The new year brings with it my renewed commitment to not fall headlong into the crippling deep dark pit of disbelief, to stare back, eyes fully open to the mostly unacceptable that is sure to come. Yes, I know, it would be so tempting to moan and groan and then pretend that he really hasn’t returned to haunt us. Considering how wrong he was about so many important things, many will be tempted to say it can’t really be possible. But this is Truskmumpia…
Especially those of us living near to the all-too-real, not especially great Great Barrington. We of the ever-increasing affordable-housing crisis, worsened by what seems to be never-ending gentrification, a failing infrastructure, an unsupportable local tax system, and, of course, those many hundreds of Barringtonians living in the village of Housatonic who can’t drink the water they are paying for. Of course, there are those in the building trades, constructing brand new $5 million to $10 million homes on what used to be farmland or on hills previously thought inaccessible, or presiding over multi-million-dollar renovations who are buying new pickup trucks. And I imagine if you can lasso up a plumber or electrician or spare carpenter and deliver him to an out-of-towner who has been stalled out for so many months on a waiting list, you can earn yourself a hefty finder’s fee.
Perhaps the MAGA amongst us will be celebrating, but I can sympathize with those who doubt that Dr. Jay Bhattacharya’s renewed presence in our lives will actually Make Great Barrington Great Again. I am guessing the majority, silent or otherwise, won’t be thrilled to see the discredited Great Barrington Declaration crawl back into the public eye.
The Great Barrington Declaration is sponsored by our local right-wing think tank, the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER). AIER makes the case for “free trade vs. protectionism, individualism vs. the new collectivists (DEI/Critical Theory/Marxism/Social Democracy/Economic Nationalism/etc.), shareholder capitalism vs. ESG and stakeholder capitalism, foreign policy for a free society, and the foundations and first principles of freedom and free markets.” I am not really sure why a concern for diversity, equity, and inclusion can’t legitimately squeeze itself into “the foundations and first principles of freedom,” but then again, it is not my website nor my rhetoric. Anyway, AIER tells us:
The Great Barrington Declaration was authored and signed on the campus of the American Institute for Economic Research in October 2020 by Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Dr. Sunetra Gupta, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. AIER and these scholars were motivated by concerns about overreaching policies enacted by governments during the COVID-19 pandemic.
AIER ever so cleverly appropriated the bucolic beauty of one of our most beautiful Barrington hillsides, an image and vision as far removed as possible from the photos of the beds of those COVID patients, unable to secure a room, who clogged the hallways of our jammed urban hospitals, or the makeshift morgues parked outside of New York City hospitals whose on-site facilities couldn’t handle the growing numbers of the dead.
With this backdrop, their idea of “Focused Protection”—such a kind way of introducing the discredited theory of COVID herd immunity—seems so very tranquil, even idyllic:
Fortunately, our understanding of the virus is growing. We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza.
As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity. 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.
[Emphasis added.]
These claims, of course, belied the staggering reality that even those younger than 60 who craved and attempted to live a normal life unvaccinated, without masks, foregoing social distancing, often succumbed and found themselves on ventilators in the ICUs of many of our hospitals.
Because AIER lives here, they assumed our name to forcefully advocate against those public health initiatives that imposed public sacrifice in order to reduce the spread of the lethal airborne COVID-19 virus, temporarily shutting down public places like schools, arenas, and large businesses where the infected could unknowingly spread the virus to many of those nearby simply by talking or coughing or sneezing.
AIER chose to promote its Great Barrington Declaration without talking to the town itself, and Great Barrington almost immediately found itself at the center of a raging debate about national public health policy and the best way to confront the COVID pandemic. The town quickly issued a public statement that included the following:
Your co-opting of our town’s name in the title of your declaration, whether intentional or not, is exploitative and unwelcome for reasons which are stated further in this letter … So far, COVID-19 has killed over one million people and infected more than 40 million. Let the record show that we emphatically disagree that spreading more disease is the solution to the COVID pandemic. Furthermore, your declaration ignores the growing evidence on long-COVID, whereby thousands of young and healthy people who contract the virus are left with debilitating symptoms months after a mild infection.
[Emphasis added.]
It turns out the Great Barrington Declaration was primarily the work of conservative economists focused on the field of healthcare. And it is one of the three organizers, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the National Institute of Health, who has brought with his nomination a renewed scrutiny of the Great Barrington Declaration. Wikipedia notes:
Jayanta Bhattacharya (born 1968) is an American physician-scientist and economist who is a professor of medicine, economics, and health research policy at Stanford University. He is the director of Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. His research focuses on the economics of health care.
