A useful thread on the problems with a single paper being read and interpreted by lay people Tweet— Twitter API (@user) date
If there was one thing that could improve the level of public discourse - whether it's science, politics, health, etc - then critical thinking is that silver bullet.
It's a noble goal, but changing people's minds is much harder than most of us anticipate. I've started to feel it's more productive to just try and promote good discussion rather than to doggedly attempt convince someone of something (not to say you shouldn't try and persuade). Even if it has no effect, at least it's good practice in critical thinking (after all, if you'll forgive the aphorism, the easiest mind to change is your own).
No u. Just kidding. I've had D&V for days - couldn't leave the house if I tried. I do resent that pleasure driving is explicitly forbidden, though, i.e. just going for a drive/ride. Sometimes I get in my car/motorbike, drive into the middle of nowhere and stand in a field. It is tremendously therapeutic. It is also literally a zero risk factor in viral spread. But it's now illegal. What I can legally do, though, is drive 10 minutes up the road to my nearest large public area and go for a walk with a friend for the purpose of 'exercise' in close proximity to dozens of other sudden fitness enthusiasts. Because logic.
With you on that. I bought a Pan European just before Christmas and the number of times I've actually ridden it is in single figures. Furthest I've ever ridden it was back from the dealer. I mean... to be fair, the weather is pretty crap at the moment, so it's not often that the weather permits a ~200-odd mile trip to blow away the cobwebs. (It was a bit different this time last year, I would much rather ride in the pissing rain and howling wind than get on a bus.) There is a good argument to be made that it creates an unnecessary risk of tying up emergency services if you were to have an accident, but to be honest that's pretty thin. Riding a motorbike inherently carries more risk than driving a car, but you're at risk of being involved in a collision even if you're just walking down the street. Personally I'm not sure how much water this argument really holds.
I get the impression "driving for pleasure" was kaiboshed was so that it couldn't be used as a generic coverall for all sorts of other lockdown abuses. Keep the roads nice and quiet and people are more likely to stay at home, and all that.
You wouldn't know it if you drove round where I live. We go to the supermarket once or maybe twice a week (although it's usually only one of us actually going into the shop), and every time the traffic seems to be busier and busier. The traffic today was back to pre-pandemic levels. Maybe most of this traffic is people that genuinely need to travel, maybe all of these people are going to or from jobs that they can't do remotely. But the contrast with the first lockdown last year is stark, doing that same run you could count the number of other cars you'd see on one hand.
Yeah, I remember stepping out onto our quiet street during the first lockdown and it was eerily silent. Now, it feels a lot like any other day. It is quieter, but not like it was.
I legit loved riding to work in the first lockdown. It was a motorbiker's paradise. The tying up emergency services argument was put to me, but it is, as you say, thin. In fact I'd go further: it's insultingly dumb. If motorbikes being dangerous is a problem, why can I still use one to commute? If all non-essential pootling about is a problem - well, it isn't. Jesus, think about the actual odds of any journey resulting in an accident (it's like a rounding error in someone's cosmonautical calculations). Then divide that again, because there are now hardly any other vehicles on the road. As ElThomsono says - it's just about people using it as a catch-all excuse. But this is only a bandaid applied to the gaping chainsaw injury of a problem that the police face, which is that policing lockdown is almost impossible, since "shopping" and "exercise" are permanent get-out-of-jail-free cards any time you're stopped within reasonable distance of your home. In that sense, I suppose it doesn't matter that pleasure driving is banned, because you can still just...do it. Just stay local. The response this often elicits is a scrambling attempt to rationalize why you shouldn't do that in terms of harm, even though nobody is harmed, which I see as tying into a deeply British trait - the need to sanctify rules. Probably something to do with our Christian cultural legacy. We're like the ladder monkeys in that apocryphal experiment.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56145492 Perhaps, in hindsight, tendering contracts via Whatsapp messages isn't the best idea. Not that there will be any consequences for Hancock.
Leaks reveal that 2 people can meet in a park from 8th March while schools return at same time, but you still can't even sit in a garden until 29th MARCH when suddenly it's ok for SIX people to do so, foillowed by a mad dash to bring back pubs and everything else by April. No, not good enough. This is where you lose the public again with illogic. Let people see their loved ones, and not on a freezing park bench.
I said A garden you protoplasmic philistine! If that garden belongs to someone else, that's a COVID hotspot.
