Once again let's take a look at the organization sponsoring the Great Barrington Declaration resolution. It is sponsored by the American Institute for Economic Research, a conservative think tank - by the very nature of the sponsoring group it is a political document, not a scientific document. The American Institute for Economic Research found 30 doctors and scientists to be their sponsors for the Great Barrington Declaration who are listed on the first page. All 30 of these doctors & scientists have previously been all over conservative media pushing their non-lockdown claims. They are primarily political activists which is why they were selected to join as sponsors. It is only proper to take a look at the "sponsoring doctors" and their previous activities -- including their history of bad science, tainted studies, conflicts of interest, media claims and academic discipline. Pointing out the facts is not trying to silence anyone - the facts, of course, are inconvenient to those pushing the no-lockdown narrative so naturally they despise anyone revealing them. Having a number of doctors and scientists sign a declaration does not make the science correct or proven --- any more than having a number of scientists sign petitions & surveys make 97% of scientists support global warming claims correct -- or the fabricated, altered data behind their global warming claims correct. Especially since "science" on both sides of the global warming debate was strictly driven by government, political & corporate grant money provided to create collateral to support the pre-determined positions of the sponsors. Bottom line - the Great Barrington Declaration is a flawed political document with no basis in science driven by a conservative political group. Their intent is merely to gather signatures so they can get media attention for their political position driven by right-wing economics rather than best public health practices when facing a novel global pandemic.
Once again I note your attempt to discredit an organization entirely based on political affiliation and absolutely ZERO contradictory evidence to their claims. Slander isn't an argument. Just because you say there's no science, doesn't make it true.
There is an entire set of articles quoting mainstream scientific experts I have posted in this thread and other threads that directly take on the nonsensical claims in the Great Barrington Declaration-- I suggest you go read them. "Natural herd immunity" and suggestions to not follow best public health practices when facing a novel pandemic is nothing more than eugenics. People and groups pushing these policies needed to be called out on their political agenda and past activities.
Why? Haven't you read them? Why can't you argue what they are stating here? Are you incapable of doing anything other than throwing mud? Pandemics occur annually with the flu virus and other cold (corona) viruses. We don't lock everyone down for those. We don't nuke the economy over those. We don't destroy businesses and livelihood over those.
Excellent interview of Scott Atlas. Now, before you listen to it (assuming you are open to listening to it) consider whether the response to this - if you disagree with it - should be based on refuting the statistics and data Atlas presents, or to attack Atlas himself. One approach (refuting the data) is more difficult, but possible (I see some flaws in some of the data presented) but it requires work and I don't believe you can actually refute much of what he said. The numbers don't lie. The other approach is to condemn the man because of who he is, who he works for and his political affiliation. As if that changes the numbers somehow.
Cultists are incapable of thinking epidemiologists can subtract the "cons" casualties resulting from lockdown and weighting them against the "pros". It's a sad reflection of their failings in simple arithmetic, so "models" and "variables" is imperceptible from magic to them.
Cultists attack people. Just like you guys do. The rest of us try to go after the actual viewpoints or positions.
