion drove it. He simple answered ā€œI donā€™t knowā€. Probably the most honest answer we have had from an expert.

Fair enough pal, thereā€™s more to debate though than just lockdowns,

I think the vaccines have been debated fairly well on here as well and I certainly would not be in the majority with regards to my viewpoint on them.

We donā€™t. We have better health infrastructure than most of Europe anyway. Especially when you mobilise the private as well, which we did.

I think there is a very large degree of fear of being seen to be wrong involved at all levels, and especially in the current media environment.

Natural cautiousness, disbelief, incomprehension at the scale of the challenge and the measures that would be needed. All that contributed to the slow response.

When I was posting here before I myself went through a period of cognitive dissonance about what was happening. Fear translated into gallows humour, but that was mixed with a sort of tired ā€œseen it all beforeā€ type mindset going back to previous pandemics. I think the penny started dropping for real around the last eight or nine days of February 2020 that this really was deadly serious.

Fair play to you, you saw the threat early. I disagree with a lot of your posting since the pandemic began but you were definitely off the mark early.

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I think some of your views are mad but you never seem to get riled up or aggressive in any of your debating with people, fair to play to you.

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But sometimes I think there has to be fear, sometimes the gravity of a situation is such that there is no alternative. What I do think is counterproductive is preaching at ordinary people for venial sins as regards breaches of restrictions. If you think Iā€™m extreme, I have a brother who is way more extreme in this regard, despite being at best partially informed, and his attitude is not persuasive to say the least.

One of the unmentionable doctors made what I thought was a great call back in December. She looked at the rates rising suddenly, with an identical trajectory across all london boroughs. While all around here list their heads she said it was bollox and that the most likely explanation was cross contamination in a test centre. ā€¦she was right of course

I donā€™t think youā€™re extreme. I still think youā€™re purposely missing the point, Iā€™ve drawn the distinction for you already, not that you needed me to, and Iā€™ll leave it at that. I do have an extremely negative view of the ISAG. I do agree on your second point, itā€™s what the people in the articles I posted links to were talking about.

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She reports people from standing outside a church socially distance yet goes to BLM protest. The definition of a WOKE politician who is all for free speech until it doesnā€™t suit her narrative.

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