Good analysis of Medley’s admission. The problem since last year has been the blinkered focus on only one problem and the failure to appreciate that every policy decision - but particularly legislation controlling people’s lives - can cause foreseen and unforeseen harm.
https://twitter.com/briefanomaly/status/1472355207216435203
This approach was built in to UK policy making with Raab’s ‘Five Tests’ (in April 2020) that fettered the government’s discretion to remove restrictions until tests relating only to this one virus had been met.
Even if such unprecedented state control could ever be justified (it cannot) that irresponsible monomania prevented the multi-faceted policy decisions necessary - those that considered the consequences on society, economy, public health & democratic norms in the widest sense.
That even Nelson talks of measures that might be ‘required’ (in what were a brilliant series of questions that teased out this admission on modelling) is an unfortunate reminder of how far this flawed thinking has entrenched itself.
Restrictions can never be ‘required’ even if a policy maker makes that judgement on the basis of analysis on its harms and benefits in the widest sense. But that is particularly so when that decision is made only on predictions relating to one harm.
I find it absolutely astonishing that I even have to say this. It is so *obvious*. It is what everyone would have understood to be the basics of any rational government since rational men and women thought about statecraft.
That I do says much about the decay of rational, proportionate, humanitarian thinking among our elites, because of their over-specialised cocoons and limited historical and philosophical understanding.
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