Let's see what 17 leading public health organizations have to say about the Great Barrinton Declaration... 17 Public Health Organizations Condemn Herd Immunity Scheme for Controlling Spread of SARS-Cov-2 Great Barrington Declaration is not grounded in science and is dangerous https://www.bigcitieshealth.org/media-statement-great-barrington-declaration (BETHESDA, MD) – SARS-Cov-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 has infected at least 7.8 million people in the United States and 38 million worldwide. It has led to over 215,000 deaths domestically, and more than 1 million globally – with deaths continuing to climb. If followed, the recommendations in the Great Barrington Declaration would haphazardly and unnecessarily sacrifice lives. The declaration is not a strategy, it is a political statement. It ignores sound public health expertise. It preys on a frustrated populace. Instead of selling false hope that will predictably backfire, we must focus on how to manage this pandemic in a safe, responsible, and equitable way. The suggestions put forth by the Great Barrington Declaration are NOT based in science. There is no evidence that we are even remotely close to herd immunity. To the contrary, experts believe that 85 to 90 percent of the U.S. population is still at risk of contracting SARS-Cov-2. Herd immunity is achieved when the virus stops circulating because a large segment of the population has already been infected. Letting Americans get sick, rather than focusing on proven methods to prevent infections, could lead to hundreds of thousands of preventable illnesses and deaths. It would also add greater risk in communities of color which have already experienced disproportionate impacts of the pandemic. The declaration ignores our best tools to fight the virus, i.e. wearing masks, social distancing, hand-washing, avoiding large crowds, strategic testing, rapid isolation of infected people and supportive quarantine for people who need to isolate. We have seen the failure of the herd immunity experiment in nations such as Sweden, which has the highest mortality rate among Nordic countries.[ii] COVID-19 carries a much higher risk of severe disease and death than other infections where herd immunity was attempted before a vaccine was available.[iii] It is illogical to ignore public health and scientific evidence when so many lives are at stake. Combatting the pandemic with lockdowns or full reopening is not a binary, either/or choice. We need to embrace common sense public health practices that allow for a safe reopening of the economy and a return to in-person work and learning while also using proven strategies to reduce the spread of the virus. The declaration suggests a so-called focused protection approach. It suggests allowing the virus to spread unchecked among young people to create herd immunity in the entire population. This notion is dangerous because it puts the entire population, particularly the most vulnerable, at risk. Young people are not all healthy and they don’t live in vacuums. They interact with family members, co-workers and neighbors. Inviting increased rates of COVID-19 in young people will lead to increased infections rates among all Americans. Public health guidance and requirements related to masking and physical distancing are not an impediment to normalcy – they are the path to a new normal. The goal is both public health safety and economic security; the two are not in conflict with one another, they are dependent on each other. We need to focus our efforts on the development and implementation of a national, science-based and ethical pandemic disease-control strategy. The pandemic has created serious hardships on families’ economic security and on American’s mental health and well-being. What we need is a coordinated and robust national response including mask use, hand hygiene and physical distancing, while also ensuring social supports for those most vulnerable, including physical and mental health, and social factors. What we do not need is wrong-headed proposals masquerading as science. This statement was authored by: Big Cities Health Coalition American Public Health Association Trust for America’s Health American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology Association of Public Health Laboratories Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health de Beaumont Foundation Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health National Association of County Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities Directors National Association of County and City Health Officials National Association for Rural Mental Health National Network of Public Health Institutes Prevention Institute Public Health Institute Resolve to Save Lives Well Being Trust
The declaration ignores our best tools to fight the virus, i.e. wearing masks, social distancing, hand-washing, avoiding large crowds, strategic testing, rapid isolation of infected people and supportive quarantine for people who need to isolate. No it doesn't. What a load of shit. Should I go and find all of these "left leaning institutes" and blame it all on a political narrative? What a joke.
