Introducing the Grinch
This “expert” is so far up his own hole that all he can see is little numbers on his spreadsheet.
The telling part is that he is an epidemiologist, which nowadays translates as someone who has built a computer model and who spends his life putting numbers in one end to see what comes out the other. Computer models are fine for things like engineering but are fuck all use when it comes to such things as human behaviour and social manipulation. There is an infinite number of variables for a start and the process completely overlooks such trivialities as happiness and joy.
To a lot of us [probably the majority], December is a pretty bleak time of year. The evenings are dark and the weather is not only bad but usually is going to get worse over the next few months. I am all in favour of a little bit of jollity when families can get together and light the place up a bit. It gives them something to look forward to. For a lot of families, it’s the one time when sons and daughters along with the kids can travel home and unite the family for a few days. This year in particular has been very tough and everyone deserves a little break from the constant doom and gloom of the Healthists.
Our “expert” of course can’t see any of this. All he can see is his precious numbers. He sees the world in terms of risk and death. He doesn’t measure the joy of meeting a grandchild for the first time, or welcoming home a son or daughter. He is obsessed with health and figures and the individual doesn’t count.
Dr Scally […] said he really worries about what will happen over the coming weeks, saying there has been little discussion about travel.
Let him worry, but don’t inflict his worries on the rest of us. Maybe he should try a Valium or two? Or maybe snort a couple of lines of coke?
Or maybe he should just fuck off and get a life?
Let him put into his Sinclair Spectrum spreadsheet the probability of murders, suicides, deep depression, increased drug use, undiagnosed lethal illnesses and let him print that out.
Plus the non zero probability of some lone person with mental health issues skewering him/her/it when his details are doxed. (Am I using the correct jargon).
Christmas and Hogmanay were the times when the people realised that the soothsaying modeller with his bag of chicken bones was wrong when he claimed that they were headed for eternal darkness of ever shortening dsys unless they gave him a few virgins (nice lookers, mind) and some gold and the fillet cut of the pig.
History does not record where his chicken bones ended up after being splintered, or how the soothsayer got them out.
Fuck off is the response to these people. As often as it takes till they get the message.
My son and heir lives in a Covid hotspot, Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire with 181 per 100,000 of the population infected. The population of Newcastle-under-Lyme according to the 2019 data is 129,000. So that is less than 0.1% with the virus. The town is doomed ! They are already in tier 3 (tiers before bedtime), so we cannot in theory, visit our son, or he visit us. But hope is at hand ! We are also in tier 3, so we can, in theory, move into a tier 3 area. I think. Anyhoo, My son-in-law is planning a climbing trip in Snowdinia tomorrow, he will have to go from tier 3 to tier 2 and back into whatever the half-wits of the Welsh Assembly decide what to make the virus go away across the border into the Saxon lands !
It may be a pretty spreadsheet but when they are doing the expressions they are massively over egging the risk for Covid. If he only got that right then he would be a lot happier.
I wish Doris would just say. All those that believe in this bullshit self isolate until it is over and let the rest of us wipe ourselves out.
Hi Grandad,
Same sort of nonsense in Blighty. The other day we had the suggestion that, should you be so reckless as to keep Christmas, you should put Granny at the far end of the table, next to an open window, where the fresh December air would protect her from the Covid.
Lockdown Sceptics though did a piece on The Risk To Granny (linked from their site) where they calculated the balance of risks: Do you invite Granny and risk KILLING HER with the Covid, or not invite her, in which case, being old, she might die anyway before you see her again. And maybe she might like to make the decision herself?
All the best to you,
gareth
We had a similar suggestion here, except that they wanted Grandad at the open window [with a force 9 Northerly blowing down his neck]. I think you may guess my response to that?
Hi Grandad,
I am an epidemiologist in the good ole US of A and couldn’t agree with you more.
Take it from me that the daily number reports are meaningless. Ahh, statistics. My favorite quote is from Ronald Dahl, who said, “If you torture the data long enough it will confess to anything.”
Lies, damned lies and statistics!
He got his way in the end and we are in complete lockdown now. I hope that eases his worries and he can sleep a bit better?