Thread by @BillHanage

This illustrates a few of the points made by people who, whatever their motivations, should not be really taken seriously when it comes to talking pandemic - not least because these arguments come from the part of epidemiology that deals with *non*infectious disease 1/n

https://twitter.com/brianjohnsontx/status/1314002285106790400

(Firstly anyone who says Covid mania has already revealed that they’ve got what you might call a pre-existing condition when it comes to the science. I don’t think that more than 200,000 and counting deaths is worth joking about. Call me crazy) 2/n

‘May not’ vs ‘may’. Yes it is right to be cautious about these statements. But not to the level of relativism implied here. The ‘may’ formulation is not equivalent to ‘may not’. It implies that we think about its consequences 3/n

I am amused at the way supposedly clever people get obsessed with newspaper articles now about the pandemic, when they were quiet over this …ologicalontologyproject.wordpress.com 4/n

‘Emerging evidence’ means roughly the 2nd category here: things I am increasingly certain of based on my expert view of the data and conversations with other experts. That’s worth reporting, especially if it is emerging evidence that keeps emerging blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/h… 5/n

the study of chronic disease is different from infectious. For a start, things like lead poisoning do not multiply themselves for everyone poisoned. Under the circumstances of a pandemic, reporting what the experts think as they gather the information is an essential service 6/n

Finally, the message of no evidence so no action is a message of despair. It states we can do nothing because we don’t know what to do. In fact we do. There were pandemic plans torn up only years ago. If a fraction of the advice had been followed we’d be in a better place 7/end