absolute straw man bullshit... fraudulent misrepresentation... did not even address the damage being done by the lockdown of the low risk. Obviously political crap... The GB dec stated we must protect the high risk. "The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection. Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent PCR testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home. When possible, they should meet family members outside rather than inside. A comprehensive and detailed list of measures, including approaches to multi-generational households, can be implemented, and is well within the scope and capability of public health professionals. "
Infectious disease expert calls White House advisers herd immunity claims 'pseudoscience' https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday...pert-calls-white-house-advisers-herd-immunity Infectious-diseases expert Michael Osterholm blasted a report that Scott Atlas, a medical adviser to President Trump, is pushing the White House to attempt a “herd immunity” approach to the coronavirus pandemic. “First of all, that 20 percent number is the most amazing combination of pixie dust and pseudoscience I've ever seen," Osterholm said, in reference to the proportion of the population Atlas reportedly said would need to contract the virus to achieve herd immunity. “It’s 50 percent to 70 percent at minimum.” "And remember when we talk about getting to 50 percent to 70 percent protection, we're talking you can get there with disease — but if that happens, there will be lots of deaths, a lot of serious illnesses — or we can try to get there with vaccination, and postponing the number of people who get sick until we have the vaccines available,” Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” "50 percent to 70 percent just slows down transmission, it doesn't stop it,” he added. “So this virus is going to keep looking for wood to burn for as long as it can ... so, our goal is to get as many people protected with vaccines.” Anthony Fauci, the U.S.’ top infectious diseases expert, has also been sharply critical of the idea. “If you just let things rip and let the infection go, no masks, crowd, it doesn’t make any difference — that quite frankly, George, is ridiculous,” Fauci told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America” last week.
Herd Immunity? Or ‘Mass Murder’? A proposal to let people with low risk of infection live without constraint could lead to a million or more preventable deaths. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/19/opinion/coronavirus-herd-immunity.html No matter their politics, people nearly always listen to those who say what they want to hear. Hence, it is no surprise that the White House and several governors are now paying close attention to the “Great Barrington Declaration,” a proposal written by a group of well-credentialed scientists who want to shift Covid-19 policy toward achieving herd immunity — the point at which enough people have become immune to the virus that its spread becomes unlikely. They would do this by allowing “those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally.” This, they say, will allow people “to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.” These academics are clearly a distinct minority. Most of their public health colleagues have condemned their proposal as unworkable and unethical — even as amounting to “mass murder,” as William Haseltine, a former Harvard Medical School professor who now heads a global health foundation, put it to CNN last week. But who is right? The signers of the declaration do have a point. Restrictions designed to limit deaths cause real harm, including, but by no means limited to, stress on the economy, increases in domestic violence and drug abuse, declines in tests that screen for cancer and on and on. Those living alone suffer real pain from isolation, and the young have every reason to feel bitter over the loss of substantive education and what should have been memories of a high school prom or the bonding friendships that form in a college dorm at 2 a.m. or on an athletic team or in some other endeavor. So the idea of returning to something akin to normal — releasing everyone from a kind of jail — is attractive, even seductive. It becomes less seductive when one examines three enormously important omissions in the declaration. First, it makes no mention of harm to infected people in low-risk groups, yet many people recover very slowly. More serious, a significant number, including those with no symptoms, suffer damage to their heart and lungs. One recent study of 100 recovered adults found that 78 of them showed signs of heart damage. We have no idea whether this damage will cut years from their lives or affect their quality of life. Second, it says little about how to protect the vulnerable. One can keep a child from visiting a grandparent in another city easily enough, but what happens when the child and grandparent live in the same household? And how do you protect a 25-year-old diabetic, or cancer survivor, or obese person, or anyone else with a comorbidity who needs to go to work every day? Upon closer examination, the “focused protection” that the declaration urges devolves into a kind of three-card monte; one can’t pin it down. Third, the declaration omits mention of how many people the policy would kill. It’s a lot. