I wrote about the so-called Great Barrington Declaration yesterday. Others have commented. This is a summary from twitter:
It would seem that my concerns are shared.
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Richard, this is a response of experts to the views of other experts on an issue for which there is currently limited understanding. There is currently no right and wrong to the corona problem. There is uncertainty and everyone is seeking to find the optimal solution. This is a hugely complex issue with no easy answers.
Disagreement and debate has always been and will always be essential to furthering scientific understanding. Attempts to whip up football supporting partisan like responses helps nobody.
The Great Barrington Declaration is not about epidemiology: it is about political economy. Barring certain groups in Tufton Street, London SW1, the great majority think that the rise of the far-right is a threat to civilisation as we know it. I suggest that there is consensus on this issue and that there is a right and wrong.
I was thinking this whole Barrington thing has Tufton Street psychopaths written all over it.
Comments like that suggest that you understand neither epidemiology nor political economy. The false dichotomy between public health and the general wealth of the nation can be easily refuted by even a cursory knowledge of global realities. Poverty has always been the biggest killer of all. Whilst the rich world fretted about the relatively paltry threat of COVID-19, and locked down their economies in response, millions of people will be plunged into extreme poverty because of the selfish neuroticism of the west. In short, the knock-on effect of lockdown will cause untold numbers of premature deaths. Some of these will be in the West too, but apparently raising such concerns has become the preserve of the ‘far right’.
With respect, I suspect I do know something about political economy
I am also an anti-poverty campaigner
And what I know is that the American Institute for Economic Research is dedicated to diminishing the role of the state and the supply of state services, both of which are essential for the eradication of poverty, which is not its goal: rather it serves the interest of health concentration in the hands of a few
And yes, that does make it a far-right think tank
What the declaration looks like to me is a statement of resource allocation.
If we allow the virus to spread, we will see more hospital cases. Which forces hospitals to choose between treating covid or normal health related issues.
They are right to say lockdown is bad for society. Yet so is not locking down. And science will never be able to say which one is preferable since you cant get an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. They are presupposing that lockdown is bad. And we are also assuming that there is only one kind of lockdown.
The Dutch government tried to implement a policy that sounds very similar. They called it an intelligent lockdown. And it failed to protect those in care homes and eventually had to implement stricter measures to prevent the health system collapsing.
The foregrounding of this dangerous and fundamentally unscientific nonsense by the MSM is depressing. Prof. Devi Sridhar on Channel 4 news last night swiftly disposed of it as ‘neither scientific nor accurate’ – but then this was followed by a 5 minute interview with one of its signatories (excellently and combatively conducted by Matt Frei, along the lines of ‘the problem surely is that the path to this ‘herd immunity’ is just paved with too many corpses?’). The effect, clearly intended by the portentiously titled ‘Declaration’, however, remains clear. Herd immunity in human populations rather than the preservation of life. And this appears to be part of a wider, coincidental (?) promulgation of so-called ‘economic health before human health’ messaging. Evan Davies, perhaps first best known for his right-wing economic views, had already conducted a pseudo-examination of the new Scottish restrictions on Radio 4’s PM programme, which seemed heavily slanted to suggest – even fish for(?) – public discontent with the behaviour of the Scottish Government on this matter. Sir JohnCurtice’s closing interview by Davies – scrupulously fair on Curtice’s part – having failed to deliver the rather obviously trawled for opinions, then had to be re-spun at the end.
My question then is – do these communicators realise what they may well be doing, i.e. undermining public cooperation with vital public health measures? This is not a game of PR. It matters.
Agreed
I was appalled (yet again) by the vitriolic bile Richard was subjected to by trolls, in the earlier thread Richard presented on the ‘Great Barrington’. The key here was, when Richard challenged them as trolls, the mask slipped.
