Bob The Badger

Hm, who do I trust?
The man who is not a virologist and has no formal medical training and who believes people should not be told to wear masks on moral grounds. 
Or all the scientists in every country on the planet who are formally trained, study this stuff and who say mask wearing is an important element in fighting covid.
Tough call.

Hm, who do I trust?
The man who is not a virologist and has no formal medical training and who believes people should not be told to wear masks on moral grounds. 
Or all the scientists in every country on the planet who are formally trained, study this stuff and who say mask wearing is an important element in fighting covid.
Tough call.

Hm, who do I trust?
The man who is not a virologist and has no formal medical training and who believes people should not be told to wear masks on moral grounds. 
Or all the scientists in every country on the planet who are formally trained, study this stuff and who say mask wearing is an important element in fighting covid.
Tough call.

Hm, who do I trust?
The man who is not a virologist and has no formal medical training and who believes people should not be told to wear masks on moral grounds. 
Or all the scientists in every country on the planet who are formally trained, study this stuff and who say mask wearing is an important element in fighting covid.
Tough call.

I think masks probably help to cut the chances of becoming infected based on the fact that since I've worn a mask whilst shopping for  last  (almost)  two years, I've not had a single, rotten cold, and boy, are my colds rotten! I reckon I've been spared at least 5! ?

I think it's becoming apparent that the efficacy of the vaccines in preventing people catching Covid was significantly exaggerated.
It appears to me that too many people are being infected when you have so many who have been double-vaccinated.
I didn't realise the uptake was as high as it is and when I saw @maxjam post an article that said it was 80% I actually went to look for info that disproved that.
There isn't any because it's actually higher than that. I was wrong.
I'm no mathematician, in fact I failed 'O' level maths, so I have no clue about how these stats would look if analysed by an expert. But it doesn't feel like you can have vaccine efficacy rates over 90% (as we were told) with so many people double-jabbed and yet still be seeing so many people catch it.

Here's why I kinda don't care though.
Clearly the people catching it aren't getting as seriously ill and not as many people are dying. So the campaign in that respect, has been a success.
BUT, when you over-promise like it seems they did, then you give ammunition to the anti-vaxxers.
Wasn't the vaccine tested on the alpha variant?
In which case, maybe it was that effective then and the mutations to beta and then gamma before delta kicked their asses reduced the efficacy. I honestly don't know.
Even so, they should have said, this is how effective it is now, we have no way of knowing how effective it will be later when the virus mutates.
Playing Devils Advocate again however, when you have a public health crisis the first thing you want to do is protect the public as quickly as you can and sowing seeds of doubt would just have slowed down the toll out and increased the death count.
 

The thing is you need people to trust you and the government have handled so much of this badly, 

When u say reasonable ur talking about a side that hasnt been meaningfully added to in nearly 2 years now… the saying if u stand still in football ur going backwards… but what if ur already going backwards .. compared to our competition being able to add to their squads for the last 18 months to 2 years were on a landside 
as abject as it wad today and has been im not apportioning blame to rooney as it stands
 

So the goat part didn't happen either?
Well that's a relief I was dreading having to explain that to the wife.

At least after today we can focus on the F A Cup.

I think it's becoming apparent that the efficacy of the vaccines in preventing people catching Covid was significantly exaggerated.
It appears to me that too many people are being infected when you have so many who have been double-vaccinated.
I didn't realise the uptake was as high as it is and when I saw @maxjam post an article that said it was 80% I actually went to look for info that disproved that.
There isn't any because it's actually higher than that. I was wrong.
I'm no mathematician, in fact I failed 'O' level maths, so I have no clue about how these stats would look if analysed by an expert. But it doesn't feel like you can have vaccine efficacy rates over 90% (as we were told) with so many people double-jabbed and yet still be seeing so many people catch it.