A herd immunity strategy to fight the pandemic can be 'dangerous,' experts say. Here's why https://www.phillytrib.com/news/hea...cle_98d2d68f-ae19-50d2-b06c-f86bf85d6853.html After months of effort to limit the spread of the coronavirus in the United States, herd immunity has emerged as a controversial topic. During a call with reporters on Monday, White House senior administration officials discussed a controversial declaration written by some scientists that advocates for ending lockdowns, building immunity and pushing for those who are not vulnerable to Covid-19 to resume normal life. The Great Barrington Declaration aligns "very strongly with what the President has said for months -- that is strongly protect the high-risk elderly and vulnerable and open schools and restore society to function," a senior administration official said during the call. Yet many experts warn that the idea to allow the novel coronavirus to circulate freely -- also known as a "herd immunity" approach -- is dangerous. World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has even called it "unethical." "Allowing a dangerous virus that we don't fully understand to run free is simply unethical," Tedros said during a briefing on Monday. "It's not an option." Tedros explained that herd immunity is a "concept used for vaccination," not pandemic control. "Never in the history of public health has herd immunity been used as a strategy for responding to an outbreak, let alone a pandemic. It is scientifically and ethically problematic," Tedros said. "Letting the virus circulate unchecked, therefore, means allowing unnecessary infections, suffering and death." Previously, White House Coronavirus Task Force member Dr. Scott Atlas responded to a report in late August that claimed he is a proponent of a "herd immunity" strategy to combat Covid-19. "I've never advocated that strategy," Atlas said at a press conference in Florida. Such an approach -- similar to what was pursued in Sweden -- would mean that many people nationwide would have to get sick with the coronavirus in order to build up a natural immunity across communities. As the virus spreads and sickens people, many could die in the process. Atlas explicitly denied that he is pushing a herd immunity strategy, but an administration official told CNN all of the policies Atlas has pushed for are in the vein of a herd immunity strategy. Atlas has rejected the need for widespread community testing, arguing that the administration should focus almost exclusively on protecting and testing elderly populations while pushing for the rest of the economy to return to normal, this official said. "Everything he says and does points toward herd immunity," the senior administration official said. About 2 million Americans could die in the effort to achieve herd immunity to the coronavirus, Dr. Leana Wen, emergency physician and CNN medical analyst, said in late August. Wen told CNN's Brianna Keilar that she has "huge concerns" about a herd immunity approach and much is still unknown about how long immunity to Covid-19 might last. "If we're waiting until 60% to 80% of people have it, we're talking about 200 million-plus Americans getting this -- and at a fatality rate of 1%, let's say, that's 2 million Americans who will die in this effort to try to get herd immunity," Wen said. "Those are preventable deaths of our loved ones that we can just not let happen under our watch." Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization's technical lead for coronavirus response, said during a media briefing in Geneva in August that "herd immunity" is typically discussed in the context of vaccinations -- not as a response to a pandemic. "Normally when we talk about herd immunity, we talk about how much of the population needs to be vaccinated to have immunity to the virus, to the pathogen, so that transmission can no longer take place or it's very difficult for a virus or a pathogen to transmit between people," Van Kerkhove said. "If we think about herd immunity in the natural sense of just letting a virus run, it's very dangerous," she said. "That means that many people are infected, many people will need hospitalizations and many people will die." Sweden's 'herd immunity' efforts Herd immunity refers to a specific threshold of protection needed for a certain population or community to have against an infectious disease to keep it at bay -- and that protection can come from either prior infections or vaccination, Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, told CNN in late August. "If a herd immunity threshold has been crossed, it is very difficult for an infectious disease to be able to find new people to infect and to sustain transmission in that community," Adalja said, adding that when it comes to Sweden, "it doesn't seem like the herd immunity threshold was crossed there, from all we can tell." Unlike most countries, Sweden did not go into a lockdown when the pandemic spread across Europe in early spring. Instead, there was an emphasis on personal responsibility, with most bars, schools, restaurants and salons remaining open. Despite the more relaxed approach, only 7.3% of people in Stockholm had developed the antibodies needed to fight the disease by late April -- well below the 70-90% needed for herd immunity. Now the country has more than 5,800 deaths from Covid-19, corresponding to about 576.38 deaths per million people. The last Covid-19 fatality was recorded on August 23. The number of deaths per million in the country is much higher than some of its closest neighbors, with similar low population densities, namely Denmark at 107.73, Finland at 60.46, Norway at 48.7 or Estonia at 48.25. "When most of a population is immune to an infectious disease, this provides indirect protection -- herd immunity -- to those who are not immune to the disease by acting as a bulwark against further population infection surges," Eric Orlowski, of the University College London, and Dr. David Goldsmith, a retired physician based in London, wrote in a commentary that published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine