Hey Damian Grant, you're a straight up irredeemable moron. You weren't wrong consistently wrong about everything bc you were somehow right about the fundamentals but got unlucky, you were wrong about everything bc you're a ideologue who rejects reality. https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300187577/damien-grant-overwhelming-evidence-shows-i-was-the-worst-prognosticator-on-the-impact-of-covid

Sure, there were divergent opinions on vaccine timing. I didn't know what to believe - but the experts did. And people who are not columnists or twitter randos made their decision on the advice of the experts.

But most crucially, the basic calculus was that if you went for the elimination strategy you could always open up later. If you opened up - or went for a middle ground - trying to eliminate later on is much more painful...

It was, by any rational measure, a high cost, *least risk* strategy. It ate a high upfront cost - the lockdown - in order to minimise our exposure to an ongoing risk that was difficult to quantify. Even if it didn't work, it would've bought us time for a more moderate path.

It could be argued that a moderate cost, moderate risk strategy was better. It would've proved to be wrong, but it would've been a coherent position.

What's not coherent is saying the least risk strategy is high risk bc it's high cost.

And re:treasury not outlining an economic collapse, what exactly was the mechanism for economic collapse there? You can't just handwave "yeah things will be bad so therefore there is a nonzero possibility that they'll be infinity bad" that's not a real goddamn thing.

You can some to the wrong conclusions based on sound reasons. But to look back on it - a year's worth of being totally, absolutely wrong about some of the most consequential decisions for our country - and to believe the lesson to take from that was that he was actually right????

Why is this man still a thing.