Daily, on our TV screens we are assured by “public health experts” whose jobs at the Ministry of Truth are safe, whatever happens to the economy, that tier 3 measures are more effective than tier two measures in controlling covid. That is to say numbers often rise enough to push a tier 2 district into tier 3 and then as controls tighten that district can return to tier 2 and eventually to tier 1. But there is a massive logical flaw in this claim which the media, collectively, fails to spot.
We might all agree that case numbers for covid as with all other diseases do not rise forever. Gradually herd immunity kicks in, the rate of growth slows and at a certain point case numbers start to fall at an ever faster rate. Those who talk of exponential growth do not, with the greatest of respect, understand what this means. The simple way to think of what is happening is to consider what happens when you throw a cricket ball into the air. It shoots up at first but gradually the rate of acceleration slows and eventually the ball reaches peak height and falls to the ground.
The assumption of the GroupThink of experts, politicians and journalists is that cases fall when a district goes into tier three because of the extra restrictions when compared to tier 2. But what if we consider the analogy with the cricket ball. On its ascent, the ball passes through tier one (as it leaves your hand) then into tier 2 and finally Matt Hancock says the ball is so high and the rate of height increases so fast that it must go into tier 3. But this is at a point where the ball is coming quite close to peak height anyway. Before too long, it peaks and starts to fall and inevitably heads back into tier 2 territory and then tier 1.
Little Matt Hancock or Mad Mark Drakeford then boasts that it was their measures that caused the fall. You and I, having looked at the way other diseases play out, might argue that the falls would have happened anyway. I look at how lockdowns have made no real difference to spread citing Greece and Sweden as case studies, not to mention the shambles that is Wales. The wretched Hancock just blathers on about THE science. For him, it is settled whatever the hard data says to the contrary.
The difference is that I accept there is no proof of my view. I might just be wrong although I can show evidence that I am not. Having, like Hancock, studied David Hume at Oxford, I know that events can be conjoined but not connected but that they can also be connected so I humbly accept the possibility that I might be wrong.
But the GroupThink insists that there is proof of their view and that this justifies moving the whole country into Tier 3 as it must work, so wrecking the economy causing mass job losses, bankruptcies, missed cancer tests, suicides and all round misery. Our leaders and the experts insist that there is a proven causal connection between tightening lockdown via tier 3 and curbing the virus. Once again little Hancock resits his Oxford logic paper and scores a Gamma Minus.