2020 Hindsight: How LOCKDOWN SCEPTICS went to war with reality

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Podmasters

News, Government, Politics, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 December 2020

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Angry, irrational rejection of key public health measures like lockdowns and masks was one of the ugliest aspects of 2020. How did lockdown deniers give scepticism such a bad name? Did the Brexiters’ war on experts make it harder to fight COVID? And deep down, do some lockdown deniers have a point? Alex Andreou talks to Queen Mary University politics professor Tim Bale and FT writer, honorary fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and author of How To Make The World Add Up Tim Harford about the power of wilful ignorance. “Over the past few years. middle finger, up-yours politics is what has resonated with many, many people.” – Tim Bale “Many sceptics didn’t go for the principled argument. They just argued that lockdowns kill more people or even that the virus isn’t all that dangerous.” – Tim Harford “How can the BBC allow business people to act as armchair epidemiologists?” – Tim Bale “The virus didn’t go away of its own accord. It went away because of the incredible sacrifice that so many people made.” – Tim Harford “The person in the street probably trusts experts MORE after the experience of COVID than they did beforehand.” – Tim Bale “Sweden was the poster boy for lockdown scepticism. But when you look at the infection and death figures – and the economy – Sweden is not that different from Britain.” – Tim Harford Presented by Alex Andreou. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	My name is Stan. I'm at. Nice to meet you. So you took up photography where? I've always loved
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0:11.8	Well college. I loved going to college. It's good you can retry. I'm enrolled on the day course. But college?
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0:55.9	theirs with dental life. Pick up dental life in the pet food aisle. Hello and welcome to another edition of the Bunker Daily. I am your host Alex Andro.
1:12.0	The truth shall set you free but first it might piss you off.
1:16.8	So goes a favorite motto of Alcoholics Anonymous as we divide increasingly into tribes battling friends, colleagues and strangers at the office, the pub or in social media,
1:28.0	that is what we battle for to establish the supremacy of our version of the truth in a binary struggle in which
1:36.1	it seems one can be either gloriously right or ridiculously wrong. The latest tribe to
1:42.4	darken my electronic doorstep is that of lockdown sceptics, a term which
1:48.3	is to me as a Greek unremittingly irritating, unfashionable as it might be, we still love experts on this program,
1:58.0	and since this is an episode that is all about data, I have not one, but two of them with me today. My first guest's voice will be very familiar to many of you from Radio 4s more or less.
2:09.0	He is a senior columnist for the Financial Times, an honorary fellow of the Royal Statistical Society
2:14.8	in his new book How to Make the World Add Up is one of the funniest and wisest things I have
	...

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