"Thousands of Scientists Urge End to 'Devastating' Lockdowns" Topic

About 15,000 scientists and doctors worldwide have signed a newly created document urging an end to pandemic lockdowns, arguing that the policies aimed at curtailing the novel coronavirus have produced "devastating" effects on public health.

The Great Barrington Declaration, which was released Tuesday and continues to gather signatures, was spearheaded by doctors from Harvard, Stanford and Oxford University.

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This is Art Robinson and his Oregon Petition all over again isn't it. link

I can't belive such drivel is getting media attention, but when entrenched capitalist interests crosses public health, there's a way. Anyways, Wired has a decent write-up about how this petition fails the reality test. link

From wired:

The problem is that we aren't in lockdown. Across the UK, pubs, restaurants, schools and universities are all largely open. The kind of lockdown that the Great Barrington Declaration seems to be railing against hasn't been in place in the UK since mid-June. Even in places like Manchester which are under local lockdown restrictions, pubs, restaurants and schools are still open and it's hard to find people who are advocating for a return to the lockdown we saw in March. When the Great Barrington Declaration authors declare their opposition to lockdowns, they are quite literally arguing with the past.

But since people don't read links here, here's my synthesis of the criticism of the letter.

We don't know how long immunity lasts. If immunity is on the order of months, let'er rip strategies are doomed to fail and will cause more suffering. We don't know what the level of immunity is needed to achieve herd immunity. This depends on a multitude of factors (public health measures such as mandatory masking and social distancing will reduce the R0 of the virus meaning that heard immunity can be achieved with a lower spread. For example, measles needs 95-98% for herd immunity. While our best guesses on COVID-19 are lower, there's no guarantee that it will stick in the 60% range. Furthermore, do some simple math with regards to getting to that optimistic 60% range without a vaccine. The USA has an estimated 328 million people. 60% coverage (that also assumes that it's homogeneous – big assumption there since there's huge regional variation in the US right now) means that you're infecting 196.8 million people. If the population wide mortality rate is 0.25% (Very lowest estimate for the crude mortality rate in NY state), you're still looking at 500k dead Americans, and about 5 million Americans with long-lasting complications – Best case scenario. But that's very unlikely for the following reason, the crude mortality rate in NY shot up when the medical system there was under sever strain. It bent but it didn't really buckle since there was still the ability to shift resources from other states to NY. In a let'er rip strategy that won't happen since all states will be under pressure at the same time. Secondly, despite months of warning, the US still does not have adequate supplies of PPE for the hospital staff, and that's also going to put more strain on the healthcare system.

Furthermore, the letter has no working definition of who exactly is a vulnerable person, nor is there any description of what shielding the vulnerable would look like in a practical (ie non-though experiment setting), nor what do do if that strategy failed.

15,000 is a lot of doctors. However, for comparison, there are approximately 950,000 medical doctors in the United States. Let us assume that the United States has half of the world's doctor's, theta would mean that there are 1.9 million doctors globally. 15,000 doesn't seem that big anymore.

Thank you Martin for exposing this Nonsense. The wired article is first class.

Good to have you back.

210,000 deaths from the China flu is a lot. However, for comparison, "In 2020, an estimated 606,520 people will die of cancer in the United States."

I can't belive such drivel is getting media attention, but when entrenched capitalist interests crosses public health, there's a way.

Anything not agreed with, try to insult and belittle.

Shows honest scientific integrity.

Blatant attacks on free market enterprise are very revealing.

Honest scientific integrity is studying the claim and analyzing the evidence behind it. The linked article presents this evidence.
At that point, Martin's description seems … apt.

Just a fact of life, the "smart" people on this forum always resort to ad hominem attacks becasue they have no ability to logically discuss anything that goes against their opinions. Drinking the kool-aid does that to their thought processes.

I find the best response is to shake my head and chuckle softly.

Blatant attacks on free market enterprise are very revealing.

Where did I say anything about free markets? Capitalism does not need nor require free markets.

