8 ms·

The Great Barrington Declaration

35 points by Alupis 6y ago

jasonv 6y ago
I’ll start. I live in Contra Costa County (east bay, SF area), with a lot of retired people. 1.1 million residents. We’ve had 224 deaths with COVID so far. In the US, death rates are pretty flat (not fluctuating much with cases), and of the 198k deaths in the US, only 16K were younger than 54 years of age. Does that sound like a pandemic? Is it reasonable to shutter most of our economies for those numbers? Can we not have different regulations for those with elevated risks? Earnest questions. People are suffering economically and emotionally because of stress and isolation.
- markiannucci 6y ago
  The United States leads the developed world in deaths due to this fucking virus. The gbdeclaration will help us continue to lead the world in deaths from the virus. I'm sorry things are tough.
  - collyw 6y ago
    Belgium leads on a per capita basis which would seem more relevant.
- strictnein 6y ago
  > Does that sound like a pandemic? Those are all numbers with all the prevention/protections put in place. You don't get to use them as an argument against "shutting down the economy". > "of the 198k deaths in the US, only 16K were younger than 54 years of age" And the other 200k (your numbers are a little dated) apparently aren't worth worrying about?
  - jasonv 6y ago
    Isn’t it as callous to dismiss the 50 million people who have filed for unemployment for the 200-210K who have died from the pandemic, esp when the majority of those are older? https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/07/09/nearly-50-million-americans-have-filed-for-unemployment-heres-whats-really-happening/#4369168127d3 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/07/09/nearly-50-... From an argument perspective, I’d suggest that if we want to allay encryption restrictions because we don’t buy “think of the children”, the same logic could be applied to the economy and the 50m already at economic risk. People are dying and suffering from poverty, starvation.. around the globe. Children aren’t have their childhoods. And per https://swprs.org/facts-about-covid-19/ https://swprs.org/facts-about-covid-19/ perhaps we’ve flattened the death curve and we need more targeted policies for those who are truly at risk.
- snewman 6y ago
  1. That's the number of deaths given the restrictions. If there were no restrictions then the numbers would be much higher. 2. What is your source for death rates not fluctuating with cases? In general, deaths have reliably tracked cases, with a delay of a few weeks (because it takes time to progress from diagnosis to death). 3. Shuttering the economy is not binary. With an intelligent approach, and general compliance with measures such as mask wearing, we ought to be able to control the virus without a complete shutdown. Unfortunately we keep making unintelligent tradeoffs and executing inconsistently.
  - jasonv 6y ago
    2 - First image in this collection: https://swprs.org/covid-the-big-picture-in-7-charts/ https://swprs.org/covid-the-big-picture-in-7-charts/ 3 - We are asking everyone to adhere to economic and social restrictions when the risks are not equal to everyone. People in certain age groups, and with health risks, are far more at risk than most people.
    - rallison 6y ago
      > 2 - First image in this collection: https://swprs.org/covid-the-big-picture-in-7-charts/ https://swprs.org/covid-the-big-picture-in-7-charts/ This site seems entirely untethered to reality? E.g. "2) Covid mortality vs. flu mortality" section appears to put IFR for covid of those at age 80 at 0.16%? Yet, we have entire countries that aren't far off from that number for population fatality rates, let alone infection fatality rate. Wait.. I was just assuming this had to be an IFR comparison, because for something like this, anything else would be disingenuous. I should assume less. It looks like it is comparing annual mortality of flu with the current mortality of Covid-19. 1. We're still far from a year into notable spread of Covid-19. 2. Normal flu seasons don't have lockdowns, masks, bans on large events, etc. 3. In digging a bit more, this uses the 2017 flu season as a baseline, which was one of the worst. This site is actually a great example of Covid-19 misinformation. It has a veneer of authority - Swiss Policy Research as a name sounds like it might be credible. And, it presents what, on first glance, appears to be claims grounded in science (and hey, nice graphs and all!). But, one starts digging into the claims, and it starts to become clear the flaws. jasonv: there are a lot of pseudoscientific resources out there with respect to Covid-19. This looks to be one of them. It's more essential than ever to vet what you're linking to these days.
- rallison 6y ago