Here's why I kinda don't care though.
Clearly the people catching it aren't getting as seriously ill and not as many people are dying. So the campaign in that respect, has been a success.
BUT, when you over-promise like it seems they did, then you give ammunition to the anti-vaxxers.
Wasn't the vaccine tested on the alpha variant?
In which case, maybe it was that effective then and the mutations to beta and then gamma before delta kicked their asses reduced the efficacy. I honestly don't know.
Even so, they should have said, this is how effective it is now, we have no way of knowing how effective it will be later when the virus mutates.
Playing Devils Advocate again however, when you have a public health crisis the first thing you want to do is protect the public as quickly as you can and sowing seeds of doubt would just have slowed down the toll out and increased the death count.
 

I see that the recent Steps Concert in Glasgow might be a superspreader event. A couple of cases initially but this afternoon the numbers increased quickly to 5,6,7,8.

@Archied - I can share books in here and maybe others are interested.
I'll stick to easy to read stuff, not because I don't think you're capable of reading more academic stuff, but quite honestly a lot of it bores me senseless.
The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis - A brilliant introduction to the work of Tversky and Kahnaman from the guy who wrote Moneyball.
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely - A cool intro into behavioural economics and why humans do irrational poo. Ariely is a Professor at Duke so a lot of the research he's done himself.
Influence by Robert Cialdini - Probably the seminal book on how and why we are influenced by others and outside factors. This book has been raped and pillaged by marketers, but it has real value for anybody wanting to understand human behaviour.
It has just been republished with a lot of new cutting edge research. I read the old one a couple of times and I'm working my way through the new one that is almost twice as long.
Like Ariely, Cialdini is a professor and much of the research is his own.
Situations Matter by Sam Sommers -Another book written by an academic but for laypeople and really entertaining. He breaks down the whole James Bulger murder when upwards of 50 people (I think, could have been in the 30s actually, but a lot) saw Thompson and Venables with James but nobody properly intervened. 
It seems none of us would, it was typical human behaviour and people who say otherwise are just victims of hindsight bias.
Anything by Malcolm Gladwell other than his short stories book which I forget the name of. I loved Blink which is a deep dive into rapid cognition and have read it maybe 5 times. But his last book Talking with Strangers was really good too and shows how we and why we jump to erroneous conclusions.
Gladwell pretty much turns every topic on its head and says it's not like we think it is and he's usually right. His revisionist history podcast is great too.
Freakonomics - Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner - A really fun read. Like seems to be a thing in this thread, they look at common misconceptions and explain why all is not what it appears on the surface. I read this 16 or 17 years ago so cannot remember many details, but the fact that it went to America with me in 2006 and came back again last year means I must have loved it.
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman - One of my favourite books of all time and a must for anybody serious about understanding how we come to decisions and how/why we often get them wrong.
I have a couple of hundred books in my Audible.com account, but you cannot merge .co.uk and .com so when I moved back I had to set up a new account and now I cannot get to my older ones to scroll through.
Well, I suppose I could if I could be arsed, but I've lost my password and it would mean logging out of Audible.co.uk and then resetting my old password.
But I'm sure that should keep you going for the weekend.

History was my favourite subject at school, but other than the English Civil War I'm ignorant on huge swathes of it these days.
Rather embarrassingly, II couldn't even tell you much about WWI and WWII other than we won.
So I'll not be debating that.
The big issue with our own experiences is that they can, and frequently do, give us a false perception of reality.
By giving our own experience more weight and credence (especially over things like science - not saying you with that, just generalising) we start to build a skewed view of what reality is.
We think our reality is the reality.
I love the Dalai Lama quote when on being asked by a journalist what would Buddhism do if science proved it to be wrong (the two are actually incredibly closely aligned, but I'm sure you know that) he replied 'Buddhism would need to change'.
I get that you're anti-mask and you think they pose a danger to kids development even if I don't know what you mean by that, or how it will manifest.
I don't think you're right, but I can't be sure as there have been no studies done (according to the scientist in the 5 Live debate I mentioned on Monday) so you're entitled to that opinion.
But it drifts from having an opinion to being demonstrably wrong when you suggest that as individuals we cannot communicate highly effectively without seeing the other persons mouth, nose and jaw.
In actual fact, the mouth is very easy to contrive. It's easy faking a smile with your mouth, the tricky bit is making sure the eyes get the message because people are intuitively very good at cueing in on people's eyes, or rather the muscles around them, and realising when somebody may be insincere.
We can communicate effectively without sight and sound - we're doing it now and depending on what research you want to believe that equates to less than 20% of how we communicate when in person. Some think closer to 7 or 8%
I'm not at all sure I favour making kids wear masks in school. In fact, I probably lean away from that, but in all honesty I'm not sure why I think that. I don't have a solid reason, just a sense that it's not a good thing.
Just like I have a sense that kids seeing adults wearing masks isn't a bad thing. I'm sure if somebody had a bad experience in the past it could be a trigger, but you could say that about everything from clowns to dogs. 
Maybe it was unnerving for some for a week or two, but as a species we're phenomenal at adapting, it's literally what we do best. So kids will adapt if they haven't already.
 
