Reply To: Show us zee papers.. Passports of your not coming in ever….

[khusrauParticipant 1169xp 3]

I think there are a whole series of logical fallacies in the upstream post. Were you vaccinated as a child? If you are 53 in the UK then there would have been a whole cocktail from polio onwards. The risk of contracting some of these diseases was low, almost entirely due to the herd immunity created by the vaccinations  but the consequences were severe.

And if you think mathematical modelling is educated guesswork, then you really haven’t had the contact with scientific academia you reckon. One of the big challenges early on was that the models were not known, and the flu model isn’t a great fit. The model improves all the time.

Finally, your decisions are based on your risk assessment, based on what you have read and heard. Extrapolate that to a wider population that has heard and read other stuff, like onions can trigger Long Covid (I kid you not) or drinking bleach works.

Really, human beings are generally pretty rubbish at risk assessment. And the capacity is a bell curve on age as a general rule. The real difference between this pandemic and the somewhat strained analogies is that your assessment of risk doesn’t just endanger yourself. Issues of privacy aside, if there had been broadcast the actual dying of a patient whose lungs were killing them, then the risk perception of many people would be quite different.

I would rather listen to Devi than some bloke down the ‘spoons.

As for my observations. I have actually worked in the collation and analysis of epidemiological data, and as a risk manager, among other things.

The reality from a wargames perspective, is that knowing there are people like you out there, affects whether people like me will go back to conventions any time soon.