  > I live in Contra Costa County (east bay, SF area), with a lot of retired people. 1.1 million residents. We’ve had 224 deaths with COVID so far. > Does that sound like a pandemic? It sounds like a region that has handled the pandemic well. > In the US, death rates are pretty flat (not fluctuating much with cases) Daily deaths are tracking case rates (given, one is best off looking at a combo of case rates, positivity and total testing). Of course, deaths lag a fair bit. > of the 198k deaths in the US, only 16K were younger than 54 years of age. And, we're only around 10% total incidence rate in the US, based on more recent widespread antibody studies. 16K for under 54 is still a fairly large number given that we're only at ~10%. Add in 55-64 and we're at 42K deaths. Let's ramp up to an incidence rate of 50% - super basic napkin math and we'd be at over 200K deaths for the under 65 crowd - as in, entirely people of below retirement age. That's huge. > Is it reasonable to shutter most of our economies for those numbers? We haven't though. Not to downplay the economic impact, but most of the economy is still running. > People are suffering economically and emotionally because of stress and isolation. Yeah, this aspect sucks. A few comments: * Let's imagine we lifted all restrictions. How much do you think that would improve the economy? There's at least some evidence that economies that have failed in mitigation, such that the virus runs pretty close to free, have had the sharpest GDP declines - https://ourworldindata.org/covid-health-economy https://ourworldindata.org/covid-health-economy - granted, it is hard to separate out factors, as countries that have seen huge spread often also will, at least temporarily, lock down more. But, my general comment here is that the virus itself is a significant portion of the economic impact. * The federal government should have done more to keep people afloat during this period. This sort of crisis is exactly when we should have committed to sustained support, e.g. UBI until the pandemic was over. * Beyond that, re isolation, most places in the country allow for gatherings, for you to visit family and friends, for you to go out and about. Sure, big events and bars are still restricted in most places, but if one wants to socialize, they still can.
- carapace 6y ago
  Are we still doing the "sacrifice the old people for the sake of the economy" bit? You do realize that, if you don't die first, you'll be old too one day?
gorgoiler 6y ago
Alas, if only schools weren’t staffed by us oldies.
rallison 6y ago
This seems incredibly hand-wavey in actually accomplishing "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. The fundamental problem is that pretty much every country that has not been able to contain general community spread has had a hard time attempting to protect even just the super high risk populations (e.g. nursing homes). But, in a country like the US, the high risk population is much, much larger than the nursing home population. Age or health conditions means that probably at least 100 million people in the country would be high risk. I've still not seen any comprehensive proposal for how you can protect the high risk populations while letting the virus run free in the low risk populations. In general, we're way too interconnected and aren't willing to invest the (likely massive) resources to even attempt this. Think of how many high risk people still have to work in non-WFH jobs. Think how many multi-family households there are. Think of how many low risk people live with high risk people. Think of how many parents of school kids and teens are high risk. The more general community spread there is, the more it impacts high risk folks who don't have the luxury of fully isolating from community risk. Finally, it doesn't help that Jay Bhattacharya is one of the authors - a Hoover Institution associated fellow who's pretty infamous in the epi community for the fundamentally flawed Santa Clara antibody study - significant statistical issues, a highly flawed recruitment strategy, a side story of his wife recruiting people through a non-approved side channel, questionable funding sources like the founder of JetBlue (with records that showed said founder might have influenced the research), and, and, and. Many of these flaws biased the study into showing a high infection incidence rate, and thus a much lower fatality rate, in the same ballpark as the flu. Given that he's continued to downplay the seriousness ever since then, his name being attached to any sort of declaration should give one at least pause.
- roca 6y ago
  Another interesting question is, what is the economic impact of those high risk people not being able to leave their homes? What happens to the schools and workplaces where they normally serve? > 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. That is a rather coy statement. They don't even give us a clue how that could actually work.