The question I find myself idly asking myself ask is this; how organised are the trolls to target neoliberal critics? Cui Bono? Who pays? I sometimes wonder if there are trolling boiler-rooms, which are ‘fired -up’ at critical moments. In 2014 I was struck by the mass of vile trolls appearing during the Scottish Indpendence Referendum; and vanished as suddenly from social media when it was over. We are beginning to see their like again ….
You are right
https://summit.news/2020/10/07/over-6000-scientists-doctors-sign-anti-lockdown-petition/
Here is a long list of scientific experts in this field who disagree with you
I am well aware
The far-right has medical supporters
‘Twas ever thus, ever since doctors had to be bribed into the MHS
So the 6000 signatories including Gupta from Oxford uni are all far right (in your opinion)??
Is anyone who disagrees with you also far right?? If so it probably makes a significant majority of the population far right? (using your definition of course)..
They have been conned by the far right
This is the issue of the capture of medicine, just as it was with tobacco
That happened
Why should I assume it cannot happen again? And why else would a right-wing fundamentalist economic think tank do this?
“They have been conned by the far right”
What all of them? More likely the majority of people on this issue do not wish to make it political or neoliberal or side with renters or whatever rhetoric you want to throw out.. they make their choice, and it it a choice, on other criteria namely how best to get through this given that no vaccine is imminent and won’t be available for some considerable time.
Very large companies are talking about vaccines in months…
You are talking complete nonsense
If that fails we think again…but not this way, come whatever
I think it is awful to suggest this is a left vs right wing debate. There clearly are 2 sides to the arguement and it is certainly not about lockdown vs deaths and disease. This is about harm reduction including deaths, and which path is the causes the least.
In my view if you want to characterise this debate it is between those that are logic driven and those that are more emotional, and yes that include the fearful.
I believe Lord Sumpton is exactly right when he says the data is clear and in a year or so it will be even clearer.
Only a fool would think a document promoted by a far-right think tank that is fundamentally opposed to the state and public medicine has no political content to it
Yes, I am saying you’re a fool, just in case you could not read between the lines, as your comment suggests
there’s the lack of logic right there, you don’t need me to explain venn diagrams do you?
Feel free
I can write in Venn diagram mathematical notation, but if you wish to waste your time, feel free
But there again, I may well delete it as irrelevant to this post
This Guardian article is very unnerving:-
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/08/more-than-80-positive-cases-in-covid-study-had-no-core-symptoms
The coronavirus would appear to have mastered the art of being nearly undetectable.
Those promoting “herd immunity” would appear not to have any relationships of any value to them so this core aspect of “undetectability” will not be of any concern to them. No doubt as this excellent Rebecca Solnit Guardian article makes clear they see themselves as invincible because “nothing is really connected to anything else!”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/08/trump-coronavirus-pandemic-dishonest-cruel#comments
This reveals stunted individuals of mind-blowing intellectual and emotional ignorance!
I agree
After doing some reading, I have some concerns about the RT-PCR test to be honest. It has a high rate of false positives – the logical conclusion is that many people believe themselves to be ‘infected’ and ‘infectious’ when they might not actually be so, The false positive reports obviously inflate, inaccurately, the overall infection rate figures.
The test will pick up tiny fragments of Coronavirus RNA. So, if you have been exposed to it, whether you showed symptoms or not weeks or months ago, you’ll be confirmed as a positive ‘case’.
The following articles make for interesting and thought-provoking reading as they do challenge the prevailing narrative and are written by professionals ‘in the know’.
https://lockdownsceptics.org/lies-damned-lies-and-health-statistics-the-deadly-danger-of-false-positives/
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/09/28/false-positive-tests/
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/09/13/a-way-to-control-covid-19-for-now/
I profess to be keeping an open mind as yet.
Few think these criticisms valid
I think they tend towards quackery
But of course any test has false results
We started this pandemic with “herd immunity”.
Herd immunity was govt policy then, it still is, however much they attempt to conceal it.
Nothing could be guaranteed to prolong the spread of the disease than sending children back to school. It virtually guarantees that the elderly will contract it.