in mid-August. "It is likely that some of this inter-Scandinavian difference in mortality outcomes might have also have arisen from a failure to shield the most vulnerable Swedes from viral infections (40%--50% of their cases have been in the elderly nursing home resident population)," Orlowski and Goldsmith wrote. "But as with other aspects of this unparalleled crisis, more time is needed to understand the many lasting impacts." Much of the criticism around Sweden's response has focused on the high death rates in care homes. "It's not obvious how to completely isolate those people that are at risk for severe disease from those who generally get mild disease," Adalja said. "The biggest problem that I have with the Swedish approach is that if you are going to do that -- if we're going to actually try and do herd immunity -- you really need to fortify your nursing homes and you really need to do some testing and tracing and isolating," he said. "If herd immunity does not include testing, tracing and isolating, then it's going to be very hard to protect vulnerable populations." Sweden's chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell admitted in June that the country's Public Health Agency "didn't know that there would be such a big potential for the disease to spread in elderly care homes, with so many deaths." But he told Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter: "There are things that we could have done better but in general I think that Sweden has chosen the right way." A top World Health Organization official praised Sweden's response to the coronavirus pandemic in August, saying its approach has been mischaracterized. Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO's Health Emergencies Programme, said "there is a misunderstanding" that Sweden has not implemented control measures. "It's tried to rely on individuals and communities to comply with the advice of government and it has tried to avoid imposing mandatory lockdowns, mandatory separation of individuals," Ryan said during a media briefing in Geneva, adding that this is based on historically very high levels of trust between the Swedish government and its people. "In Sweden, Anders Tegnell and the team there have done a good job," Ryan said. "That is the way in which Swedish people and the Swedish government interact. That is the social contract in Sweden," he said. "Nobody has come through this pandemic with a perfect strategy." 'Instead of pushing for herd immunity, the U.S. must double down' Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, wrote an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal in late August that came out against the idea of the United States following Sweden's model. "Swedish government officials initially sought to let the virus run largely unchallenged in the general population while taking steps to protect the elderly. The Swedish view was that the country could reach herd immunity without jeopardizing the economy. But holding up Sweden as an enlightened model misreads important parts of its experience," Gottlieb wrote in the op-ed. "Many Swedes pulled back from normal activities to shelter themselves from infection anyway, even younger and middle-aged people. The country experienced 5,821 Covid deaths in a population the size of North Carolina. And Sweden is far short of herd immunity, even as the country's economic recovery ranks among the worst in its region," Gottlieb wrote in part. "Confronting a dangerous pandemic requires containing spread wherever it is reasonably possible." He went on to note that wearing masks, testing for Covid-19, and tracing the contacts of people who have it remain helpful. "Sweden's attempt to create 'herd immunity' has been woefully unsuccessful and is definitely not a strategy we should seek to replicate in the United States," Dr. Howard Koh, former assistant secretary for health under President Obama and professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said in an email to CNN in late August. "What's more, pushing for 'herd immunity' now would completely upend the months of work the U.S. has done so far in efforts to control the virus," Koh said in part. "Instead of pushing for herd immunity, the U.S. must double down on the public health tools at our disposal -- including universal mask wearing, widespread testing, and contract tracing -- until a vaccine and more effective therapeutics become available."
Let's take a look at how Scott Atlas threatens people and quiets anyone who disagrees with his approach. He does not want anyone discussing the science or facts on why his politically-driven ideas are totally wrong. Anyone whose sole approach on dissenting opinions is to sue and silence them -- does not deserve to be heard. This article lists out the previous claims by Atlas regarding COVID which have been demonstrated to be completely incorrect. Scott Atlas, White House adviser on coronavirus, threatens to sue colleagues back at Stanford who spoke out against his approach. https://www.insidehighered.com/news...avirus-threatens-sue-colleagues-back-stanford In an unusual move for an academic, Dr. Scott Atlas, Robert Wesson Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is threatening to sue Stanford colleagues who criticized his work. The work in question here is also unusual, as Atlas has since August served as an adviser on the White House coronavirus task force. Atlas, a neuroradiologist and health-care policy expert, was immediately a controversial pick for the White House post, as he is not an immunologist, epidemiologist or public health expert. And some of his public statements before and after joining the task force have been controversial, as well. In July, for instance, prior to his appointment, Atlas told Fox News, “These people getting the infection is not really a problem, and in fact, as we said months ago, when you isolate everyone, including all the healthy people, you're prolonging the problem because you’re preventing population immunity.” Atlas later denied that he was advocating a herd-immunity