"We had a taste of freedom as the summer wore on [and now] a pretty dismal [winter is in the wings]."
"Obviously,
the Great Barrington fix will excite the minimizers who pretend
COVID-19 is not much worse than the flu and enliven the libertarians who
object to public health measures on principle."
"So be it: they've been offside all along."
"[There
is hope a vaccine may be available by March, and given the prospects]
why on earth should we rush to embrace a reckless prescription for a
demographically-selective national 'chicken-pox party' involving a
dangerous pathogen?"
Dr.David Naylor, co-chair, Canada's COVID-19 immunity task force
"[The
most] compassionate approach [leading to 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
protecting those who are at highest risk."
"People
who are more at risk may participate [in normal activities] if they
wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the
vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity."
Declaration authors
The
Great Barrington Declaration is a 510-word opus written by academics
from Harvard, Stanford and Oxford universities whose prestige obviously
lends credence to the three academics who put the composition together
as a learned trio offering a wise solution to a global public dilemma.
They have sufficient clout to have gained an audience with U.S.Health
and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and White House pandemic adviser
Scott Atlas himself under scrutiny for his views on herd immunity -- the
view of "controlled spread"
of the young and healthy who are less likely to perish from COVID in
the interests of gaining immunity once recovered, effectively halting
the spread of the disease.
Thousands
of people have signed on to the declaration, obviously accepting its
argument as a sensible solution to the spread of the pathogen. "By
way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity
and perform frequent PCR testing of other staff and all victims", reads the document. Food and essential goods should be delivered to retirees living at home, and those not vulnerable "should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal".
In-person teaching at schools and universities should proceed, as well
as the resumption of extracurricular activities such as sports as "low
risk" adults work normally, and arts, music and cultural events resume.
The
authors point out that lockdowns have resulted in collateral damage on
public health, including lower childhood vaccination rates, fewer
screenings for cancer and a deterioration in mental health, not to
mention domestic violence "leading
to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class
and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden". "We
all feel that the scientific and public discussion has excluded
pertinent evidence [about the harms of the lockdown, for instance], and
the possibility of a superior approach to the epidemic that would save
lives relative to the current approach", pointed out Jayanta Bhattacharya, physician, epidemiologist and health economist at Stanford University Medical School.
Hospitalizations
are steeply rising in the United States, with confirmed case numbers in
lock-step in Ontario and Quebec while across Canada, average daily case
counts leaped upward 40 percent in one week alone. Collateral damage
can be seen in the fed-up attitude of young people tired of restraints
to their social lives, while those working in small businesses see their
livelihoods evaporating. These are conditions under which the
herd-immunity movement can gain public traction.
"I mean, honestly, if a medical student submitted this as a paper they would get a failing grade",
Dr.Irfan Dhalla, general internist and vice-presdent at Unity Health
which operates two Toronto hospitals said in exasperation, of the
declaration she considers reflective of a fringe element within society
and the medical community. "It's
not as much as a fringe view as I would like it to be. But it's the
wrong view. We cannot reach herd immunity without a massive loss of life
or a vaccine. It's that simple. Honestly, it boggles my mind that
intelligent people are signing on to this statement."
'We Do Not Consent' rally London, Sept. 26,
2020. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein)
Professor
Martin Kulldorff of Harvard Medical School, co-author of the
declaration, feels society should focus on shielding people over 60, but
those under 40 "should
live their normal lives unless they have some known risk factor.
Anybody above 60, whether teacher or bus driver or janitor I think
should not be working -- if those in their 60s can't work from home they
should be able to take a sabbatical [supported by social security] for
three, four or whatever months it takes before there is immunity in the
community that will protect everybody."
Co-author
Oxford University epidemiologist Dr.Sunetra Gupta feels that it's
entirely possible to shield those in the high-risk category while
allowing others "to get out there and get infected and build up herd immunity" as a temporary measure and not a
"permanent state of affairs. We're saying, let's just do this for the
three months that it takes for the pathogen to sweep through the
population."
Critics of this school of thought don't hesitate to point out that those countries succeeding in managing COVID including South Korea, have strategies that don't rely on "letting the virus run wild while hoping that the asthmatic community and the elderly can find somewhere to hide for 12 months",
pointed out Dr.Michael Head, senior research fellow in global health at
the University of Southampton. Britain too had briefly considered herd
immunity and then retreated as the COVID toll rapidly rose.
Dr.
Naylor noted Sweden's gamble with herd immunity which saw them with the
highest rates of hospitalization and deaths in comparison to their
neighbours, and where in any event, their no-lockdown policy failed to
create herd immunity, according to a paper published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. No herd immunity strategy that focuses on the young and healthy is ever going to result in the "controlled demographic burn that some zealots imagine", concluded Dr. Naylor.
"Case
growth will be exponential, with masses of people sick in their 40s and
50s, hospitals will be overrun and deaths will skyrocket as they did in
Italy and New York", pointed out Dr.Naylor. And nor
are younger people immune to severe COVID-19, as highlighted by a new
study by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital that found of 3,222
people aged 18 to 35 admitted to U.S. hospitals in April and June, 21
percent required intensive care, ten percent needed mechanical
ventilation, and 2.7 percent died, a rather sobering reality.
"There is no current evidence about COVID-19 to suggest that a
long-term passive approach has any merit. Despite the huge advances in
our understand of the coronavirus and resulting infection, we don’t know
that herd immunity is even possible. Natural, lasting, protective
immunity to the disease would be needed and we don’t know how effective
or long-lasting people’s post-infection immunity will be. Just to find
out whether this is possible, would be to consign a great many more
thousands of people to their deaths, and many more would be left
suffering from the effects of long COVID, which even less is well
understood."
"There is also the fact that we haven’t properly got to grips with
how to shield vulnerable populations adequately and neither do we have
the capacity in the UK to test for asymptomatic infections.
Furthermore, we’re also still only scratching the surface of how the
virus is transmitted."
Dr Simon Clarke, Associate Professor of Cellular Microbiology, University of Reading, U.K.
This represents a general opinion site for its author. It also offers a space for the author to record her experiences and perceptions,both personal and public. This is rendered obvious by the content contained in the blog, but the space is here inviting me to write. And so I do.
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