roca 6y ago
It's worrying that these supposed professionals don't even know what "herd immunity" means. From the declaration: > herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable This is not the correct definition. Here's a correct definition: https://www.livescience.com/herd-immunity.html https://www.livescience.com/herd-immunity.html > Herd immunity describes the point at which a population is sufficiently immune to a disease to prevent its circulation. These are very different definitions. If a disease spreads through the whole population (i.e. everyone eventually gets it), then herd immunity was never established, regardless of the infection rate.
- fruffy 6y ago
  Stop this please. Herd immunity is not a well-defined term [1]. Their definition is just as valid as yours. "i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable" is a perfectly fine assessment of herd immunity. [1]https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/52/7/911/299077 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/52/7/911/299077
  - roca 6y ago
    That paper certainly does not admit their definition. The abstract is very clear: > A common implication of the term is that the risk of infection among susceptible individuals in a population is reduced by the presence and proximity of immune individuals As I said, a steady infection rate does not imply there is any such reduction, therefore it does not imply herd immunity. If you have a reference that uses their definition of herd immunity, please provide it.
    - fruffy 6y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#Mechanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#Mechanics I would like to avoid devolving into an argument about semantics. My original point is that nothing about the original throwaway line is wrong per se or indicates that they do not know what they are talking about. I find these sorts of nit-picks odd.
sgwealti 6y ago
I find this hard to take seriously since it doesn’t say anything about comprehensive testing and contact tracing.
spzx 6y ago
>The ‘think-tank’ behind the Great Barrington Declaration is part-funded by right-wing American billionaire Charles Koch, reports Nafeez Ahmed https://bylinetimes.com/2020/10/09/climate-science-denial-network-behind-great-barrington-declaration/ https://bylinetimes.com/2020/10/09/climate-science-denial-ne...
bigdubs 6y ago
Wish they would leave a town of people probably completely unaware of this out of it.
cinquemb 6y ago
[0] The social-economic environment and the political consensus behind healthcare, were both contentious in the US pre covid-19 (and arguably globally as well). This has been the case for decades despite changes in the effectively two-party system at various levels of government, and contentiousness has only increased during this time. [1] With the current variability in the approaches to covid-19 in the world, and without a vaccine that can make it so that those most at risk can not catch it (or the various strands) ever again (assuming that they choose to take one if available with possible trade-offs in mind), I find it very hard to believe that the measures to mitigate the downside risks to spread/death will some how improve anything in regards to [0], and only serve to accelerate/decelerate various socioeconomic trends that were already under way. Good luck to my fellow citizens stateside, I long ago made my choice in regards to [0] (now in a jurisdiction where the government's ability to enforce anything has always been extremely limited compared to a lot of "first-world" countries) which was going always going to resolve itself one way or another and I didn't want to be around to face the extreme downsides of such.
yongjik 6y ago
So, the POTUS has caught it, along with many high-profile officers, who are both high-risk group and the group of people who should be protected from deadly virus in a functioning country. And yet the president is having a rally with hundreds of people at White House with no social distancing. And we are somehow to believe that there's a plan to identify and protect vulnerable population while keeping the rest of the country running normal? All the talk of "virus or economic doom" is false dichotomy - the truth is that America had a total leadership failure, which cost us both lives and economy, and now that it's everywhere and we aren't even pretending to trace the spread, we're stuck in the trench, and there's no way to get out. We can either stay at home, ruining economy, until vaccines arrive, or we can pretend the virus is gone, reopening, inviting the second wave, thereby killing more people and also ruining economy.
Capira 6y ago
Great there are finally epidemiologists speaking up against these exaggerated policies.

