Wouldn’t it be useful to have a recent case study to test the rationality of regulators on this stuff. Like, IDK, just spitballing here, a regulator banning use of the same vaccine for over 65s based on nothing at all?
Or, random top of the head scenario, health officials in a large European country anonymously leaking to that country’s paper of record false information about the same vaccine’s effectiveness? Which the journalist in Q never addresses or apologises for?
"UKIP, but tax cuts instead of immigration cuts". There's always been a chunk of Con activsts (& MPs) who like this idea. I'm not sure there's an electoral market for it, but thanks to Tice we get to find out.
Problem is that there is always the confounding hypothesis: "UKIP is Farage and Farage is UKIP". But then that causal line works both ways. Maybe Farage is departing politics because he knows this recipe is doomed to fail, rather than its failure being due to his departure.
FWIW, in my own research on UKIP economic right wing ideology was seldom a strong predictor of support. Immigration, national ID and the EU did all of the work. As we show in Brexitland, Brexit was similar - identity and social attitudes strongly predict Leave, econ atts don't
One year in, and still the message that outdoors is just vastly safer than indoors still hasn't got through. Let people hang around in parks. The risk is tiny.
"super-spreading—the biggest driver of the pandemic—appears to be an exclusively indoor phenomenon. I’ve been tracking every report I can find for the past year, and have yet to find a confirmed super-spreading event that occurred solely outdoors".FFS let ppl have their park cans
Basically everything laid out here by David Shor re the US Dems 2016-20 has also happened to Labour since 2010, except the bit where minority voters defect to the right. And if Trump can win minority votes, then I suspect a Johnson/Sunak/Patel Con party could also...
This big realignment around education, and the potential tensions this creates between identity liberal white voters and BAME voters who are more socially conservative (even on some identity issues) are big themes of my book with @ProfSobolewska Brexitland
This is literally stuff we fail students for on intro quant methods classes. @patricksturg you may be interested in checking through this latest example of duff survey research
This was predictable, and predicted, by many who urged govt to act sooner in November/December. Great successes in 2021 on vaccine rollout should not blind us to the huge policy failure which immediately preceded it - a policy failure which cost thousands of lives.
Lets not forget either the many voices in the media demanding Johnson and the govt "save Christmas", lobbying which ignored all health advice at the time. Many of the same people are now demanding the govt again ignore public health advice and accelerate reopening.
Responses to this illustrate, rather depressingly, that those inclined to give the govt an easy ride have an already worked out counter-narrative "it was the new variant". This did play a role, but so did policy. Earlier, tougher restrictions would have reduced this massive spike