 

Interestingly @Archied if we'd never had any interaction and we met in a pub with @TexasRam, I'm pretty we'd have a lot more in common politically speaking than you and he would, or me and him for that matter.
Same goes for you and @G STAR RAM
Just a hunch of course, I'm still waiting to get to my copy of G Star Ram - An Autobiography. 
 

Well I for one am sick of seeing kids running around screaming in terror because people are wearing masks.
Be careful because now you're stepping into my area of expertise when it comes to body language and communication and you clearly know nothing about it.
Voice tonality, inflection, cadence, tone etc are super important with communication, !,000 x more important than seeing the other persons mouth, which is almost academic presuming you're not deaf.
Body position, angle of head, use of hands and general stance are also infinitely more important in how we judge a situation as to whether it poses a threat or not. Although I realise you never mentioned danger.
And we have something called eyes, that are much more important than the mouth is, although in genuine people they work together. 
Not being able to see a persons mouth does not necessarily impact on the ability to communicate in any meaningful sense, unless somebody actually wants it to.
Go and check out the work of Paul Ekman, especially his book, Emotions Revealed, although there are aspects that are somewhat in doubt now, especially certain expressions not crossing cultures.
Amy Cuddy has done some good stuff including an interesting Ted Talk too. 
 

@Archied - I can share books in here and maybe others are interested.
I'll stick to easy to read stuff, not because I don't think you're capable of reading more academic stuff, but quite honestly a lot of it bores me senseless.
The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis - A brilliant introduction to the work of Tversky and Kahnaman from the guy who wrote Moneyball.
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely - A cool intro into behavioural economics and why humans do irrational poo. Ariely is a Professor at Duke so a lot of the research he's done himself.
Influence by Robert Cialdini - Probably the seminal book on how and why we are influenced by others and outside factors. This book has been raped and pillaged by marketers, but it has real value for anybody wanting to understand human behaviour.
It has just been republished with a lot of new cutting edge research. I read the old one a couple of times and I'm working my way through the new one that is almost twice as long.
Like Ariely, Cialdini is a professor and much of the research is his own.
Situations Matter by Sam Sommers -Another book written by an academic but for laypeople and really entertaining. He breaks down the whole James Bulger murder when upwards of 50 people (I think, could have been in the 30s actually, but a lot) saw Thompson and Venables with James but nobody properly intervened. 
It seems none of us would, it was typical human behaviour and people who say otherwise are just victims of hindsight bias.
Anything by Malcolm Gladwell other than his short stories book which I forget the name of. I loved Blink which is a deep dive into rapid cognition and have read it maybe 5 times. But his last book Talking with Strangers was really good too and shows how we and why we jump to erroneous conclusions.
Gladwell pretty much turns every topic on its head and says it's not like we think it is and he's usually right. His revisionist history podcast is great too.
Freakonomics - Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner - A really fun read. Like seems to be a thing in this thread, they look at common misconceptions and explain why all is not what it appears on the surface. I read this 16 or 17 years ago so cannot remember many details, but the fact that it went to America with me in 2006 and came back again last year means I must have loved it.
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman - One of my favourite books of all time and a must for anybody serious about understanding how we come to decisions and how/why we often get them wrong.
I have a couple of hundred books in my Audible.com account, but you cannot merge .co.uk and .com so when I moved back I had to set up a new account and now I cannot get to my older ones to scroll through.
Well, I suppose I could if I could be arsed, but I've lost my password and it would mean logging out of Audible.co.uk and then resetting my old password.
But I'm sure that should keep you going for the weekend.

