3 ms·

Not to downplay Oxford or Britain's work, but I think it's safe to argue that the poor general response to COVID is also an indicator of your skill at science.

by ssully 6y ago

Not to downplay Oxford or Britain's work, but I think it's safe to argue that the poor general response to COVID is also an indicator of your skill at science. And I say this as American, who's response was just as bad or worse. People are going to look back at this pandemic with amazement at the work the world scientists did to create a vaccine in record time, but with shame and embarrassment at the loss of life in countries that are considered world powers due to politics, ignorance, and stubbornness.

klmr 6y ago
> it's safe to argue that the poor general response to COVID is also an indicator of your skill at science This isn’t safe to argue at all. In fact, it’s completely wrong. We know that the poor UK response is almost exclusively due to politicking and government corruption. The scientific advisory panel of the government (SAGE) hasn’t always been right in their assessment but they very quickly produced rigorous working models and solid recommendations, most of which have mirrored (and continue to mirror) the international consensus. Furthermore, public research in the UK has, sometimes against the active opposition of the government, done stellar work to ramp up testing and genetic sequencing. For instance, several institutes (incl. the Crick Institute in London and the University of Cambridge) had extensive testing capabilities set up in record time, but their offers to official channels were ignored for weeks, if not months (the Crick in particular simply ignored this and already provided testing internally and externally, at a time when basically no country had widespread testing yet). Likewise, a collaboration of different institutes quickly set up genome sequencing pipelines for COVID-19 samples, and as far as I know the Sanger Institute is sequencing more COVID-19 samples than any other individual entity in the world: https://www.sanger.ac.uk/about/who-we-are/sanger-institute/tackling-covid-19-at-the-sanger-institute/ https://www.sanger.ac.uk/about/who-we-are/sanger-institute/t...
ska 6y ago
> but I think it's safe to argue that the poor general response to COVID is also an indicator of your skill at science. That's not logical at all. It's a reasonable argument that poor general response to COVID is an indicator that you aren't currently doing a good job of governance, but that's a whole different kettle of fish.

by ssully 6y ago

klmr 6y ago

> it's safe to argue that the poor general response to COVID is also an indicator of your skill at science This isn’t safe to argue at all. In fact, it’s completely wrong. We know that the poor UK response is almost exclusively due to politicking and government corruption. The scientific advisory panel of the government (SAGE) hasn’t always been right in their assessment but they very quickly produced rigorous working models and solid recommendations, most of which have mirrored (and continue to mirror) the international consensus. Furthermore, public research in the UK has, sometimes against the active opposition of the government, done stellar work to ramp up testing and genetic sequencing. For instance, several institutes (incl. the Crick Institute in London and the University of Cambridge) had extensive testing capabilities set up in record time, but their offers to official channels were ignored for weeks, if not months (the Crick in particular simply ignored this and already provided testing internally and externally, at a time when basically no country had widespread testing yet). Likewise, a collaboration of different institutes quickly set up genome sequencing pipelines for COVID-19 samples, and as far as I know the Sanger Institute is sequencing more COVID-19 samples than any other individual entity in the world: https://www.sanger.ac.uk/about/who-we-are/sanger-institute/tackling-covid-19-at-the-sanger-institute/ https://www.sanger.ac.uk/about/who-we-are/sanger-institute/t...

ska 6y ago

> but I think it's safe to argue that the poor general response to COVID is also an indicator of your skill at science. That's not logical at all. It's a reasonable argument that poor general response to COVID is an indicator that you aren't currently doing a good job of governance, but that's a whole different kettle of fish.