AGH, POLITICS

Or possibly, on listening to this latest episode, it's just that Josh Barro is the sort of person who doesn't believe getting used to the new normal is worth saving lives, because both the left and the right panelists have suggested this week that persistent masking is perhaps just a thing we're going to have to get used to, and he's insisting that masks are too inconvenient for that and that the vaccine works and lowers the risk of severe illness enough that it's worth it, and that society ought not to accept these rules because masks separate people from each other and it's important to see others' faces.

Note that Josh Barro is the center and the host, and both the left and the right panelists disagreed with him on this. His opinion asserts a number of things as scientific facts that are not actually true, including "vaccines stop transmission" stated unequivocally and without the numerous and severe caveats you really need to attach to that statement.

So I'm thinking that some of the willful ignorance of science on this show is just him. (Also "yes Britain has slightly better vaccination than us but they've also got a bunch of people who got the AstraZeneca vaccine" is just... ??? The AstraZeneca vaccine wasn't ineffective; it was possibly causing questionable side effects.)