Wrong? Us experts? Never!

Writing at UnHerd, UK blogger Toby Green observes the scramble by celebrity epidemiologists and other media-revered ‘experts’ to recast the COVID narratives they peddled relentlessly through two years’ of lockdowns, mask mandates, fines and nonsensical edicts that, as they tirelessly assured one and all, would stop the coronavirus in its tracks.

Were he writing of Australia’s COVID experience, he might have added the arrests of COVID policy critics to the list of outrages, plus VicPol’s policy of treating old ladies to a good thumping and a pepper-spray spritz when not pelting their fellow citizens with rubber bullets.

Green writes:

The past two days have seen sorties from scientists desperate to shore up the lockdown version of history. Lockdowns were necessary, and anyone who disagrees does not care about society or equality. This version of history is so fraudulent that it cannot be allowed to triumph.

Writing in The Guardian yesterday, [health researcher and scribbler] Devi Sridhar asks: “Why can’t some scientists just admit they were wrong about Covid?” Why indeed? Sridhar notes that scientists have divided into opposing camps, taking “particular pandemic positions … eventually building a base of followers that organise around that position and defend it viciously.” She just doesn’t seem to recognise that this neatly describes her own approach.

Sridhar’s piece is a craven attempt to rewrite history by claiming that the Zero Covid position was only ever intended for the pre-vaccine era. Can this be the same Sridhar who said in a New Statesman interview in January 2021 that “the better option is to eliminate the virus” – even after vaccines had started to be rolled out? Or who tweeted in June 2020 that “the fastest way to get economy & normal life back is to push for a ZERO Covid Britain. Clear virus, build domestic economy”? Still, as far as Sridhar’s concerned, if anyone got anything wrong, it wasn’t her.”

As Green goes on to note, Ms Sridar has plenty of fellow entrants in the back-pedaling stakes.

–rf