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Why is this being flagged? The author is Ehud Qimron, a professor of clinical microbiology and immunology at Tel Aviv University. Edit: here is his Google Scho

Why is this being flagged? The author is Ehud Qimron, a professor of clinical microbiology and immunology at Tel Aviv University. Edit: here is his Google Scholar page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ejRFmsYAAAAJ https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ejRFmsYAAAAJ

hirundo 5y ago
Fear. There are many many people who believe that vaccinations are the only viable strategy to contain this pandemic, and information or opinion to the contrary is therefore a public and personal threat.
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  People seem to unable to accept that in some situation, regardless of what you do, people will die anyway.
dekhn 5y ago
I was fine until it got to the Barrington Declaration.
- generalizations 5y ago
  > The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching 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 better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection. > https://gbdeclaration.org/ https://gbdeclaration.org/ What's wrong with the Barrington Declaration? Thousands of scientists and doctors say there's a better way.
  - microtherion 5y ago
    * None of the countries who paid lip service to "protecting those who are at highest risk" while letting the virus spread freely through the rest of society spelled out how exactly they were going to achieve that protection, and indeed, none of those countries managed to protect the vulnerable. * Identifying those "at minimal risk of death" is not at all simple. There seem to be as yet poorly understood genetic factors in play that determine who is and is not at risk at a younger age, and rolling the dice seems like a poor strategy. * Even WITH precautions (and eventually vaccines), more than 50,000 people under 50 and more than 200,000 people under 65 in the US died of COVID. Under the Barrington strategy, the outcome would have been far worse. * There are other adverse outcomes than death, and those seem to disproportionately affect healthier patients. * The strategy they advocated would have led to the health care system being flooded with cases, with adverse consequences for level of care. * Every extra patient is giving the virus more lottery tickets to develop new mutations. You don't want to give away extra lottery tickets. * And the whole strategy is predicated on achieving an "immunity" which pretty obviously does not exist to the extent propagated in the declaration. People can and do get reinfected. The strategy was a bad idea even in 2020. In 2022, advocating for people to get infected when vaccines are available can hardly be characterised as anything but an utter crackpot notion.
    - inter_netuser 5y ago
      Please explain how Japan did everything to the contrary of your comment and yet, ended up with lowest deaths in the world. No lockdowns. No vaccine passports. No vaccine mandate. No mask mandate. Literally nothing. Outcome: lowest incidence and lowest mortality in the world. Seems like they've managed to protect the vulnerable without unnecessary panic attacks. Why? Sweden also had no lockdowns, and two years in, has lowest excess mortality in Europe, and average on all other measures. Why? Please show us with numbers how Japan and Sweden did much worse by refusing draconian measures. Thanks.
      - microtherion 5y ago
        > Japan [...] No lockdowns. No vaccine passports. No vaccine mandate. No mask mandate. Japan may not have mask mandates, but it is my understanding that they had very high levels of non-mandated mask wearing. > Literally nothing. If you're implying that they had Great Barrington style mass infection parties, I would certainly like to see more evidence of that. > Sweden also had no lockdowns "Lockdowns" is a red herring. Very few places in the world had complete lockdowns, and very few places in the world were completely without restrictions. Notably, Sweden closed universities for some time and instituted domestic and international travel restrictions and assembly restrictions — exactly the kind of measures that get described as "lockdowns" in other countries. > and two years in, has lowest excess mortality in Europe Lowest, other than… Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Norway. Notably, they did MUCH worse than any of their immediate neighbours, which should be their natural peer group to compare against: https://elifesciences.org/articles/69336 https://elifesciences.org/articles/69336 And Sweden's particular way of "protecting the vulnerable" was to simply euthanize the elderly if they caught COVID: https://bioedge.org/uncategorized/questions-raised-about-swedens-covid-19-policy-on-nursing-homes/ https://bioedge.org/uncategorized/questions-raised-about-swe...
      - dekhn 5y ago
        Public health researchers have not been able to explain Sweden particularly well, but Japan is a country with scrupulous rule-following. You will note they also have the world's highest age of mortality in non-covid times, too.
  - dekhn 5y ago
    What's wrong with it is that it got politicized and became a tribe-identifying document early on. Also, in practice many of the ideas aren't completely terrible, but aren't very practical, and most important, go against the grain in US public health care, and likely would have been extremely unpopular during the original few waves of infection. I encourage you to read up on the whole history of Barrington, and what Leavitt, Ionnides and Battacharya were saying early on the epidemic.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

hirundo 5y ago

Fear. There are many many people who believe that vaccinations are the only viable strategy to contain this pandemic, and information or opinion to the contrary is therefore a public and personal threat.

