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Dr Charlie Easmon casts a sceptical eye at the TV pundits proffering their expertise during the pandemic
The trouble with experts
Getty Images/Roger Kisby
y idea of heaven is Monty Python’s Whicker’s World spoof, Whicker Island, where our hero wistfully waters whisky while wantonly waxing words with W. For me, hell would be a post-lockdown lock-in in a dodgy pub full of TV pundits. Brexit and football have taught me not only to distrust these people, but to despise them as they fling unsubstantiated opinions around like the proverbial brown stuff hitting the fan. It is messy, unpleasant and the odour stays with you for ages. Football managers are famous for having opinions on everything, but it took a steely German, responsible for guiding Liverpool to their crushing Premier League championship win, to bring some sense to the coronavirus pandemic. The wise words of Jürgen Klopp should be on permanent loop in every town centre, as he told a journalist that his opinion did not matter and they should instead go and ask the experts. However, history has shown us that everyone, from Mao Zedong to Michael Gove, can hate experts. Mao was a tad harsher than Gove and killed quite a few experts. Latterly, Gove has had to recant as he claimed the Government had been “following the science”. In the eyes of many, that phrase has become to be synonymous with following the lead lemming off a cliff as tens of thousands of our fellow citizens and loved ones have died. But who are the experts in this pandemic and how do they differ from pundits? Who gets wheeled out when, and whose voices get heard and whose get silenced? Listening back to specialists in virology, infection, epidemiology and public health, these experts tend to fare well if they stick to what they know, but, like everyone else, start to look a tad less credible when asked to speculate. Doctors David Lipkin, Anthony Fauci and Peter Piot are all still much quoted on TV networks. When they do appear on TV, experts are often shunted aside by a popular creature of modern fiction that the 19-year-old Mary Shelley would have recognised. The modern Frankenstein’s monster is the popular TV doctor who is made up of the following parts: a conventional level of attractiveness; well-groomed hair, if they
US medical commentator Dr Mehmet Öz has said he ‘misspoke’ after suggesting on Fox News that it might be ‘worth the trade-off’ to reopen schools despite potentially increasing the coronavirus death toll
