The Big Fail by Joe Nocera & Bethany McLean

Author:Joe Nocera & Bethany McLean [Nocera, Joe & McLean, Bethany]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-10-17T00:00:00+00:00

He called this policy “focused protection.”

In early October, AIER held a small, impromptu conference to discuss pandemic strategies. The think tank asked Kulldorff, Bhattacharya, and a third anti-lockdown epidemiologist, Sunetra Gupta from Oxford University, to come to Great Barrington and speak to a group composed of AIER economists and a few freelance journalists. Over the course of a weekend, they discussed various COVID-19 mitigation strategies, with each of them reaffirming their view that the best way to deal with the coronavirus—at least until a vaccine came along—was to protect the elderly and let those at less risk go about their lives, minimizing the economic and social disruptions. Focused protection, in other words.

On the Sunday morning the conference ended, “the idea came up that we ought to do a statement of principles to summarize everything that had been discussed over the weekend,” recalls Phil Magness, a senior research fellow at AIER. “It was basically an afterthought.” The three scientists sat around a laptop and banged out a short, one-page statement. When they had finished, they signed it with a flourish and sipped champagne as onlookers cheered. An AIER tech staffer threw together a web page, posted a few photographs from the conference, and invited readers to add their signatures to the document, which by then had a name: the Great Barrington Declaration.[*]

In many ways, it was a reiteration of Kulldorff’s earlier article. “Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health,” the three scientists wrote. They continued:

The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health—leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice. Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.

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