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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Listen to this episode: https://www.discernable.io/podcast/episode/1d882a45/political-psychology-series-episode-8-professor-william-m-briggs
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
