An “expert”, it is said, is someone who is able to explain at great length why, in hindsight, they were completely wrong. Since the beginning of the Wuhan pandemic, a great many experts have been wrong about a great many things.
So why on earth are we still listening to them?
Climate alarmism and politics are particular fields where “experts” are consistently wrong about nearly everything. But, nipping at their heels, given a fresh burst of wind by the Wuhan pandemic, is public health. Over the past 18 months we’ve been treated to confident – and almost always ludicrously scary – prognostications from a roster of “experts” scrambling over each other to sit in front of the cameras and Look Serious.
The Grand Poobah of Wrongness is, of course, the UK’s Prof. Neil Ferguson. Ferguson has been wrong about every major disease outbreak of the past two decades or more, confidently predicting astronomical death tolls that never eventuate. Oh, but he’s got a computer model, donchaknow.
Despite being consistently wrong about everything, Ferguson, for unknown reasons, was the go-to “expert” for making predictions about the Wuhan virus. Once again, he was ludicrously wrong, again and again. Most recently, Ferguson made dire predictions of cases as high as 200,000 following Britain’s “Freedom Day”. They’ve been about a tenth of that.
Proving the adage about experts, UK government minister Claire Keegan patiently explained that “all forecasts and projections tend to be wrong”. And that’s a good thing, apparently. Because they’re experts and you’re not.
Then, of course, there’s America’s “Dr. Flip-Flop”, Anthony Fauci, who only ever appears on television to contradict whatever he said the last time he was on television.
But fear not! New Zealand hasn’t exactly been a slouch when it comes to “experts” making wrong predictions and contradicting themselves.
Way back when the virus first broke out of the lab in Wuhan, New Zealand’s Expert of Experts, the expert so expert that she was dubbed New Zealander of the Year, Dr Siouxsie Wiles, got into the prediction game:
An infectious diseases expert says New Zealand is likely to escape a coronavirus outbreak[…]
Auckland University’s Siouxsie Wiles says we are likely to see cases here due to the high number of overseas cases, but told Mike Hosking the number of cases is likely to be limited.
“We don’t have the same population density and when small number of cases come in, they can be easily isolated and stopped.”
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To be fair, Wiles wasn’t completely wrong: New Zealand is a low-population density country and was therefore never going to be under serious threat.
But, as history has shown, the bit about “easily isolated and stopped” hasn’t exactly panned out that well.
More importantly, Wiles’s January 2020 prediction gives the lie to the image of PM Jacinda Ardern as the consummate Covid manager.
Still, experts didn’t give up on their shiny computer models, and they were wrong again.
“Covid-19 modeller” (which ought to tell you everything you need to know already) Professor Shaun Hendy says that the current size of the outbreak far exceeded his initial calculations.
Now that the virus has done what the experts said it wouldn’t, and broken out in New Zealand, Kiwis are being hit with the full zealotry of the public health bullies. Especially when it comes to the Mark of the Bug. Lo, indeed it has come to pass that all people, great and small, are caused to receive a mask on their faces, so that they cannot go forth and buy unless they have the mask.
But there was a time when the experts pooh-poohed the need for masks.
According to the Ministry of Health’s website it doesn’t recommend the use of personal protective equipment, such as masks, for most people in the general community.
“Basic hygiene measures are the most important way to stop the spread of infections, including the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19).”
Stuff
New Zealand’s public health bureaucrats weren’t exactly going it alone, either. Australian experts were rejecting mass mask-wearing, too, back in the halcyon days of early 2020. The US CDC was also against masks, before it was for them. So for them, in fact, that even people who are fully vaccinated have to wear them.
But New Zealand’s experts are determined to go one better than even that lunacy. Introducing… Lockdown 4.5!
Get ready to don full-on N95 respirators and forced vaccinations for New Zealand supermarket workers.
And who are you to think that sounds crazy? Are you an expert?
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