Didn't read it all, but there are lots of things going wrong.
There has been loads of really, rushed, flawed antibody papers that are bunged out onto preprint servers without much hope of ever getting past peer review, but are trailed in the media in the hope of getting more funding in to the research group, because governments have to make sure they are throwing money at any promising research avenue and are desperate for positive news, while the media are obviously keen for the scoop, and write-ups rarely written by scientifically literate journalists - for example, remember when we were posting about that study from Oxford that had was reported as estimating that 50% of people had got the virus?
There's also a general situation similar to the climate change debate, where whenever someone wants to cloud an issue they are able to trawl the internet and find an epidemiologist with a contrary opinion, and reference it as evidence that 'scientists can't agree on anything.'
And our politicians have been a disgrace. Making policy judgements under uncertainty, and taking responsibility for those choices is the skill of politics - passing the buck of policy response to an advisory group of disease spread modellers - 'we're following the science!' Is a total abdication of responsibility in a national crisis, and absolutely astonishing - the only thing this achieves is protecting reputations of the politicians involved from the inevitable public enquiry into why we it was f*cked up so badly. |  |
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