[throwawaylinux]

Yep that's what was suspected at the time which is why these experts were saying it's probably more like a seasonal flu than a serious pandemic of other sorts, don't wear a mask, keep traveling, etc. And they were wrong (well, to some extent -- it's still probably around a 1% mortality rate so still arguably closer to a seasonal flu going by Fauci's same reasoning).

Clearly bullying here of a person for pretty much repeating what many experts like Fauci and politicians like Pelosi were saying at the time is way out of line. Hopefully you can agree on that.

[_djo_]

Experts don't always get it right, but what differentiates those we trust from those we don't is that they're cautious, curious, and learn from new information to adjust their views and recommendations.

Plenty of scientists have admitted that they underestimated aspects of this pandemic, from the effectiveness of masking, to the likelihood and severity of variants, to how quickly vaccines would come on stream. But they learnt from it and moved on.

Someone who downplayed the pandemic from the very beginning and who, in response to a new variant that has virologists and epidemiologists extremely worried, says "this is danger porn. pay it no mind and have happy holidays" is neither a serious person nor worth listening to on this subject. They clearly haven't learnt from their past mistakes, or don't want to.

[throwawaylinux]

> Experts don't always get it right, but what differentiates those we trust from those we don't is that they're cautious, curious, and learn from new information to adjust their views and recommendations.

I don't think they do necessarily. I have heard very little in the way of contrition or reflection or honest explanation as to why so many got it wrong for so long. Wrong about the virus, wrong about how it spreads, wrong about vaccines, etc. And yet so many of them still act like they are absolutely certain of what they are saying, when it's clear they in fact don't.

Scientists and experts can be egotistical, dogmatic, inflexible, and rusted on to old ideas. That whole Planck's principle thing, you know.

> Someone who downplayed the pandemic from the very beginning and who,

Someone who said what many experts were saying, you mean?

> in response to a new variant that has virologists and epidemiologists extremely worried, says "this is danger porn. pay it no mind and have happy holidays" is neither a serious person nor worth listening to on this subject. They clearly haven't learnt from their past mistakes, or don't want to.

I disagree, I don't see how that follows. The media certainly have certainly hyped things up and exaggerated and peddled this danger porn. The OP was referring to a sentence from a news article, not a quote from a scientist. The claim is not that covid doesn't matter and this variant is harmless, it's that the news article is danger porn.

Which it is. If it's nothing there's not much we can do, if it's bad news there's not much we can do. As other top level comments say, mutations happen all the time. Look how many major variants there are https://www.who.int/en/activities/tracking-SARS-CoV-2-varian... what is there to gain by panicking every time a new one is found?