SA – Thank you for taking the time to read that paper and posting a considered response. Yes, I have of course read it myself and would not have linked to it otherwise. It is a bit unwieldy I agree, but as I tend to read studies and articles relating to ‘the bigger picture’ rather more than those specific to the virus itself, although I read some of those too, it was of interest to me.
The problem for me is, and always has been, does the cost of the response outweigh the cost of the disease? Its all well and good to say ‘if we had done x at the beginning’ things might have worked out better. But we didn’t, and now we are where we are. It has indeed become horribly politicised, that was almost inevitable in our society, but I do also get a very strong sense that those still clamouring for harsher restrictions now view themselves as ‘morally’ right, always an exceedingly distasteful attitude in my opinion. I felt that this bit of research shed a little light on that and tried to warn of the dangers inherent in such a situation. A feeling of having morality on ones side, makes people behave differently than they might otherwise, what was ‘wrong’ before becomes acceptable ‘under the circumstances’. They are even clamouring to have sceptical or dissenting voices de-platformed and silenced altogether in the name of ‘stopping the spread of misinformation’. Have you ever really stopped to consider how incredibly dangerous that is to society? How that moral outrage will be used and how, far from finding a practical solution to the problem of this or any other virus, it will distort reality altogether? Both you and Clarke have made plain that you consider me callous, uncaring and even downright malicious. The result being that I no longer wish to debate with either of you. Do you see how that works in the wider context?