I apologize if it seems I'm "accusing you" of anything at all, Tim. I believe that we all fall prey to confirmation bias, and therefore attend preferentially to information which supports our desires and worldview. I'm not "accusing:" I'm merely stating one of my own biases, which is that we're all susceptible and that this sometimes interferes with our ability to see things clearly and make wise decisions.

Of course I was responding in part to your statement that your family intended to go ahead with existing plans regardless of what you heard from the government. You may have meant something different, but what I heard was "We intend to ignore any information contrary to what we've already decided." In your post quoted above, you say instead that you "*hope* to be able to go ahead" [emphasis added], which seems to me quite different. Again, I'm just stating how I interpreted your words; I'm not trying to tell you what you meant, felt or believed when you wrote them.

I was also responding to the conclusions I thought you were drawing from some--not all--of the statistics you quoted. For example, statements that a case rate is doubling every couple of days can't be disproven by projecting that rate into the indefinite future. Both can be true: case rates are currently doubling, and they can't continue to do so without exceeding our population.

This is, in fact, the norm: in the beginning of an epidemic there might be one, five, or ten known cases, but in a couple of days there might be ten times as many.--that is, five, fifty or a hundred. Obviously, that doesn't mean the case rate will continue to expand by a factor of ten; that would be absurd. Anyone--politician, health "expert," or reporter who thinks that numbers works this way is suffering from a failure of critical thinking.

I've already pointed to the lag times between increases in infections, hospitalization, ICU admissions, and death rates. You said that "CURRENT FIGURES: are not showing any sign of recent increase..." but this has been true during all surges of this pandemic; first infections increase, then after a bit so do hospitalizations, eventually ICU admissions, and finally death rates. Whether this will be true during the current phase remains an open question. If we're lucky, predictions that this variant is less virulent will prove out. At the moment, the people I trust more rather than less are offering very mixed predictions; one stated this morning that he expects record death rates in the US this winter. I hope he's wrong.

Yes, I'm aware of those controversies (and we've had our share of similar events). I'm also aware of a range of irritated responses, including a distinct deterioration in trust. As one who never particularly believed anything your prime minister said in the first place--and who felt the same except even more so about my previous president--that seems to me a reasonable response.

But the fact that a bunch of politicians held Christmas parties last year doesn't mean much when it comes to my own decisions; why should it? I don't trust them, their ability to make wise decisions, their propensity for telling the truth or ability to predict the future. A prominent politician from my neck of the woods--a Trump campaign organizer and COVID denier--just died of COVID after traveling to El Salvador under bogus pretenses during an intense outbreak there. Am I going to model my own life after his?

I don't know whether this clarifies my earlier post, but I hope it does at least to some extent. Meanwhile, here's to a happy, stress-free holiday for you and your family!

Mark