35 points by Alupis 6y ago

I’ll start. I live in Contra Costa County (east bay, SF area), with a lot of retired people. 1.1 million residents. We’ve had 224 deaths with COVID so far. In the US, death rates are pretty flat (not fluctuating much with cases), and of the 198k deaths in the US, only 16K were younger than 54 years of age. Does that sound like a pandemic? Is it reasonable to shutter most of our economies for those numbers? Can we not have different regulations for those with elevated risks? Earnest questions. People are suffering economically and emotionally because of stress and isolation.

markiannucci 6y ago
The United States leads the developed world in deaths due to this fucking virus. The gbdeclaration will help us continue to lead the world in deaths from the virus. I'm sorry things are tough.
- collyw 6y ago
  Belgium leads on a per capita basis which would seem more relevant.
strictnein 6y ago
> Does that sound like a pandemic? Those are all numbers with all the prevention/protections put in place. You don't get to use them as an argument against "shutting down the economy". > "of the 198k deaths in the US, only 16K were younger than 54 years of age" And the other 200k (your numbers are a little dated) apparently aren't worth worrying about?
- jasonv 6y ago
  Isn’t it as callous to dismiss the 50 million people who have filed for unemployment for the 200-210K who have died from the pandemic, esp when the majority of those are older? https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/07/09/nearly-50-million-americans-have-filed-for-unemployment-heres-whats-really-happening/#4369168127d3 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/07/09/nearly-50-... From an argument perspective, I’d suggest that if we want to allay encryption restrictions because we don’t buy “think of the children”, the same logic could be applied to the economy and the 50m already at economic risk. People are dying and suffering from poverty, starvation.. around the globe. Children aren’t have their childhoods. And per https://swprs.org/facts-about-covid-19/ https://swprs.org/facts-about-covid-19/ perhaps we’ve flattened the death curve and we need more targeted policies for those who are truly at risk.
snewman 6y ago
1. That's the number of deaths given the restrictions. If there were no restrictions then the numbers would be much higher. 2. What is your source for death rates not fluctuating with cases? In general, deaths have reliably tracked cases, with a delay of a few weeks (because it takes time to progress from diagnosis to death). 3. Shuttering the economy is not binary. With an intelligent approach, and general compliance with measures such as mask wearing, we ought to be able to control the virus without a complete shutdown. Unfortunately we keep making unintelligent tradeoffs and executing inconsistently.
- jasonv 6y ago
  2 - First image in this collection: https://swprs.org/covid-the-big-picture-in-7-charts/ https://swprs.org/covid-the-big-picture-in-7-charts/ 3 - We are asking everyone to adhere to economic and social restrictions when the risks are not equal to everyone. People in certain age groups, and with health risks, are far more at risk than most people.
  - rallison 6y ago
    > 2 - First image in this collection: https://swprs.org/covid-the-big-picture-in-7-charts/ https://swprs.org/covid-the-big-picture-in-7-charts/ This site seems entirely untethered to reality? E.g. "2) Covid mortality vs. flu mortality" section appears to put IFR for covid of those at age 80 at 0.16%? Yet, we have entire countries that aren't far off from that number for population fatality rates, let alone infection fatality rate. Wait.. I was just assuming this had to be an IFR comparison, because for something like this, anything else would be disingenuous. I should assume less. It looks like it is comparing annual mortality of flu with the current mortality of Covid-19. 1. We're still far from a year into notable spread of Covid-19. 2. Normal flu seasons don't have lockdowns, masks, bans on large events, etc. 3. In digging a bit more, this uses the 2017 flu season as a baseline, which was one of the worst. This site is actually a great example of Covid-19 misinformation. It has a veneer of authority - Swiss Policy Research as a name sounds like it might be credible. And, it presents what, on first glance, appears to be claims grounded in science (and hey, nice graphs and all!). But, one starts digging into the claims, and it starts to become clear the flaws. jasonv: there are a lot of pseudoscientific resources out there with respect to Covid-19. This looks to be one of them. It's more essential than ever to vet what you're linking to these days.
rallison 6y ago
> I live in Contra Costa County (east bay, SF area), with a lot of retired people. 1.1 million residents. We’ve had 224 deaths with COVID so far. > Does that sound like a pandemic? It sounds like a region that has handled the pandemic well. > In the US, death rates are pretty flat (not fluctuating much with cases) Daily deaths are tracking case rates (given, one is best off looking at a combo of case rates, positivity and total testing). Of course, deaths lag a fair bit. > of the 198k deaths in the US, only 16K were younger than 54 years of age. And, we're only around 10% total incidence rate in the US, based on more recent widespread antibody studies. 16K for under 54 is still a fairly large number given that we're only at ~10%. Add in 55-64 and we're at 42K deaths. Let's ramp up to an incidence rate of 50% - super basic napkin math and we'd be at over 200K deaths for the under 65 crowd - as in, entirely people of below retirement age. That's huge. > Is it reasonable to shutter most of our economies for those numbers? We haven't though. Not to downplay the economic impact, but most of the economy is still running. > People are suffering economically and emotionally because of stress and isolation. Yeah, this aspect sucks. A few comments: * Let's imagine we lifted all restrictions. How much do you think that would improve the economy? There's at least some evidence that economies that have failed in mitigation, such that the virus runs pretty close to free, have had the sharpest GDP declines - https://ourworldindata.org/covid-health-economy https://ourworldindata.org/covid-health-economy - granted, it is hard to separate out factors, as countries that have seen huge spread often also will, at least temporarily, lock down more. But, my general comment here is that the virus itself is a significant portion of the economic impact. * The federal government should have done more to keep people afloat during this period. This sort of crisis is exactly when we should have committed to sustained support, e.g. UBI until the pandemic was over. * Beyond that, re isolation, most places in the country allow for gatherings, for you to visit family and friends, for you to go out and about. Sure, big events and bars are still restricted in most places, but if one wants to socialize, they still can.
carapace 6y ago
Are we still doing the "sacrifice the old people for the sake of the economy" bit? You do realize that, if you don't die first, you'll be old too one day?

gorgoiler 6y ago

Alas, if only schools weren’t staffed by us oldies.