Talking about medicine capture……here is a piece about USA medicaid fraud, and remember that many of the companies involved now operate in the UK medical structures:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/09/medicaid-fraud-staggering-cost-140-billion/
The psychology at work here in the GBD is typically Randian in its approach and therefore Neo-liberal through and through.
It invites us to ‘shrug’ like Atlas does as in the title of one of Ayn Rand’s (ahem) ‘stories’ in the face of the trials of the weak and vulnerable because man kind ‘has no responsibility but to himself’ apparently.
The fact that this bypasses concepts like God and Jesus as well as the historic record of human history telling us of the capacity of human beings to co-operate in order to survive just goes right over the heads of the idiots who created it and the gullible who fell for it in equal measure.
Shame on them all.
Spot on PSR
I have no qualifications to debate the medical or economic validity of the GBD proposals, but I’ve tried to follow both the GBD statement & interviews and those of other scientists who dismiss them (eg Devi Sridhar and others) who advise the UK and devolved governments. I’m concerned that this type of debate misses the point. It seems to me that:
– we are told that governments are ‘following the science’ and as far as I can tell none of these advisory scientists have publicly disputed this to any degree (there are of course others who disagree)
– from digging around in the statistics it would seem that the pubs opening in July, the EOTHO August caused no spike in infections in the expected timescale of enhanced transmission
– since schools opened, the rules of 6 and other ‘household’ restrictions and mask wearing being effectively compulsory indoors, and then university openings, pub curfews etc infections have clearly rocketed, hospital admissions and deaths increasing.
– so, if you were looking at this from a ‘stood back’ non scientific viewpoint we can see that the science we are following isn’t working. Same seems to apply in a number of EU countries.
– We are told to protect the NHS (which is supposed to protect us) meanwhile, other health issues go untreated, NHS has 30% empty beds etc etc. Millions of people are waiting treatment. There are approximately 3500 covid patients in hospital today, with 450 on ventilators.
– I happened across a quote from Lord Ashcroft which says:
‘It is also becoming clearer that “following the science” on Covid-19 takes little or no consequence on either other health matters let alone on the economic health of the nation…we are going around in circles and it’s costing the nation and it’s citizens dearly…’
Just a view from afar
Well, here’s an idea – I’m sure real public health officials and infectious control experts have millions of ideas for what could be done without locking down and wrecking the economy, and I’m sure those ideas are all summarily dismissed by our policy makers because it would involve effort and investment on their part, far easier to let people (the plebs) die and have permanent poor health rather than change their nice little set-up – how about educate people on strict hygienic, and somewhat on infectious control, then install infrastructure that make living life possible ,,,,
Millions of things can be done – hand washing stations (auto on/off taps say) throughout city and town centres and shopping areas, automatic doors, compulsory high-air flow through all buildings, reintroduce segregated office spaces – no big open plan places – each with hand washing and tea making facilities, all site work to require full showering and hand washing facilities, reintroduce compartments on train carriages – with individual external doors and good air con, professional cleaners with proper training and good wages employed in excess numbers, buses trams and underground trains with less seats and lots of partitions, wide pavements, subsidies to businesses to upgrade premises – less seating, more physical partitions like booths for restaurants and pubs, high air flow air con, hand washing stations outside and inside public toilets,,, etc.
Most of the time we don’t have the opportunity to do good hygiene out in public and at work – the infrastructure needs to change. Get the wind whistling through buildings at gale force rates – stagnant re-breathed air is a big risk (hence why the first ban is usually to stop visiting other’s private houses).
As usual, governments are trying to blame us for their ignorance and their failings. Education and infrastructure change on a grand scale. Why not get private individual transport upgraded (I love my internal combustion engine on wheels btw, so won’t be giving it up easily, but) so that we have lots of cheap wee electric vehicles dotting about, with free parking everywhere.
