Science and politics - a comment on Michael Curzon’s recent piece
They might, given an adequate education, have noted instead that while the government document looks authoritative, it is nothing more than a value-judgement.
Below is a comment from David Seedhouse on Michael Curzon’s recent article about the Omicron variant and the press conference on it:
SCIENCE AND POLITICS
Despite the MSM's repeated attempts to persuade its readers that they should all wear masks as a public health measure they remain unable to offer any evidence, as we noted in yesterday's Open Letter to the Guardian Health Editor:
"Why use a face covering?
Evidence suggests transmission mainly happens indoors where people are close together.
Face coverings worn over the nose and mouth reduce the spread of coronavirus droplets from coughs, sneezes and while speaking."
For once they provide a link for 'the evidence'. But they seem not to have read the link properly or they are now so psychologically affected they cannot see the words correctly. Here is a key section:
"There is currently insufficient evidence on transmission to be able to confidently quantify absolute risk of infection and the impact of mitigation measures. For some modes of transmission it may be possible to use surrogate approaches, computational models or data from other diseases to estimate the relative effects of prevention and mitigation measures.
However as many of these are environment specific it can be difficult to quantify with a high degree of confidence. There is a well-established concept of “tolerable risk” which is defined by HSE as “...’tolerable’ does not mean ‘acceptable’. It refers instead to a willingness by society as a whole to live with a risk so as to secure certain benefits in the confidence that the risk is one that is worth taking and that it is being properly controlled”.
They might, given an adequate education, have noted instead that while the government document looks authoritative, it is nothing more than a value-judgement.
Risk is not an objective concept, it is a subjective one.
The latest decree that everyone must wear face coverings has, therefore, nothing to do with science and everything to do with politics: our leaders need to be seen to be doing something.
It seems only reasonable that given this, a political response is justified. Most citizens have no say in this matter, but we can as individuals mount a political protest by choosing not to comply with non-evidence-based rules.