The "Covid Diary" page has now been updated to include entries for the period May to July 2020. Please note there are a few links to external sites - these are very well worth reading.
The usual Commentary is in prepartion and will be added when I feel like it. Meanwhile, here is something about the word of the moment "misinformation".
Quite early on in this covid business I found myself embroiled in a rather sterile debate about the nature of misinformation. “Sterile” because it really doesn’t deserve a debate. You don’t need a psychologist to explain that thinking is a necessary human activity. It is something we necessarily do pretty well all the time. You can’t switch it off and you do it (and yes, whatever “it” is, defines a yet-unanswered psychological question) using the language of thought which is, itself, an innate endowment. You may not like it all that much (and I love my dog to bits), but we are a species alone on the planet manifesting this skill. Indeed, a species alone to have come to that conclusion, or any conclusion, on the matter. This rather abstract claim has consequences - one of which is that debates about misinformation are necessarily sterile: P Pilate, you may recall, asked Jesus “what is truth?” and rather missed his chance by not waiting for an answer.
Which bring me to the more interesting consequence. “Expression” (or, if you insist, “free expression”) is the closest thing to an absolute that any of us is likely to encounter and although it will go on upsetting the Pilates of this world, we encounter it in private. There’s nothing to be done about thinking thoughts, whatever they are, and wherever they take you. It’s what we do (although dogs don’t).
It was trying to make this point that inflamed my interlocutor, who became quite passionate (you’re right, that’s when he mentioned shouting fire in crowded places). Soon enough we were not debating, but squabbling like a dreary couple in the last stages of a disintegrating marriage. That’s what got my good friend’s goat - his realization that I really could think whatever I liked. Even, dare I say it, things he thinks himself, for our brains are made in similar ways. I’ll think an impossible thing before breakfast if I feel like it and there’s nothing, my dear friend, nothing at all, you can do to stop me. That’s why debates about misinformation are pretty parochial - small beer for the kids.
Now don’t run away with the idea that I think people don’t lie. Au distinctly contraire, I know they do it all the time. I have a professional interest in the subject - I have written three books on lying and am currently writing a fourth. Not academic psychology (that would barely merit a pamphlet), but novels. And before you point me to the paradox inherent in using fiction to approach the subject of truth, I'll remind you truth's a funny thing. I can only say that had I the skill poetry would have done a better job. Now why is that?