210,000 deaths from the China flu is a lot. However, for comparison, "In 2020, an estimated 606,520 people will die of cancer in the United States."

And and the first number could have been greatly reduced if the US government (at various levels) had instituted a mask mandate. The evidence is clear that masking is the single easiest "quick win" for reducing the spread of the virus.

"Just a fact of life, the "smart" people on this forum always resort to ad hominem attacks becasue they have no ability to logically discuss anything that goes against their opinions. Drinking the kool-aid does that to their thought processes."

I see this coming from both sides in many arguments, here and elsewhere. And I'm sure the folks on both sides think of themselves as smart.
So just chuckling is probably the best option.

According to a spokesperson for the WHO, Lockdowns should only be a very short term solution to get proper resources in place. What really matters is masks, sanitation, and social distancing.

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Martin must be more of an expert in this area than Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring of infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations; Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases; and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.

Why?

Where have I claimed to be an expert in medicine or epidemiology? As always, I claim that my academic specialty is that of an economic geographer, and I know enough about GIS and climate change that I feel comfortable to teach undergrad courses on those subject.

Earlier on, I was synthesizing the objections of various experts to the let'er rip strategy for glaring omissions and spherical elephants in a vacuum/wishful thinking in the letter.

Besides, the lock-downs are largely gone. Ontario has reverted a few municipalities that are currently undergoing a flair up in cases back to phase 2 status in order to tamp down on the spread, but schools are still open (with modifications for the situation). Furthermore, North America never went into the deep lock-down that Northern Italy, France and Spain went during the height of their first wave back in March.

That being said, with the benefit of time and hindsight, we have learned that this virus is more transmissible as a psudoareosol than fomite (surface contact) transmission, and thus we can achieve a similar level of R0 reduction with mandatory masking that a deep lockdown. Unfortunately, masking has become a part of the broader culture war between those that reject reality and try to substitute their own and those that accept reality.

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And now the declaration can be tied back to the Libertarian American Institute for Economic Research, so the parallels to Art Robinson's libertarian thinktank backed Oregon petition is clear.

At its core, the approach that the Great Barrington Declaration recommends is a gussied-up version of herd immunity, the epidemiological concept that once enough people in a population develop antibodies to a disease, it fades away because there aren't enough hosts left to sustain it. It may seem like an appealing idea, but as epidemiologist and dean of the Rutgers University School of Public Health Perry Halkitis told me, the herd immunity approach demands that we sacrifice lives in order to get to our goal of jumpstarting the economy. Most likely, he said, the lives that we'd sacrifice would be the very ones that the document claims to protect. The authors claim that they're protecting vulnerable people "feels disingenuous to me," he said. "It doesn't account for the fact that the more you engage people in auditoriums or stadiums—well people work there, and they're working class people, and those people are vulnerable."

The Great Barrington Declaration's market-first philosophy makes sense when you consider its source: The document was created at a meeting of the American Institution for Economic Research, a libertarian-leaning think tank. The group's mission statement says it "envisions a world in which societies are organized according to the principles of pure freedom—in which the role of government is sharply confined to the provision of public goods and individuals can flourish within a truly free market and a free society." Over the last few weeks, the creators of the document have met with White House coronavirus advisor Scott Atlas, Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, all of whom have vociferously advocated against social distancing measures during the pandemic.

We're close to a turning point in the virus: Vaccines will arrive sometime in the next year, and when they do, they'll put us on a much safer course toward ending the pandemic. "We'll get herd immunity, but let's do that with a vaccine, not by sacrificing people," said Halkitis. "It's not 1918, for God's sake." In the meantime, both Halkitis and Gonsalves agreed that it would be dangerously unwise to follow the Great Barrington Declaration's advice. "The idea that you can keep outbreaks among the young away from the elderly is ridiculous," says Gonsalves. "They can spin it however they like, but they don't really have a plan—it's grotesque, and it borders on eugenics."

