Don’t believe all scientists over pandemic – Yorkshire Post Letters

EVERY scientist, every lawyer, indeed, every mature person knows that evidence often fits with more than one interpretation.

Take the recent report that between a third and a quarter of colds in the UK now are actually Covid-19. The official view of this is that we should take more measures to combat Covid because there is a lot of it about.

An alternative interpretation is that if the symptoms of these Covid cases are no worse than having a cold, then we shouldn’t be overreacting.

Similarly, senior politicians and their scientific advisers dwell on the fact that the Omicron variant of Covid is more infectious than the dominant Delta strain. They completely ignore that both the World Health Organisation and America’s CDC report that symptoms of Omicron are usually mild.

The senior scientists and medics advising Ministers are suffering from confirmation bias, where the seriousness of Covid-19 is treated as a given, and all evidence is interpreted to bolster that belief. Alternative interpretations of new evidence are ignored, as the likely evolutionary path of this type of upper respiratory tract infection to lesser virulence and greater infectivity.

This inevitably leads to these advisors applying the precautionary principle and recommending both endless restrictions and recurring lockdowns.

It is high time our political leaders realised that their scientific advisors are not infallible and do not take into account the economy, the national debt, inflation, NHS waiting lists, delayed cancer screenings or the morale and mental health of the nation.

From: Mark Norris, Leeds.

SHADOW Chancellor Rachel Reeves (The Yorkshire Post, December 11) once again wholly blames the Conservatives for the mess we’re in. Yet Tony Blair was an admirer of Margaret Thatcher.

Personally Blair’s Labour carried on where Thatcher had left off with the continuing destruction of this country’s wealth-creating manufacturing base.

I was employed at a major government contractor for 18 years, which moved manufacturing overseas under Blair’s Labour. The company I worked for used every method to force staff to leave, yet Labour politicians used any excuse for contracts going offshore from EU rules to best deal for the taxpayer to denial.

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