Worth repeating: The vast majority of journalists are functionally innumerate and have almost no understanding of, say, science or engineering. Most political journalists only know a bit of political history and how to transcribe “both sides” of a fight. https://twitter.com/rgcooke/status/1249900394269913090

Stuck at home in Canberra, political journalists are struggling to find some sort of drama to re-tell. So rather than telling human stories of living with a pandemic, or writing explainers of medical advances about which they know nothing, they leap at any potential disagreement.

“The lockdown is working but we need to continue,” say epidemiologists and economists. “On noes this is terrible [for our anonymous funders],” say a bunch of paid spokesfoetuses. OMFG CONFLICT WE MUST HEAR BOTH SIDES.

And then intellectually lazy and scientifically ignorant seat-warming narcissists like The Ooooolmunn scratch their crotches and think “Oh yes, all these nerds are wrong because oh I don’t know. Reasons. Numbers are hard.”

There is literally no reason for any reputable news organisation to publish his feelpinions on anything other than his area of expertise, whatever that might be. Poncing about Canberra with a self-satisfied grin on his face and whinging about Twitter. Which he doesn’t watch.

And for the hard of thinking, that means that MY opinion on the length of the lockdown shouldn’t be published either, because what would I know? I’ll retweet what actual experts say, but I’m not so much of a self-centred cunt that I’ll start questioning them because... something.

So, if you really think there are “two sides” to this sort of thing, here are the two sides:

1. Experts such as epidemiologists who are working hard to understand this virus, and know things.
2. People who have no idea idea what they’re talking about.

Also, whenever you’re reading the news, remember the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

That manicured and coiffed glove puppet fronting the news has literally zero background in any of the fields they’re covering, except the one narrow thing they studied at university a decade or three ago. And they can’t even do Year 8 maths any more.

(OK, there are exceptions.)

Anyway, that’s enough about that. If you start being too critical of major news players they tend to be a bit sooky about it. “We have to hear both sides” no the fuck you don’t. Your job is to discover the truth and report it, not just dump the shit on us for us to sort through.

Finished now.