Dunedin’s panic-mongering epidemiologist David Skegg struggles with the English language. He told Morning Report, “elimination is a process, not a destination.” That’s gibberish.
In fact elimination is a destination requiring a process for it to be reached, just like say, running a marathon or any other human endeavour.
Readers may feel I’m being pedantic. Not so. It annoys me when people trot out glib nonsense and it’s simply acceptable as an oracle-like utterance.
4 Comments
It’s Lefty talk. Sound like you’re intelligent and thoughtful, yet never speak in plain English. Tip: Truly intelligent people ALWAYS speak in plain English. They want to be clear – not cool.
…take Shane Jones for example!
“Broadly speaking short words are best and the old words when short, are best of all.”
Winston Churchill
The problem here is what David Skeggs means by elimination. In Epidemiology elimination does not mean what it does to you and me. To epidemiologists it does not mean eradication of a virus, but the control of the virus within acceptable limits
i.e. suppression. So David Skeggs is correct in that it is a process of control because the virus is not actually eliminated/eradicated and therefore there is no actual end or destination. God only knows why epidemiologists were so stupid as to use the wrong adjective and for that they should be ridiculed. This confusion of terminology between elimination and suppression was actually apparent early on in this contrived crisis. At the select committee meetings David Skegg did try to explain it. However, the Government, led by the mistress of obfuscation, has chosen to leave the confusion to suit their own ends. Given a strategy of elimination will not be achievable, and when the general gullible population eventually realise they have been hoodwinked, then Cindy will fall back on the epidemiologists definition of elimination which is actually suppression. Did she lie, no as usual she just didn’t tell the truth.