Great Barrington Declaration

The Great Barrington Declaration

The Great Barrington Declaration is a proposal, written and signed at the libertarian think tank American Institute for Economic Research in Great Barrington, Massachusetts on 4 October 2020 addressing the response to the COVID-19 epidemic. The declaration advocates an approach the authors refer to as "Focused Protection", based on statistical levels of risk, as opposed to blanket lockdowns. It asserts that such restrictions have attendant adverse affects on public physical and mental health, manifesting an especial burden for the underprivileged, and that the focus should instead be on "shielding" those most at risk, with fewer restrictions placed on the remainder of the population in order to "reduce the herd immunity threshold."

The declaration was authored by Sunetra Gupta of the University of Oxford, Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University, and Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University. Cosignatories, across disciplines ranging from epidemiology, biostatistics, and public health, through psychiatry and self-harm, to finance and human geography, include Sucharit Bhakdi, Angus Dalgleish, Mike Hulme, Michael Levitt, Jonas Ludvigsson, Yaz Gülnur Muradoğlu, David Katz, and Karol Sikora.

Support

Nobel Prize winner Dr. Michael Levitt professor of Structural Biology at Stanford University, a co-signer, said in a meeting with Ron DeSantis governor of Florida that treating age groups differently and letting young people interact for social reasons and to achieve herd immunity makes complete sense agreeing that lockdowns are detrimental.

Queen’s University’s School of Medicine professor Dr. Matt Strauss, one of the co-signers, said that most medical professionals he’s spoken to agree that current lockdown and isolation policies do more harm than good. He also said he doesn't think his opinion is a minority opinion among the experts he work with. University of Montreal's Pediatrics and Clinical Ethics Professor Dr. Annie Janvier, a co-signer and part of a group of Quebec scientists speaking out against the province’s lockdown measures, said that it is not science that is leading what’s going on with COVID but public opinion and politics. She criticized the current lockdown measures in Canada saying that right now the vulnerable are not protected.

University of East Anglia's Medical Microbiology professor Dr. David Livermore said that those who dissented from the British government’s Covid-19 strategy have been dismissed mentioning that this is no longer the case as there has been a shift in outlook among international scientists. He criticized the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson strategy saying that it seeks to artificially suppress the infection among the healthy while betting on a vaccine that may not work. He said he co-signed the petition because the process of reaching herd immunity is not dependent on a vaccine. He mentioned that the government set it itself to fail believing in a perfect vaccine while the terrible cost will be paid in children who are not now being immunized, cancer and stroke patients going undiagnosed and untreated, and a shattered economy unable to fund the NHS.

St George's, University of London Oncology professor Dr. Angus Dalgleish, a co-signer, said he lost two of his colleagues who committed suicide after feeling isolated due to lockdowns and COVID-19 restrictions. He accused the British government institutions of indulging in ever greater fearmongering and repression which won't stop the contagion and will certainly lead to more business failures, mass unemployment, public distress and fractured lives. He said that the number of cancer patients waiting for treatment for more than a year reached it highest record ever of 110,000 patients, calling it a disaster for cancer patients where survival depends on receiving treatment on time. He mentioned that his oncology fellow Professor Karol Sikora said that 35,000 British people with cancer could die prematurely because of delays in screening and diagnosis. He said "The destruction of the economy will inevitably wreck the nation’s health further, not only because the misery of poverty, joblessness and insecurity drive physical and mental decline, but because the NHS is dependent on tax revenues. Empty public coffers are bound to lead next to unmanned wards and understaffed clinics". He criticized the ineffectiveness of the government heavy handed lockdown policies saying "Most of the recent lockdowns across the North of England have done nothing to stem the second wave of infections. In Bury, there were 20 cases per 100,000 people, a figure that has soared since the new lockdown to 266. In nearby Bolton the increase is even more striking, up from 21 cases per 100,000 before lockdown to 434 now".

He accused the government of authoritarianism saying "The distinctly un-British loss of civil liberties, imposition of curfews, huge criminal fines without trial and encouragement to sneak on neighbours are achieving nothing except to turn this country into a modern version of East Germany under Soviet control, complete with economic decline, institutionalised bullying by the state and widespread suspicion." He said that future generations will be paying for the damage in health, freedom, the economy, public finances and social interdependence will. He criticized the ministers and professor Neil Ferguson because of hysterical talks and overestimated predictions while the vast majority of the public are at no risk at all from COVID-19. He mentioned that the average age of death for COVID-19 patients is 82.4 and said "Today, someone under 30 has more chance of being struck by lightning than of dying from Covid, while someone aged 50 is more likely to die in a road accident. During the first wave, a lot of media attention was focused on the few rare coronavirus deaths among young people, with the implication that the virus was an indiscriminate killer. But this was more deceit, since all these young victims had other conditions". He mentioned the reason he signed the declaration saying "Because of the absence of proportion about the real menace we face, we are paying a terrible price for further lockdowns through neglected healthcare, shattered social relations, mass deprivation and soaring public debt".

