Beyond Selidor

That is so interesting (and infuriating!) about the Covid diagnostic criteria. I confess I had had some of that same general public reaction, and thank you for explaining that of course smart people know what they're doing - and of course I do know that scientific rigour is important and that the reductive response of social media is rarely the correct one and it's seductive anyway. I write laws for a living, and I hear a lot of echoes of this in the way people talk on twitter about lockdown restrictions and say things like "well why don't they make it SIMPLE". And of course what they're not seeing is that it can't be simple because it's not simple - restrictions on people's behaviour need enforcement provisions, and penalties, and exemptions, and exemptions to exemptions, and scope for amendment, and they need to not infringe on people's fundamental rights! And yet the prevailing narrative becomes "idiotic bureaucratic shambles" rather than "complex solution to once-in-a-century complex problem". (Plus the people who write the laws are just as tired and cranky as everyone else, but that's a different problem!)