Post by steppenwolf on Nov 1, 2023 14:17:42 GMT
I watched this because Cummins had said that he would happily handcuff her and escort her out of the building, and I must admit that I think he has a point. This woman is very high up in the Civil Service and was in line to become a permanent secretary. Yet she is as thick two short planks - Sir Humphrey she is NOT.
She was talking about the govt following "the science" - which she regarded as "unfair on the scientists". She didn't seem to understand that the job of the scientists was to give their opinion on how to limit the number of people who die due to Covid. Nothing else. It's then the job of the govt to decide whether what they say is achievable. Plainly lockdowns were what Sage recommended because they're not interested in the cost. But the govt (i.e. Boris) had to decide about the cost to the economy of lockdowns - and Boris didn't think it was worth destroying the economy to save a few lives. But when Sage heard what Boris wanted to do Neil Ferguson (the guy with the "model") told him that his plan would result in 500,000 deaths. Poor old Boris was so shocked that he backed down.
Ms Macnamara seemed unaware of this also. The problem was that Ferguson's model - which has been used many times before and has ALWAYS got its predictions completely wrong - was based on the flu virus anyway - and it always massively exaggerated the number of infections.. Also there are two problems with Covid: 1) it's infectious before any symptoms are manifested and 2) it's very difficult to inoculate against because you can (like a cold) keep on getting ill with same virus.
Basically everybody was working in the dark because they didn't know this at the time - but she doesn't even know it now. She was wittering on about "Track and Trace" but the minute you've got any noticeable infection in the country it's already spread all around. We would have had to introduce track and trace in about Nov 2019 for it to be any use.
And the prat questioning her didn't know anything about Covid either. What waste of time.
She was talking about the govt following "the science" - which she regarded as "unfair on the scientists". She didn't seem to understand that the job of the scientists was to give their opinion on how to limit the number of people who die due to Covid. Nothing else. It's then the job of the govt to decide whether what they say is achievable. Plainly lockdowns were what Sage recommended because they're not interested in the cost. But the govt (i.e. Boris) had to decide about the cost to the economy of lockdowns - and Boris didn't think it was worth destroying the economy to save a few lives. But when Sage heard what Boris wanted to do Neil Ferguson (the guy with the "model") told him that his plan would result in 500,000 deaths. Poor old Boris was so shocked that he backed down.
Ms Macnamara seemed unaware of this also. The problem was that Ferguson's model - which has been used many times before and has ALWAYS got its predictions completely wrong - was based on the flu virus anyway - and it always massively exaggerated the number of infections.. Also there are two problems with Covid: 1) it's infectious before any symptoms are manifested and 2) it's very difficult to inoculate against because you can (like a cold) keep on getting ill with same virus.
Basically everybody was working in the dark because they didn't know this at the time - but she doesn't even know it now. She was wittering on about "Track and Trace" but the minute you've got any noticeable infection in the country it's already spread all around. We would have had to introduce track and trace in about Nov 2019 for it to be any use.
And the prat questioning her didn't know anything about Covid either. What waste of time.