And besides, the White House, for all of it's precautions on the virus, could not the POTUS from becoming the next Prince Prospero…

More than 32,000 medical doctors and health scientists from around the world have signed a petition against lockdowns put in place to curb the spread of COVID-19, saying the measures are causing "irreparable damage."

As of Oct. 13, over 23,000 of the signatories were medical practitioners and 9,000 were medical and public health scientists. They have joined more than 400,000 members of the general public in signing the petition.

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It is not 15,000 doctors.

It is 5,000 doctors and public-health scientists.

It includes 10,000 medical "practitioners" which could include RN's, LPN's, CNA's, Para-Medics, EMT's, x-ray techs and dental hygienists.

There are (depending on how you count certification), 10-15 MILLION doctors in the world.

There are roughly 59 MILLION healthcare practitioners in the world.

15,000 out of 59,000,000 is .00025%.

Hardly a groundswell.

I would also like to see "lockdown" defined.

Is making you wear a mask indoors a lockdown?

Is enforcing social distancing a lockdown?

Is limiting the size of indoor public gatherings a lockdown?

32,000 out of 59,000,000 is .00054%.

Still not a groundswell.

They have joined more than 400,000 members of the general public in signing the petition.

Keeping up with the Kardashians averages 2,000,000 viewers.

Q-Anon is estimated to have over 1,000,000 followers.

An estimated 2% of US adults believe the earth is flat.

400,000 probably fits well within that Venn diagram.

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32,000 out of 59,000,000 is .00054%.

Still not a groundswell.

Yet, they shut down the economy for a fatality rate that's about the same …

Of course if you factor into the equation how those who have publicly spoken up have been treated, that is a lot of brave and courageous souls literally putting their careers on the line.

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Pure fear-mongering and the text-book definition of "fake news".

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Dr. Fauci says herd immunity is nonsense. Anything touting is is simply bad math.

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Sky News took a look at the signers and "The UK broadcaster Sky News last week found that some of the signatories on the document, which is open, allowing anyone to sign it in support, had used fake names, including "Dr. Person Fakename" and "Dr. Johnny Bananas."

I believe I trust Dr, Fauci and 99% of the scientific and medical establishment instead of that paragon of medical expertise Dr. Johnny Bananas. Is he a colleague of Dr. Demon Sperm? I notice when the President was sick Hydrochloriquine came nowhere near him or his family.

USA – 4% of the population, 20% of the deaths. 220,000+, 3rd leading cause of death in the US. With the daily death count 'down' to a mere 600 (over 900 yesterday) per day, the equivalent of 4 fully loaded 737's crashing each and every day. Implying this is anything but a pandemic is simply unsupported by the numbers.

The fatality rate is substantially higher than .00054%
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So you're saying it's like the global warming petition.

TMP link

It is unfortunate politics enters and one side tries to discredit the other.

Any public health officials as notorious as Fauci will never be allowed to alter their advice as they then become open to litigation at levels most would find unimaginable.

Petitions are generally silly things but Dr. Johnny Bananas and Dr. Demon Sperm have pretty much cornered the Covid silly market. Perhaps they can push hydrochloriquine to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and corner the crank market on climate change?

Fauci (with the highest trust and approval rating of anyone in the Administration) and the 99+% of his colleagues have zero fear of litigation as any court on earth would toss a wingnut suit in micro-seconds. Very few Q-Anon or Infowars types make it to the Bench with their 52" waists, neckbeards and lithium requirements.

There is a pandemic with 220,000+ US citizens dead.

21 States recorded their highest level of new infections last week.

The US daily death toll will likely go back to 800-900 per day by the end of the month.

Regeneron is still experimental and totally unaffordable to most Americans.

Absent a vaccine, herd immunity is a chimera.

So you're saying it's like the global warming petition.

Yes, full of BS. backed by a libertarian "thinktank" and utterly worthless. I think I called my shot on earlier on this thread.

Glad to see your opinion of AGW has progressed.

I have yet to see a mechanism that explains the data on a multi-decade time frame than green house gas increases caused by human activities.