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, whose modeling of the pandemic the White House has used, predicts up to about 415,000 deaths by Feb. 1, even with current restrictions continuing. If these restrictions are simply eased — as opposed to eliminating them entirely, which would occur if herd immunity were pursued — deaths could rise to as many as 571,527. That’s just by Feb. 1. The model predicts daily deaths will still be increasing then. Will we have achieved herd immunity then? No. Herd immunity occurs when enough people have immunity either through natural infection or a vaccine so the outbreak eventually dies out. By Feb. 1, even with eased mandates, only 25 percent of the population will have been infected, by my calculations. The most optimistic model suggests herd immunity might occur when 43 percent of the population has been infected, but many estimate 60 percent to 70 percent before transmission trends definitively down. Those are models. Actual data from prison populations and from Latin America suggest transmission does not slow down until 60 percent of the population is infected. (At present, only about 10 percent of the population has been infected, according to the C.D.C.) And what will be the cost? Even if herd immunity can be achieved with only 40 percent of the population infected or vaccinated, the I.H.M.E. estimates that a total of 800,000 Americans would die. The real death toll needed to reach herd immunity could far exceed one million. As horrific a price as that is, it could prove much worse if damage to the heart, lungs or other organs of those who recover from the immediate effects of the virus does not heal and instead leads to early deaths or incapacitation. But we won’t know that for years. Some aftereffects of the 1918 influenza pandemic did not surface until the 1920s or later. For instance, children born during its peak in 1919 had worse health outcomes as they grew older, compared with others born around that time. There is speculation that the influenza caused a disease called encephalitis lethargica, which became almost epidemic in the 1920s and then later disappeared, and which affected patients in Oliver Sacks’s book “Awakenings.”Both the 1918 pandemic and other viruses have been linked to Parkinson’s disease. Proponents of herd immunity point to Sweden. Swedish officials deny having actively pursued that strategy, but they never shut down their economy or closed most schools, and they still haven’t recommended masks. Its neighbors Denmark and Norway did. Sweden’s death rate per 100,000 people is five times Denmark’s and 11 times Norway’s. Did the deaths buy economic prosperity? No. Sweden’s G.D.P. fell 8.3 percent in the second quarter, compared with Denmark’s 6.8 percent and Norway’s 5.1 percent. Finally, the Great Barrington Declaration aims at a straw man, opposing the kind of large, general lockdown that began in March. No one is proposing that now. Is there an alternative? There was once a simple one, which the vast majority of public health experts urged for months: social distancing, avoiding crowds, wearing masks, washing hands and a robust contact tracing system, with support for those who are asked to self-quarantine and for selected closures when and where necessary.
And then a new strain of Covid comes out. And then a new emerging virus comes out. And then a terrorist organization biological weapon is released. And there is a release from a bioweapons facility like during the 2001 Anthrax attacks in the US. The above scenarios have all happened before and will happen again. We are currently undergoing active infection of a dangerous virus. It seems like an opportune time to create durable policy that is response to current and future scenarios. Off the top of my head, it seems the following areas should be addressed by a unified, global and local policy: 1. Advanced citizen training on recognizing early symptoms of infections, PPE options, the proper use of PPE, and effective disinfection practices. 2. Require the use of PPE by all when in public. Those with medical conditions preventing the use of PPE should avoid being in the public unless on medically necessary travel during an outbreak. 3. Enforce crowd size limits. 4. Create antivirus infrastructure where there is a high turnover of people such as classrooms, travel centers, rest areas, public restrooms, grocery stores, major employers, churches, sporting events, conventions, protests, etc. Where the venue of an event does not lend itself to practical antivirus infrastructure, greater restrictions on crowd size should be implemented. Antivirus infrastructure could include strategic placement of disposable hand protection in areas where people often use their hands such as shopping carts, fuel dispensing pumps, and faucet handles. Doors should either be automatic or capable of being opened without the use of one’s hands. In particularly high risk areas, such as countertops at checkout areas, heavily used public restrooms, and busy entranceways, automatic antivirus technology should be regularly deployed, such as UV light and or automated chemical disinfection. Obviously this entails closing a restroom periodically and suggests a larger facility should have multiple restrooms with staggered disinfection schedules. Building HVAC and air handling systems should be reviewed to ensure an environment that is less conducive to the spread of virus is maintained. Some metrics to consider are humidity levels, temperature levels to a degree considering energy cost and comfort, and air exchange rates. Separate entrances and exits might be beneficial in places that experience a high volume of people. While seating used in mass transportation and other businesses should be less dense, it would likely cause a failure of business models. Then again, continuing rolling outbreaks of a dangerous virus will reduce the customer base for businesses through death and loss of descetionary income. We need to face reality that dangers exist in this world and that it is necessary to be prepared. Either preparing or not has a cost associated with it. With preparing against virus outbreaks, the cost is more predictable and has the benefit of discouraging potential biological attacks.