@Archied - I can share books in here and maybe others are interested.
I'll stick to easy to read stuff, not because I don't think you're capable of reading more academic stuff, but quite honestly a lot of it bores me senseless.
The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis - A brilliant introduction to the work of Tversky and Kahnaman from the guy who wrote Moneyball.
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely - A cool intro into behavioural economics and why humans do irrational poo. Ariely is a Professor at Duke so a lot of the research he's done himself.
Influence by Robert Cialdini - Probably the seminal book on how and why we are influenced by others and outside factors. This book has been raped and pillaged by marketers, but it has real value for anybody wanting to understand human behaviour.
It has just been republished with a lot of new cutting edge research. I read the old one a couple of times and I'm working my way through the new one that is almost twice as long.
Like Ariely, Cialdini is a professor and much of the research is his own.
Situations Matter by Sam Sommers -Another book written by an academic but for laypeople and really entertaining. He breaks down the whole James Bulger murder when upwards of 50 people (I think, could have been in the 30s actually, but a lot) saw Thompson and Venables with James but nobody properly intervened. 
It seems none of us would, it was typical human behaviour and people who say otherwise are just victims of hindsight bias.
Anything by Malcolm Gladwell other than his short stories book which I forget the name of. I loved Blink which is a deep dive into rapid cognition and have read it maybe 5 times. But his last book Talking with Strangers was really good too and shows how we and why we jump to erroneous conclusions.
Gladwell pretty much turns every topic on its head and says it's not like we think it is and he's usually right. His revisionist history podcast is great too.
Freakonomics - Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner - A really fun read. Like seems to be a thing in this thread, they look at common misconceptions and explain why all is not what it appears on the surface. I read this 16 or 17 years ago so cannot remember many details, but the fact that it went to America with me in 2006 and came back again last year means I must have loved it.
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman - One of my favourite books of all time and a must for anybody serious about understanding how we come to decisions and how/why we often get them wrong.
I have a couple of hundred books in my Audible.com account, but you cannot merge .co.uk and .com so when I moved back I had to set up a new account and now I cannot get to my older ones to scroll through.
Well, I suppose I could if I could be arsed, but I've lost my password and it would mean logging out of Audible.co.uk and then resetting my old password.
But I'm sure that should keep you going for the weekend.

No I'm not saying it has no effect, just that the effect is not that great unless you rely on lip reading.

We may be forced to enunciate more slowly because of the physical barrier the mask creates, but that's about it.
When we read people. as we all do, we give more importance to all the things I mentioned previously before we do the mouth.
This isn't me offering an opinion btw, this is just how we interact as human beings.
Have you ever heard anybody say anything like 'I could tell be the shape of his mouth he was going to do that?'

What you hear is 'I could see it in his eyes' or "I could tell by his posture' or 'it was in the tone of his voice' etc.
Good security people aren't looking at people's mouth to gauge threat, they are studying their body language.
Another great book for your rapidly growing collection is The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker. He's one of the worlds leading security experts and he talks a lot about this. A really fascinating read too.
 

