Toby Young here being billed as an "expert" in the nation's most widely read newspaper despite spouting a load of economically and epidemiologically illiterate nonsense. Several ppl, myself one of them pointed out at great length the holes in this arg *weeks ago*. https://twitter.com/toadmeister/status/1249303892405424130

Here is the thread where I laid out many of the arguments against his position. He has considered nothing, addressed nothing, changed nothing. https://twitter.com/robfordmancs/status/1245015518253285378?s=20

In normal times this kind of grifting contoversialism is merely irritating. Right now, it is a danger to public health. Young should be ashamed of himself. As should Sun editors who see fit to frame him as an "expert" on these matters and give him airtime denied genuine experts

The grift is so transparent: be provocative, say you're just "promoting healthy debate", while actually framing your argument in the most polemical fashion possible and shunning evidence which consistently points to a more moderate (but less attention grabbling) stance.

Young will bleat disingenously that a proper hard headed debate about costs & bens shld not be avoided, while conveniently forgetting to mention the many ppl who have already contacted him saying (a) they agree such a debate is needed but (b) he is doing is catastrophically wrong

It is frankly shameful that such an obvious confidence trick by the Swiss Toni of epidemiology is now plastered over the pages of the nation's most read newspaper, misinforming millions of people who deserve better. So many more informed ppl available to debate this.

I would hope that in a time of national crisis media editors would try harder to seek the best possible information from the best possible sources. In this case, evidently not.

Note that Young does not mention or apologise for his original, utterly insane demand that the lockdown end immediately after Easter (i.e. tomorrow). Indeed, he seems to have copied and pasted most of this article from the earlier one where he made it