The Myth that Ending Lockdown promotes Herd
Immunity:
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| People will not want to go
to the bar, restaurant, cinema, shop or office. And especially when others won't wear a Mask Most of the economic damage caused by a virus is driven by people voluntarily changing their behaviour.
It was reported that the “think tank” behind the |
( published in "Nature" ) HYBRID IMMUNITY to COVID is more protective than "Previous Infection" immunity alone to Omicron COVID HYBRID Immunity( previous infection + vaccination) gives you 97% immunity from Severe disease and hospitalization. And 41% immunity from reinfection. Much more than the 74% & 24% from infection alone.
from the C-SPAN Hearing on COVID-19 Vaccines and Pandemic Immunity 1:00:15 to 1:06:00 ATLAS DOGMA Trump Administration’s Embrace of a Dangerous and Discredited Herd Immunity via Mass Infection Strategy |
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On 3 October 2020, the
American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), a libertarian
free-market think-tank in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, hosted a private
gathering of scientists, economists and journalists to discuss responses to the
COVID-19 pandemic.
Among them was the "distinguished" Oxford University epidemiologist Professor
Sunetra Gupta, among the most vocal proponents of a
‘herd immunity’ strategy.
The Great Barrington Declaration, after the town in which it was created, was drafted by Gupta with two other top US scientists, Professor Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University and Stanford Fellow Jay Bhattacharya.
The Declaration itself – which calls for only the elderly and vulnerable to be quarantined while encouraging young people to contract the virus – was signed by an initial batch of some 35 scientists.
There’s big money behind it too:
Indeed the AIER is
not just a free-market think-tank. It receives a large bulk of its funding from
its own investment activities, not least in fossil
fuels, energy utilities, tobacco, technology and consumer goods.
AIER owns a major investment firm, American
Investment Services Inc., which harnesses the think-tank’s research to help
inform investment advice.
Security Exchange Commission filings seen by Byline Times confirm that AIER’s
American Investment Services Inc. runs a private fund valued at
$284,492,000.
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interpretation is that Drs. Gupta, Bhattacharya, and Kulldorff are
politically very naďve (or, as I’d call them, useful idiots for AIER),
which, I suppose, is possible.
Many scientists are pretty clueless
about the political ramifications of what they do and can be duped by
ideological groups. My interpretation is that, whether they realize it or not, this trio is providing “scientific cover” and a “scientists divided” narrative to cast doubt on the science. There have been denialists since tobacco companies first started casting doubt on science. Indeed, the fact that the trio behind the document have met with
all of whom advocate for immediate “reopening” of business and against maintaining strong public health interventions against COVID-19. Not coincidentally, their preferred
approach is much more in line with the approach advocated in the So does Dr. Bhattacharya’s recent claims that he’s being “censored” and “silenced.” (As an aside, that first link was an interview with ZDoggMD, which disappoints me.) |
The "scientists" behind this
stated in an accompanying video that their declaration
should
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Whether you want to call it the “magnified minority,” as John Cook does, or
something else, to me the Great Barrington Declaration represents a variation on
decades-old astroturf techniques.
Just as those behind astroturf campaigns seek to disguise their campaigns as
organically arising from grassroots efforts and activism, this form of astroturf
seeks to cloak the agenda of business or
ideological groups in the disguise of science by portraying their agenda
as organically arising from the science, using scientists ideologically
sympathetic or aligned with them to spearhead their message and then gathering
as many signatures as they can from scientists and doctors, regardless of
whether they have actual expertise in the relevant sciences.
It’s something that’s been going on for decades, which makes it unsurprising that it’s found its way into COVID-19 denial and provided fodder for Fox News and others to argue against various COVID-19 mitigation strategies.