History was my favourite subject at school, but other than the English Civil War I'm ignorant on huge swathes of it these days.
Rather embarrassingly, II couldn't even tell you much about WWI and WWII other than we won.
So I'll not be debating that.
The big issue with our own experiences is that they can, and frequently do, give us a false perception of reality.
By giving our own experience more weight and credence (especially over things like science - not saying you with that, just generalising) we start to build a skewed view of what reality is.
We think our reality is the reality.
I love the Dalai Lama quote when on being asked by a journalist what would Buddhism do if science proved it to be wrong (the two are actually incredibly closely aligned, but I'm sure you know that) he replied 'Buddhism would need to change'.
I get that you're anti-mask and you think they pose a danger to kids development even if I don't know what you mean by that, or how it will manifest.
I don't think you're right, but I can't be sure as there have been no studies done (according to the scientist in the 5 Live debate I mentioned on Monday) so you're entitled to that opinion.
But it drifts from having an opinion to being demonstrably wrong when you suggest that as individuals we cannot communicate highly effectively without seeing the other persons mouth, nose and jaw.
In actual fact, the mouth is very easy to contrive. It's easy faking a smile with your mouth, the tricky bit is making sure the eyes get the message because people are intuitively very good at cueing in on people's eyes, or rather the muscles around them, and realising when somebody may be insincere.
We can communicate effectively without sight and sound - we're doing it now and depending on what research you want to believe that equates to less than 20% of how we communicate when in person. Some think closer to 7 or 8%
I'm not at all sure I favour making kids wear masks in school. In fact, I probably lean away from that, but in all honesty I'm not sure why I think that. I don't have a solid reason, just a sense that it's not a good thing.
Just like I have a sense that kids seeing adults wearing masks isn't a bad thing. I'm sure if somebody had a bad experience in the past it could be a trigger, but you could say that about everything from clowns to dogs. 
Maybe it was unnerving for some for a week or two, but as a species we're phenomenal at adapting, it's literally what we do best. So kids will adapt if they haven't already.
 
 

The majority of the population don't read books on a regular basis.
And when it comes to non-fiction you're probably into single digits percentage-wise.
The fact that you dismissed a book you've never read as being haughty and said that you preferred real world experience suggests you're probably one of the majority.
I don't consider myself superior to anybody Archie. I'm a bleeding heart liberal.
I do consider that I'm better informed than some people in some areas though.
Just like I'm more poorly informed than many people in many areas.
The areas I'm poorly informed in outnumber the ones I know what I'm talking about by a factor of several hundred I would imagine.
I *think* you're a builder or roofer or something like that. Well, you're communicating now with the most incompetent DIY person you have probably ever known. 
I'd not debate you on anything to do with manual stuff like that because you'd probably wipe the floor with me. Which is why when you were talking about insulate Britain being ridiculous because it wasn't the issue that they were making out to be,  I didn't comment because I suspect you know a lot more about that than I do.
In circumstances like that real world experience probably does trump book learning. 
But, when you make statements that I know to be objectively false and you clearly don't understand the topic at hand when it is something I have studied and even had training in, then yeh,  I will say something and probably get sarcastic when you double down. 
I'm sorry I made you sad though.
 

The chin and the nose are definitely two of the most expressive parts of the human body.
If you were any more out of your depth on this topic you'd need a snorkel as well as flippers and a mask.
 

Yep just like in this covid topic it’s not about where we want to be that we disagree on it’s the way we get there 

The majority of the population don't read books on a regular basis.
And when it comes to non-fiction you're probably into single digits percentage-wise.
The fact that you dismissed a book you've never read as being haughty and said that you preferred real world experience suggests you're probably one of the majority.
I don't consider myself superior to anybody Archie. I'm a bleeding heart liberal.
I do consider that I'm better informed than some people in some areas though.
Just like I'm more poorly informed than many people in many areas.
The areas I'm poorly informed in outnumber the ones I know what I'm talking about by a factor of several hundred I would imagine.
I *think* you're a builder or roofer or something like that. Well, you're communicating now with the most incompetent DIY person you have probably ever known. 
I'd not debate you on anything to do with manual stuff like that because you'd probably wipe the floor with me. Which is why when you were talking about insulate Britain being ridiculous because it wasn't the issue that they were making out to be,  I didn't comment because I suspect you know a lot more about that than I do.
In circumstances like that real world experience probably does trump book learning. 
But, when you make statements that I know to be objectively false and you clearly don't understand the topic at hand when it is something I have studied and even had training in, then yeh,  I will say something and probably get sarcastic when you double down. 
I'm sorry I made you sad though.