White House Coronavirus Task Force's member Dr. Scott Atlas, Stanford University ex-professor and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, advocated for protecting the vulnerable and stopping lockdowns calling it absurd to try and eliminate the virus with lockdowns.

In an interview on October 8, 2020 Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, one of the three main signatories, said that the support they received was overwhelming.

The authors of the Great Barrington Declaration at the American Institute for Economic Research. (L–R) Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta, Jay Bhattacharya

Response

The authors of the Great Barrington Declaration at the American Institute for Economic Research. (L–R) Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta, Jay Bhattacharya

Doubts have been expressed as to whether the posited accelerated arrival at herd immunity is a possibility, together with claims that the approach paid insufficient attention to the potential effects of so-called "Long Covid". Concerns about the declaration have been issued on behalf of the British Academy of Medical Sciences by its president, Robert Lechler. Martin McKee, professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, compared the declaration to "the messaging used to undermine public health policies on harmful substances, such as tobacco".

Harvard University professor of epidemiology William Hanage criticized the logic of the declaration's signatories "After pointing out, correctly, the indirect damage caused by the pandemic, they respond that the answer is to increase the direct damage caused by it" and attacked the feasibility of the idea of "Focused Protection" for those vulnerable to severe infection, saying that "stating that you can keep the virus out of places by testing at a time when the White House has an apparently ongoing outbreak should illustrate how likely that is". Hanage cautioned that uncontrolled infections among the young run the risk of long-term medical effects of the disease. Gregg Gonsalves, epidemiologist at Yale University described the strategy proposed by the declaration as "culling the herd of the sick and disabled" calling it "grotesque". Arguing nearly half the population is considered to have underlying risk factors for the infection, he advocated for the prevailing quarantine strategy.

The Francis Crick Institute's group leader of the cell biology of infection laboratory, Rupert Beale, said herd immunity is "very unlikely" to be built up before a COVID-19 vaccine is generally implemented. Of the Great Barrington Declaration he said the "declaration prioritises just one aspect of a sensible strategy – protecting the vulnerable – and suggests we can safely build up 'herd immunity' in the rest of the population. This is wishful thinking. It is not possible to fully identify vulnerable individuals, and it is not possible to fully isolate them. Furthermore, we know that immunity to coronaviruses wanes over time, and re-infection is possible – so lasting protection of vulnerable individuals by establishing 'herd immunity' is very unlikely to be achieved in the absence of a vaccine."

Michael Head, senior research fellow in global health at University of Southampton, said the declaration was "a very bad idea" and doubted if vulnerable people could avoid the virus if it was allowed to spread. He also said "Ultimately, the Barrington Declaration is based on principles that are dangerous to national and global public health". Associate professor at the University of Leeds school of medicine Stephen Griffin criticized the declaration's flaws in ethics, logistics, and science, pointing out the risk of long-term effects of infection in even those less vulnerable to severe infection. Cellular biologist of the University of Reading questioned whether herd immunity was possible for SARS-CoV-2: "natural, lasting, protective immunity to the disease would be needed, and we don't know how effective or long-lasting people's post-infection immunity will be".

On October 9, 2020 several media outlets reported that dozens of obviously bogus names were among the signatures of support for the declaration, including "Mr Banana Rama" and "Dr Johnny Fartpants." More than 100 therapists, numerous homeopaths, physiotherapists, massage therapists, and other non-relevant people were found to be signatories, including a performer of Khoomei – a Mongolian style of overtone singing – described as a "therapeutic sound practitioner".

A report in the American conservative magazine Washington Examiner reported on independent journalist Nafeez Ahmed's attempt to expose the petition's weak verification process, which allowed "anyone to self-verify as a 'scientist' signatory"; Ahmed signed the petition by creating a bogus academic persona named "Mad Scientist" and called the declaration "a gigantic fraud". Ahmed told the Examiner that "it's simply impossible for the publishers of the declaration to know that it is supported by so-and-so 'thousands' of scientists – because it has set up an inherently opaque process that is beyond verification and is, of course, therefore, entirely unscientific". The petition's organizers indicated that "perhaps 250 total" hoax signatures had been discovered and removed from the site, and that Ahmed and others had been blocked from making future submissions. In response Jay Bhattacharya regretted that "some people have abused our trust by adding false names", which he supposed was "inevitable", but added that "given the volume of correspondence I have received from medical and public health professionals, as well as scientists and epidemiologists, it is clear that a very large number of experts resonate with the message of the declaration and its call for a focused protection policy".

External links

• Great Barrington Declaration