rallison 6y ago

This seems incredibly hand-wavey in actually accomplishing "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. The fundamental problem is that pretty much every country that has not been able to contain general community spread has had a hard time attempting to protect even just the super high risk populations (e.g. nursing homes). But, in a country like the US, the high risk population is much, much larger than the nursing home population. Age or health conditions means that probably at least 100 million people in the country would be high risk. I've still not seen any comprehensive proposal for how you can protect the high risk populations while letting the virus run free in the low risk populations. In general, we're way too interconnected and aren't willing to invest the (likely massive) resources to even attempt this. Think of how many high risk people still have to work in non-WFH jobs. Think how many multi-family households there are. Think of how many low risk people live with high risk people. Think of how many parents of school kids and teens are high risk. The more general community spread there is, the more it impacts high risk folks who don't have the luxury of fully isolating from community risk. Finally, it doesn't help that Jay Bhattacharya is one of the authors - a Hoover Institution associated fellow who's pretty infamous in the epi community for the fundamentally flawed Santa Clara antibody study - significant statistical issues, a highly flawed recruitment strategy, a side story of his wife recruiting people through a non-approved side channel, questionable funding sources like the founder of JetBlue (with records that showed said founder might have influenced the research), and, and, and. Many of these flaws biased the study into showing a high infection incidence rate, and thus a much lower fatality rate, in the same ballpark as the flu. Given that he's continued to downplay the seriousness ever since then, his name being attached to any sort of declaration should give one at least pause.

roca 6y ago
Another interesting question is, what is the economic impact of those high risk people not being able to leave their homes? What happens to the schools and workplaces where they normally serve? > 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. That is a rather coy statement. They don't even give us a clue how that could actually work.

roca 6y ago

It's worrying that these supposed professionals don't even know what "herd immunity" means. From the declaration: > herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable This is not the correct definition. Here's a correct definition: https://www.livescience.com/herd-immunity.html https://www.livescience.com/herd-immunity.html > Herd immunity describes the point at which a population is sufficiently immune to a disease to prevent its circulation. These are very different definitions. If a disease spreads through the whole population (i.e. everyone eventually gets it), then herd immunity was never established, regardless of the infection rate.

fruffy 6y ago
Stop this please. Herd immunity is not a well-defined term [1]. Their definition is just as valid as yours. "i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable" is a perfectly fine assessment of herd immunity. [1]https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/52/7/911/299077 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/52/7/911/299077
- roca 6y ago
  That paper certainly does not admit their definition. The abstract is very clear: > A common implication of the term is that the risk of infection among susceptible individuals in a population is reduced by the presence and proximity of immune individuals As I said, a steady infection rate does not imply there is any such reduction, therefore it does not imply herd immunity. If you have a reference that uses their definition of herd immunity, please provide it.
  - fruffy 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#Mechanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#Mechanics I would like to avoid devolving into an argument about semantics. My original point is that nothing about the original throwaway line is wrong per se or indicates that they do not know what they are talking about. I find these sorts of nit-picks odd.

sgwealti 6y ago

I find this hard to take seriously since it doesn’t say anything about comprehensive testing and contact tracing.

spzx 6y ago

>The ‘think-tank’ behind the Great Barrington Declaration is part-funded by right-wing American billionaire Charles Koch, reports Nafeez Ahmed https://bylinetimes.com/2020/10/09/climate-science-denial-network-behind-great-barrington-declaration/ https://bylinetimes.com/2020/10/09/climate-science-denial-ne...

bigdubs 6y ago

Wish they would leave a town of people probably completely unaware of this out of it.

cinquemb 6y ago

[0] The social-economic environment and the political consensus behind healthcare, were both contentious in the US pre covid-19 (and arguably globally as well). This has been the case for decades despite changes in the effectively two-party system at various levels of government, and contentiousness has only increased during this time. [1] With the current variability in the approaches to covid-19 in the world, and without a vaccine that can make it so that those most at risk can not catch it (or the various strands) ever again (assuming that they choose to take one if available with possible trade-offs in mind), I find it very hard to believe that the measures to mitigate the downside risks to spread/death will some how improve anything in regards to [0], and only serve to accelerate/decelerate various socioeconomic trends that were already under way. Good luck to my fellow citizens stateside, I long ago made my choice in regards to [0] (now in a jurisdiction where the government's ability to enforce anything has always been extremely limited compared to a lot of "first-world" countries) which was going always going to resolve itself one way or another and I didn't want to be around to face the extreme downsides of such.

yongjik 6y ago

So, the POTUS has caught it, along with many high-profile officers, who are both high-risk group and the group of people who should be protected from deadly virus in a functioning country. And yet the president is having a rally with hundreds of people at White House with no social distancing. And we are somehow to believe that there's a plan to identify and protect vulnerable population while keeping the rest of the country running normal? All the talk of "virus or economic doom" is false dichotomy - the truth is that America had a total leadership failure, which cost us both lives and economy, and now that it's everywhere and we aren't even pretending to trace the spread, we're stuck in the trench, and there's no way to get out. We can either stay at home, ruining economy, until vaccines arrive, or we can pretend the virus is gone, reopening, inviting the second wave, thereby killing more people and also ruining economy.

Capira 6y ago

Great there are finally epidemiologists speaking up against these exaggerated policies.