Political Psychology Series Episode 8 - Professor William M. Briggs

Professor William M. Briggs is a statistician and scientist. Previously a Professor at the Cornell Medical School he specialized in Mathematical Statistics amongst other academic pursuits such as cryptology, atmospheric physics and meteorology.

His latest book ‘The Price of Panic’ explores the cost of the global response to COVID-19.

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Watch this episode on Youtube: https://youtu.be/pDT6Cq175es

Check out his blog: http://wmbriggs.com

Read the book: https://www.alibris.com/The-Price-of-Panic-How-the-Tyranny-of-Experts-Turned-a-Pandemic-Into-a-Catastrophe-Jay-W-Richards/book/47726042

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1:14 Worldwide reaction to Covid-19

4:27 Where has the flu gone?

6:08 Are lockdowns beneficial?

8:47 Cases vs Infections

11:55 Zero tolerance policy on infections or deaths

13:00 Trust the ‘all cause death rate’ instead

13:23 The statistics debunking Covid-19’s lethality

15:07 Identifying Covid-19 as the cause of death

17:32 Measuring cases instead of deaths keeps the panic going

19:54 How do we break out of the panic?

21:25 Trump vs Johnson in their response to contracting Covid-19

22:22 Should we be scared of Covid-19?

24:10 Why are we seeing such ‘amazing’ results in Australia and NZ?

27:10 Praising Dan Andrews and Jacinda Arden’s lockdown policy

28:35 Lockdowns didn’t work everywhere

29:17 People ignore real statistics

30:27 Leaders let citizens down by not being realistic

31:17 Which leader is doing it right?

33:21 Living in the Technocracy

35:13 Scientism and morality

39:05 Appeals to authority

39:46 Masks debunked

41:50 Have people forgotten we have immune systems?

43:30 Complicity with bad leadership

43:58 Civil disobedience in the US

45:56 Have scientists been swept up in the hype?

50:14 Where do we go for trustworthy information?

53:00 Why are people buying the hype and staying in a panic state?

54:45 Future predictions

55:33 Economic effects of the pandemic

58:00 Should we make policy decisions based on modelling?

1:00:58 Models are only as good as their assumptions