There is lots that can be done to keep us much safer, without a vaccine, that doesn’t involve crashing the economy and/or our lives.
Does MMT not teach us that the scale of this kind of infrastructure investment would boost the economy? It would improve lives, make us more resilient to things like epidemics, and keep us in jobs. Why wouldn’t you do it? I would.
Give that man a job….
The countries that have the best record on Covid have suppressed the virus by following WHO guidance to test, trace, track and isolate/quarantine extensively from early on, with or without lockdown. eg South Korea has managed to keep cases low with no lockdown, New Zealand locked down for around a month when they had approx 100 cases, and now people are able to mix normally, with very low levels of infection, currently a weekly average of 3 new infections a day, and just 25 deaths in total.
While in the UK, we still don’t have a well functioning test and trace system.
And that is the issue
And why this is political
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.immuni.2020.04.012
Recap
In a sufficiently immune population, herd immunity provides indirect protection to susceptible individuals by minimizing the probability of an effective contact between a susceptible individual and an infected host. In its simplest form, herd immunity will begin to take effect when a population reaches the herd immunity threshold, namely when the proportion of individuals who are immune to the pathogen crosses 1 — 1/R0. At this point, sustained transmission cannot occur, so the outbreak will decline. However, in real-world populations, the situation is often much more complex. Epidemiological and immunological factors, such as population structure, variation in transmission dynamics between populations, and waning immunity, will lead to variation in the extent of indirect protection conferred by herd immunity. Consequently, these aspects must be taken into account when discussing the establishment of herd immunity within populations. There are two possible approaches to build widespread SARS-CoV-2 immunity: (1) a mass vaccination campaign, which requires the development of an effective and safe vaccine, or (2) natural immunization of global populations with the virus over time. However, the consequences of the latter are serious and far-reaching–a large fraction of the human population would need to become infected with the virus, and millions would succumb to it. Thus, in the absence of a vaccination program, establishing herd immunity should not be the ultimate goal. Instead, an emphasis should be placed on policies that protect the most vulnerable groups in the hopes that herd immunity will eventually be achieved as a byproduct of such measures, although not the primary objective itself.
This seems to sum up the debate nicely.
My sum up would be that herd immunity theory is just that : theory. It assumes homogenous populations and that immunity persists. Both of which are untrue.
Why would an Oxford professor promote such a theory?.
Oxford University are leading the race for a vaccine.
Westminster regime policy has been herd immunity from the start. Lockdown measures have been nothing more than a feeble pr exercise. Even I know that you can’t create herd immunity to covid19 and I am a few million kilometres away from being an epidemiologist. Why not? Because it’s a new disease without (currently) a vaccine and herd immunity takes time. This declaration is eugenics by the back door. No, actually, it’s the front entrance. Words cannot describe how much I despise the psychopaths that comprise the illegal regime in London.
If you look at figures 10 on each of these links….and note the changes in colour-coding limits….it may explain why London is still regarded as “safe”
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/919676/Weekly_COVID19_Surveillance_Report_week_38_FINAL_UPDATED.pdf
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/920373/Weekly_COVID19_Surveillance_Report_week_36_UPDATED.pdf
Note that people are dying post-28-week-limit in increasing numbers…
That limit is almost set to eliminate deaths from consideration in many cases
Interesting twitter… https://twitter.com/Dr_D_Robertson?fbclid=IwAR32AVPjW3fUZkIYws3K8YF8ncQdmO3VG8JipOMmMs0ZsZ6fJ4xc8FGWvNQ
Indeed
He is very good
I agree that the declaration is about political economy rather than health but in thinking that it should be otherwise we forget that health depends on political economy. Implicit in the declaration is that the vulnerable should be allowed to catch CV and take their chances – for example how are they supposed to shield effectively in multigenerational households – but the cost to society as a whole of doing otherwise is unaffordable. Our political leaders need to be a lot more open and honest not just about trade-offs but about the need to get the world working normally again.