The "natural herd immunity" crowd shouts "let's have the virus run free among the low-risk" --- well here are the results of that foolishness. Long-term problems in younger low-risk COVID-19 patients https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-science-idUKKBN2742O4 The following is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus. Long-term health problems seen in low-risk COVID-19 patients Young, healthy adults with COVID-19 who do not require hospitalization are still at risk for long-term health problems, Oxford University researchers found. They studied 201 recovering UK patients with an average age of 44, more than 90% of whom did not have risk factors such as diabetes, high blood pressure, or heart disease. Only 18% had been sick enough to be hospitalized. At an average of 140 days after their symptoms began, 98% were still fatigued, 92% had heart and lung symptoms, 88% had muscle aches, 87% had breathlessness, 83% headaches, and 73% gastrointestinal symptoms. Organ damage was more common among those who had been hospitalized. But it was not limited to that group as 66% of the patients had impairment of at least one organ. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans showed mild damage to lungs in 33%, heart in 32%, pancreas in 17%, kidneys in 12%, liver in 10% and spleen in 6%. The researchers say their study, posted on Friday on medRxiv ahead of peer review, cannot prove the virus caused these later issues. But it does suggest long-term monitoring of organ function will be necessary even in relatively low-risk patients.
So you just repost my link again as "Long Term Effects of the Flu" -- very puzzling. Does any of this sound like the "long term effects of the flu"? The flu does not have the long term effects of COVID-19. Trump Said Don’t Let COVID Dominate Your Life. These Millennials Don’t Know If They Will Ever Get Better. “Why is his life more valuable than mine? Then he mocks this illness that has ruined my life.” https://www.buzzfeednews.com/articl...5Uwrk8Hel274wg91G3s5ZNFkPcbX0BPAOFD7GT2PzT1Ho As the United States closes in on nearly 8 million coronavirus cases, thousands of people are still suffering from debilitating symptoms months after they contracted the virus. COVID-19 has upended their lives, changed their bodies, and made it difficult to complete everyday tasks or, in some cases, hold down jobs. A CDC study from this summer found that 1 in 5 people aged 18 to 34 who tested positive for COVID-19 had not recovered their health after a few weeks. Some may be chronically ill and need long-term care. Months into the pandemic, there’s still no real treatment plan for these patients and many say their own doctors, friends, family members — and now their president — continue to downplay what they are going through. Over the past three months, BuzzFeed News has spoken with more than 100 of these long-haulers as they searched for help and recognition. In the beginning, many said they felt very much alone, finding solace in online support groups. As doctors learned more about the virus, it became apparent that the narrative that the coronavirus largely bypassed young, active people was not entirely true. Many previously healthy long-haulers describe a common set of symptoms: fatigue, recurring headaches and fevers, trouble breathing, and a persistent "brain fog" that makes it difficult to remember things or focus. When President Donald Trump tested positive for COVID-19, many long-haulers held their breath: If the country watched their leader confirm that the virus was serious, their plight might receive more attention. But then Trump took off his mask, told people not to let COVID-19 dominate their lives, and continued to dismiss the virus that has now killed more than 217,000 Americans. On Monday, Trump returned to the campaign trail, telling an audience in Sanford, Florida, that he felt “so powerful” that he would “kiss everyone in that audience.” But young long-haulers in states like Vermont, Georgia, and California want you to know that the coronavirus doesn’t just dominate your life; it can completely change it. (More at above url)
sorry, pasted the wrong link. Here: Long term Effects of the Flu I didn't both reading any of your additional nonsense.