Quote Originally Posted by jon1959 View Post
The headline was written by a Guardian sub-editor, not the author of the opinion piece. But either way it wasn't written by 'a politically motivated journalist'.

Steve Reicher is a well-known and respected academic - Professor of Social Psychology at St Andrews. His expertise and focus during Covid is on the messages from government (including government scientists and other spokespeople) - what they say and how they are delivered - and the impact on public opinion and response. He has written a series of opinion pieces on this for The Guardian and been interviewed as an expert by the BBC and Channel 4 fairly regularly. He is not an expert on vaccines or on hospitalisation rates from Covid. That is why his piece did not stray into the areas of distraction you threw out.

The fact that the NHS has delivered an impressive vaccination programme (at least until the booster stage) and that the severity of the latest Covid variant isn't yet known, is not relevant to his point. So you are (again) wrong to dismiss the piece.

You are right to say Steve is a 'lefty'. I knew him very well over 40 years ago when we were both in the Socialist Students Alliance at Bristol University. He had his head screwed on then and he has now. The difference between then and now is that he has since spent a working lifetime becoming an authority on social psychology, contributes to the Sage process and has opinions well worth hearing.
And James will hear those opinions, then to form a coherent balanced and fully informed view he will go and read some Rod Liddle.