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Was it experts that made the call though? Or was it politicians? Testimony going on right now indicates that Boris reversed course not because of expert advice but because of public pressure.
"Sir Patrick wrote that Mr Johnson said his party "thinks the whole thing is pathetic and Covid is just nature's way of dealing with old people - and I am not entirely sure I disagree with them. A lot of moderate people think it is a bit too much."
But then Boris wants to rely on public polling as to what he should do. And that fits with what I have been told by other MP's I know, that they were getting swamped with emails and letters from their constituents about needing to do more.
Indeed we saw Boris had analysis (by experts) that the average age of death was 81-85 and only 4% of under 60's even have to go to hospital and "we may need to recalibrate" and "it shows we don't go for nationwide lockdown"
2 weeks later he announced new lockdowns because it wasn't "politically viable yet to change course" i.e. because of public pressure.
Didn't that Imperial College model (by experts) confidently stating that Something Must Be Done or Several Zillion Will Die come out right around then? Whether Boris was listening to Imperial or a bunch of panicky people who were listening to Imperial, the root still lies with the experts.
I think that was the one in March, and this was October, where he says he doesn't believe the NHS will get overwhelmed etc (which is one of the things that report said).
But he could certainly have said that, and changed course. Possibly the public would have pushed back, and maybe you can trace that back to that report. But 1) he didn't try and 2) The PM can find his own experts to say the opposite , and 3) We're now a long way from experts being the ones that decided it, rather that some experts said something that people believed and wanted their politicians to act upon, their politicians knew better and did so anyway.
Experts don't exactly seem the chief problem there. ..
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Why did the public swamp politicians? Did somebody tell them to? Perhaps a shiny box in their pocket or in their living room?
The flaw of democracy is that most people are extremely influenceable by what other people tell them, especially if these other people seem to know what they are talking about. Anybody with a pile of money large enough to get a sufficiently large enough megaphone and some respectable-looking attire can legally, publicly influence policy in democratic countries toward any outcome without any repercussion.
This is essentially what the Democrats and their media machine claimed Russia did in the 2016 American elections, but somehow we are still playing this same game.
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