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Later instalments explore why randomised trials could not prove mask-wearing was effective in preventing Covid-19 transmission, mistrust in elections and the trade-offs in deciding how and when people are vaccinated. Even when some players have decided they’re no longer playing the same game.

Strikingly, we can keep doing it all with a straight face, with pomp and circumstance, even when, in fact, the exercise borders on ridiculous. We carry on with rituals and ways of doing things long after it’s become obvious that they do not serve the purpose for which they are intended. Humans, our culture and institutions, carry a lot of inertia. Her first Substack missive was an astute analysis of why the tradition of televised debates between presidential candidates in US elections is no longer fit for purpose – particularly in the era of Donald Trump – due to “cultural lag”: Insight is the creation of Zeynep Tufekci, a sociologist and author who writes about how technology “interacts with the fabric of society” for the Atlantic and the New York Times.

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