Brwned
Have you ever been in love before?
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2008
- Messages
- 50,947
The timing was good then. Northern Ireland has just announced they need harsher restrictions because those in place haven’t been effective enough. Guess what the only thing not affected is?
Your condescension aside, the new evidence doesn’t really show schools aren’t a big problem. I would argue they show they clearly still are. When you were presented with the fact you were wrong on Belgium’s numbers your response was not that of a mathematical equation, it was to ignore it and move on. So you can climb back off your high horse.
I didn't ignore the point about Belgium, any more than you ignored the point about Sweden, South Africa, Japan, Ireland, various states in the US. I don't think that was ignoring them so much as you focusing on the part of the argument you were interested in. Your goal was to find points where you could tell me I was wrong. I wasn't trying to tell you that you were wrong. I am still not saying that. I'm just saying the data doesn't fit that singular description, so that explanation on its own cannot be sufficient. If additional context is layered on top it may be true, in certain circumstances. And as new evidence comes in, new views are to be expected.
I was providing examples of a wide range of countries that experienced different case trajectories - some were going up at that point, some were going down at that point, some had opened their schools recently, some had opened them a long time ago - to show that there was no simple correlation between schools opening and cases exploding. Cases can go up dramatically when schools are closed. Cases can go down dramatically when schools are closed. Cases can go up a long time after schools open. Cases can go down the moment when schools open. Picking out one of those cases - originally NI - and saying "this is how it works" ignores the broader trend. Likewise doing the opposite - in this case Belgium - ignores the broader point.
However if what really matters here is that simple point, I'm happy to say I was wrong about Belgium. Well, not happy, things are shit there. But I'm happy for you to take that as an argument won. And all of the others. For me, it's a loss that a discussion from different perspectives turned into whatever this was.