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> Certainly in my world, a credentialled epidemiologist questioning the accuracy of government statistics during a world health crisis, and suggestion that per

> Certainly in my world, a credentialled epidemiologist questioning the accuracy of government statistics during a world health crisis, and suggestion that perhaps our strategy could be different, is not conspiracy theory. I fully agree. (Well, with some caveats. I think credentials matters less than facts. And I think epidemiology is still in its infancy, so I personally don't put much faith in any single epidemiologist.) Maybe conspiracy theorist is the wrong term. What he did was show a very political concern with public policy (especially IIUC his opposition to lockdowns) and very little concern about the quality of his research or the people it affected. This article seems pretty decent at containing details: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/ioannidis-trump-white-house-coronavirus-lockdowns https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/ioannidis... You mention Barrington, from the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrington_Declaration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrington_Declaration > The World Health Organization (WHO) and numerous academic and public-health bodies stated that the strategy would be dangerous and lacked a sound scientific basis. So I guess maybe less "conspiracy theory" and more "recklessly dangerous" or "abandonment of the Hippocratic oath".

dekhn 2y ago
I don't think anything he did or said was recklessly dangerous. In fact I think he believes he was acting in the US's best interest. I would be curious what the outcome would be if we had followed his approaches (which evolved during the course of the epidemic). I think he would have been much more succcessful if he worked the back channels and never been so public in twitter. I saw a lot of "epidemiological immune system" activity during COVID- if you didn't toe a specific line, the larger community would attack you, right or wrong. My guess is that this is mainly from historical experience with vaccines and large-scale disease outbreaks, where having a simple, consistent message that did not freak out the population is considered more importantly than being absolutely technically correct.
- ants_everywhere 2y ago
  We essentially did follow his policy and we have a sense of the impact. The Lancet estimated that about 40% of US covid deaths could have been avoided if the administration had better policies. That's a bit over 400,000 deaths. That's about the same number of Americans lost during WWII. Not all of that can be directly attributed to John Ioannidis's advocacy against lockdowns, but it at least gives us a sense of how big a blunder it was.

dekhn 2y ago

I don't think anything he did or said was recklessly dangerous. In fact I think he believes he was acting in the US's best interest. I would be curious what the outcome would be if we had followed his approaches (which evolved during the course of the epidemic). I think he would have been much more succcessful if he worked the back channels and never been so public in twitter. I saw a lot of "epidemiological immune system" activity during COVID- if you didn't toe a specific line, the larger community would attack you, right or wrong. My guess is that this is mainly from historical experience with vaccines and large-scale disease outbreaks, where having a simple, consistent message that did not freak out the population is considered more importantly than being absolutely technically correct.

ants_everywhere 2y ago
We essentially did follow his policy and we have a sense of the impact. The Lancet estimated that about 40% of US covid deaths could have been avoided if the administration had better policies. That's a bit over 400,000 deaths. That's about the same number of Americans lost during WWII. Not all of that can be directly attributed to John Ioannidis's advocacy against lockdowns, but it at least gives us a sense of how big a blunder it was.