approach to the virus, but he has made other statements that challenge what experts say about COVID-19, such as "children almost never transmit the disease," that asymptomatic people shouldn't necessarily be tested, and that the "data is unclear on masks." Most of the studies on masks, he told radio host Brian Kilmeade, are "deeply flawed" and even "garbage." Troubled by their colleague’s influence on the national response to the coronavirus -- which was and continues to be troubling -- a group of 98 Stanford immunologists this month published an open letter about Atlas. Citing the Hippocratic oath’s “first, do no harm,” the signers said they have “both a moral and an ethical responsibility to call attention to the falsehoods and misrepresentations of science recently fostered” by Atlas. Many of Atlas’s comments and opinions “run counter to established science and, by doing so, undermine public-health authorities and the credible science that guides effective public health policy,” the medical professors continued. The “preponderance of data” supports mitigation strategies such as wearing masks and indicates that both children and asymptomatic adults transmit COVID-19 and testing them can help break the chain of infection, the open letter says. On herd immunity, they wrote, the “safest path” is through “deployment of rigorously evaluated, effective vaccines that have been approved by regulatory agencies.” Atlas has advocated reopening schools and businesses, and his Stanford colleagues wrote that all that can happen -- “if we follow policies that are consistent with science.” “As Stanford faculty with expertise in infectious diseases, epidemiology and health policy, our signatures support this statement with the hope that our voices affirm scientific, medical and public health approaches that promote the safety of our communities and nation,” the letter states. In response, Atlas’s attorney, Marc Kasowitz, wrote to the 90-some signers, demanding that they "immediately issue a press release withdrawing your letter and that you contact every media outlet worldwide that has reported on it to request an immediate correction of the record." Kasowitz demanded “satisfactory written proof” of those actions by Sept. 18, lest the signers face “necessary and appropriate actions to enforce our client’s rights, seek compensatory and punitive damages for the harm you have caused, and vindicate his reputation in court.” According to Atlas’s lawyer, the Stanford professors’ letter was written and “sent with no regard for the truth,” and “maliciously defames” Atlas. Kasowitz cited a case involving the former University of Virginia climatologist Michael Mann, now of Pennsylvania State University at State College, saying that “personal attacks on an individual [scientist’s] honesty and integrity” and assertions or implications that he “engaged in professional misconduct and deceit … if false, do not enjoy constitutional protection.” Kasowitz argued that Atlas’s public statements are in fact in alignment with the evidence-based principles outlined by the researchers, and that “any disagreement you have about testing is not with Dr. Atlas, but with the entire Coronavirus Task Force." Philip A. Pizzo, professor of pediatrics and of microbiology and immunology and former dean of Stanford School of Medicine and one the letter’s first signers, referred questions about “this important issue on behalf of the health of our nation” to a communications firm. Several other signatories did the same. At least one signer has spoken out about his involvement, though: Michael Fishbach, microbiologist and associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford, posted Kasowitz’s letter to Twitter, saying, “I stand by everything we said.” The professors' firm confirmed that the professors have not taken down their letter and that they’ve received no additional communication from Atlas or Kasowitz since the Sept. 18 deadline. They did hire their own lawyer to send their own response to Kasowitz and Atlas, though. It says that Kasowitz's threat "seeks to distort the public record -- and to chill speech by doctors, scientists and public health experts on a matter of pressing national concern -- by leveling a baseless accusation that our clients defamed Dr. Atlas." The letter says that Atlas's allegations of defamation are "meritless," as opinion is protected by the First Amendment and the White House's guidance on COVID-19 has been widely criticized. "We are more than a little surprised that Dr. Atlas has chosen to waste his time on this matter," the letter also states. "He is a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force and an advisor to President Trump. The decisions that he is involved in making are literally life and death matters for the people of this nation. If he cannot tolerate science-based criticism of his opinions and statements concerning this public health crisis, then he has no business advising anybody, let alone the president." More "fundamentally, it is disappointing that Dr. Atlas would rather spend his time scheming with private lawyers, cooking up meritless threats against scientists, than working with public officials to slow the spread of a deadly virus." E. J. Miranda, Stanford spokesperson, said via email that the university hasn't taken a position on either party's "views." Stanford's "central functions of teaching, learning, research and scholarship depend upon an atmosphere in which freedom of inquiry, thought, expression, publication and peaceable assembly are given the fullest protection," Miranda said. "Expression of the widest range of viewpoints is encouraged, free from institutional orthodoxy and from internal or external coercion. This is an important part of the academic freedom we cherish." Kasowitz did not return a request for comment, nor did Atlas. In any case, President Trump continues to share misinformation about COVID-19. This week, as coronavirus-related deaths topped 200,000, Trump wrongly told supporters at a rally in Ohio that the virus "hardly affects anyone" except the elderly.