Dim politicians

There is a simple exp lanati on as to why politicians havesuchd if fi culty with corona virus. Almost none of them are scientists. In the same way that climate change trumps all politicians, Covid-19 does the same, only much more quickly. They rush in vain to the few experts on pandemics only to find it is ridiculously easy to ignore them once they have made their recommendations.

Why? Because few politicians have even heard the word “exponential”, let alone tried to understand what it means. And so, rather than act decisively as a trained scientist would, they dither and put off the decision until it is too late. They are paralysed by lack of knowledge because the time it takes to absorb the workings of pandemics is longer than the development of a crisis. Always at the back of the mind of a politician is the knowledge that they are “democratically” elected, whereas the “experts” are not and so can be safely disregarded.

How wrong they are! Probably the only way to solve this problem is to employ at least one scientist per ten politicians to act as translator for this new “foreign” language with which the political world is suddenly forced to deal.

This solution is probably too late now, so we can look forward to more disasters, like the looming Brexit. This will rightly be thrown back in the face soft he politicians who produced it, together with a reminder that 37.5 p er cent never was a majority, nor the will of the“British People ”, whoever they might be.

HENRYK BELDA Kirkton Bank, Penicuik