Not always the mouthpiece of govt; sometimes the mouthpiece of other anonymous persons working for interested parties. Why not wait until you have a corroborated and sourced story weighing it all up and then write that?
Like an economist tweeting 'I've just opened Matlab and initialised some parametes and matrix entries!' 'Anonymous sources say there might indeed be a paper here'.
I don't understand Robert's incentives. He's at the top of his game. A superstar. Book deals when he feels like it. Pime time tv shows when he wants on what he wants. Why bother with this. There is no race that needs to be won that these 'get there first' tweets can help.
Surely if ITV are saying to him 'Robert you need to write loads of get there first tweets, no bar low enough' he can tell them to gtf out of it?
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1. The government and particularly the PM was complacent in getting into gear as the virus gathered pace in China and Italy.
2. The March lockdown came far too late. A fault that may lie with the govt and the scientists advising; perhaps the latter were incorrectly assuming a lockdown would not be agreed to and so did not recommend it early enough.
Also interesting is how one country choosing not or unable to control the virus creates negative spillovers [raising the chance of generating a new more malign variant] for other countries.
How would you combat this? Carrots and sticks for those choosing not to control the virus [sanctions, conditional aid]; aid for those unable to control it.
Another interesting issue arises that if you pursued a vaccine nationalist strategy to the great detriment of a country you are connected to this could rebound on you and others by allowing new variants to incubate and eventually unravel your suppression strategy.
In a parallel world, the Virus Policy Commitee of the Centre for Economics and Epidemiology has just voted options for vaccine prioritization and trajectories for lockdown release.
The voting helped focus Government and 'Covid Recovery Group' minds on the consequences of early relaxations, given stark forecasts for the number that would die or be left long term disabled by covid under each of the options.
Although the government was left to choose its own vaccination and lockdown policy, and the VPC's votes were advisory only, the death numbers printed in black and white made it hard for the government to choose the high numbers of deaths.
‘Sociologists have no compelling theory of society’.... ‘philosophers have no compelling theory of knowledge’.... ‘theologians have no compelling theory of religion’... send tweet
For clarity... given some of the replies. I don't actually believe any of those statements. They just illustrate the vacuity of someone [like me] who is obviously not from those disciplines and demonstrates no history of grappling with primary contributions, tweeting out.
'finance has no compelling theory of finance'.... 'banking has no compelling theory of banks'.... 'anthropology has no compelling theory of human behaviour'.... this is fun!
The titbits I get fed about the debate over a hypothetical post indy monetary policy in Scotland make it seem like a lot of nonsense is being talked on the indy side.
One could say 'it is doable, with some institutional risks, to set up a new central bank and do independent inflation targeting, with credible political backing, and the reservoir of econ and cb expertise, and history of inflation targeting itself.'
However, SNP don't want to say this, as it - rightly - fears that people fear the risks of setting up a new currency. Even though IMO this is a perfectly sensible and doable option.
What is the Gupta causality? 1. Covid Research Group ideologically disposed against lockdowns, caring not about the evidence. 2. Look for similar credentialled scientist. 3. Govt pressured to give platform to said scientist to placate CRG....
4. Fact of sceptic's access and influence over govt makes sceptic newsworthy+BBC charter worry, leads to platform amplification. 5. Amplification takes us back to 3, with more pressure for govt to listen to the advice.
Something similar was at work with the pro Brexit economists and trade commentators in the pre and post referendum period.