inter_netuser 5y ago
People seem to unable to accept that in some situation, regardless of what you do, people will die anyway.

dekhn 5y ago

I was fine until it got to the Barrington Declaration.

generalizations 5y ago
> The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching 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 better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection. > https://gbdeclaration.org/ https://gbdeclaration.org/ What's wrong with the Barrington Declaration? Thousands of scientists and doctors say there's a better way.
- microtherion 5y ago
  * None of the countries who paid lip service to "protecting those who are at highest risk" while letting the virus spread freely through the rest of society spelled out how exactly they were going to achieve that protection, and indeed, none of those countries managed to protect the vulnerable. * Identifying those "at minimal risk of death" is not at all simple. There seem to be as yet poorly understood genetic factors in play that determine who is and is not at risk at a younger age, and rolling the dice seems like a poor strategy. * Even WITH precautions (and eventually vaccines), more than 50,000 people under 50 and more than 200,000 people under 65 in the US died of COVID. Under the Barrington strategy, the outcome would have been far worse. * There are other adverse outcomes than death, and those seem to disproportionately affect healthier patients. * The strategy they advocated would have led to the health care system being flooded with cases, with adverse consequences for level of care. * Every extra patient is giving the virus more lottery tickets to develop new mutations. You don't want to give away extra lottery tickets. * And the whole strategy is predicated on achieving an "immunity" which pretty obviously does not exist to the extent propagated in the declaration. People can and do get reinfected. The strategy was a bad idea even in 2020. In 2022, advocating for people to get infected when vaccines are available can hardly be characterised as anything but an utter crackpot notion.
  - inter_netuser 5y ago
    Please explain how Japan did everything to the contrary of your comment and yet, ended up with lowest deaths in the world. No lockdowns. No vaccine passports. No vaccine mandate. No mask mandate. Literally nothing. Outcome: lowest incidence and lowest mortality in the world. Seems like they've managed to protect the vulnerable without unnecessary panic attacks. Why? Sweden also had no lockdowns, and two years in, has lowest excess mortality in Europe, and average on all other measures. Why? Please show us with numbers how Japan and Sweden did much worse by refusing draconian measures. Thanks.
    - microtherion 5y ago
      > Japan [...] No lockdowns. No vaccine passports. No vaccine mandate. No mask mandate. Japan may not have mask mandates, but it is my understanding that they had very high levels of non-mandated mask wearing. > Literally nothing. If you're implying that they had Great Barrington style mass infection parties, I would certainly like to see more evidence of that. > Sweden also had no lockdowns "Lockdowns" is a red herring. Very few places in the world had complete lockdowns, and very few places in the world were completely without restrictions. Notably, Sweden closed universities for some time and instituted domestic and international travel restrictions and assembly restrictions — exactly the kind of measures that get described as "lockdowns" in other countries. > and two years in, has lowest excess mortality in Europe Lowest, other than… Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Norway. Notably, they did MUCH worse than any of their immediate neighbours, which should be their natural peer group to compare against: https://elifesciences.org/articles/69336 https://elifesciences.org/articles/69336 And Sweden's particular way of "protecting the vulnerable" was to simply euthanize the elderly if they caught COVID: https://bioedge.org/uncategorized/questions-raised-about-swedens-covid-19-policy-on-nursing-homes/ https://bioedge.org/uncategorized/questions-raised-about-swe...
    - dekhn 5y ago
      Public health researchers have not been able to explain Sweden particularly well, but Japan is a country with scrupulous rule-following. You will note they also have the world's highest age of mortality in non-covid times, too.
- dekhn 5y ago
  What's wrong with it is that it got politicized and became a tribe-identifying document early on. Also, in practice many of the ideas aren't completely terrible, but aren't very practical, and most important, go against the grain in US public health care, and likely would have been extremely unpopular during the original few waves of infection. I encourage you to read up on the whole history of Barrington, and what Leavitt, Ionnides and Battacharya were saying early on the epidemic.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]