According to AIER:
The Great Barrington Declaration explained how lockdown policies produced devastating effects on short- and long-term public health and overall human flourishing, all of which disproportionately impacted the working class and young people worldwide. The authors advocated a ‘focused protection’ approach, which would allow people at minimal risk to live normally and build up immunity while protecting those at high risk. AIER does not profess medical, pharmaceutical, or virological expertise, but rather possesses a deep understanding of the economic trade-offs of various institutional designs, as well as the political economy of public policy questions.
[Emphasis added.]
While admitting the lack of medical expertise necessary to ethically promote a strategy to combat a devastating pandemic, AIER nevertheless quickly attacked their critics as irresponsible and engaged in an unwarranted attempt at censorship:
The Great Barrington Declaration was subject to suppression efforts since it contradicted governments’ preferred responses. FOIA requests revealed emails where government officials discussed the need for a ‘quick and devastating published take down’ of the Declaration’s premises, despite tens of thousands of doctors and scientists signing it. It has also been discovered that government agencies pressured social media companies to censor and bury the Declaration’s recommendations. We remain proud of our effort to promote scientific discussion and free inquiry, even amidst such a crisis. It is especially during these times when we must remain vigilant about government overreach and attempts to silence dissenting views.
While many of you have wiped the Great Barrington Declaration from your mental hard drives, now that Dr. Jay Bhattacharya might head the National Institutes of Health (NIH), it is important to re-evaluate their claims. Dr. Bhattacharya quickly launched an aggressive public relations campaign. For The Wall Street Journal, he and Eran Bendavid wrote “Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say?,” with the subtitle “Current estimates about the Covid-19 fatality rate may be too high by orders of magnitude”:
If it’s true that the novel coronavirus would kill millions without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines, then the extraordinary measures being carried out in cities and states around the country are surely justified. But there’s little evidence to confirm that premise—and projections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high.
Fear of Covid-19 is based on its high estimated case fatality rate — 2% to 4% of people with confirmed Covid-19 have died, according to the World Health Organization and others. So if 100 million Americans ultimately get the disease, two million to four million could die. We believe that estimate is deeply flawed … But it could make the difference between an epidemic that kills 20,000 and one that kills two million … As of March 23, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 499 Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. If our surmise of six million cases is accurate, that’s a mortality rate of 0.01%, assuming a two week lag between infection and death. This is one-tenth of the flu mortality rate of 0.1%. Such a low death rate would be cause for optimism.
This does not make Covid-19 a nonissue. The daily reports from Italy and across the U.S. show real struggles and overwhelmed health systems. But a 20,000- or 40,000-death epidemic is a far less severe problem than one that kills two million. Given the enormous consequences of decisions around Covid-19 response, getting clear data to guide decisions now is critical … If we’re right about the limited scale of the epidemic, then measures focused on older populations and hospitals are sensible … And policy makers will need to focus on reducing risks for older adults and people with underlying medical conditions.
A universal quarantine may not be worth the costs it imposes on the economy, community and individual mental and physical health. We should undertake immediate steps to evaluate the empirical basis of the current lockdowns.
[Emphasis added.]
They argued that while COVID was dangerous, the response of medical professionals and those in charge of the response of the local, state, and the federal governments was unduly harsh. They claimed that the estimates of COVID infections, the predicted virulence, the expectations of hospitalizations and deaths were off by highly significant margins. If instead of a pandemic that could cause a million or 2 million fatalities, the reality would be limited to 20,000 to 40,000 deaths, well then, the measures calling for a shutdown of normal activity—in schools and at work, for example—would be an unnecessary overreaction. If instead of the WHO’s estimate that two to four percent of people with confirmed COVID-19 have died, what if we were actually dealing with “a mortality rate of 0.01%” or one-tenth the impact of deaths by flu.
Not surprisingly, there was an immediate response amongst medical professionals. Their article “Scientific consensus on the COVID-19 pandemic: we need to act now” became known as “The John Snow Declaration” and was published in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet:
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has infected more than 35 million people globally, with more than 1 million deaths recorded by WHO as of Oct 12, 2020. As a second wave of COVID-19 affects Europe, and with winter approaching, we need clear communication about the risks posed by COVID-19 and effective strategies to combat them. Here, we share our view of the current evidence-based consensus on COVID-19.
SARS-CoV-2 spreads through contact (via larger droplets and aerosols), and longer-range transmission via aerosols, especially in conditions where ventilation is poor. Its high infectivity, combined with the susceptibility of unexposed populations to a new virus, creates conditions for rapid community spread. The infection fatality rate of COVID-19 is several-fold higher than that of seasonal influenza, and infection can lead to persisting illness, including in young, previously healthy people (ie, long COVID). It is unclear how long protective immunity lasts, and, like other seasonal coronaviruses, SARS-CoV-2 is capable of re-infecting people who have already had the disease, but the frequency of re-infection is unknown. Transmission of the virus can be mitigated through physical distancing, use of face coverings, hand and respiratory hygiene, and by avoiding crowds and poorly ventilated spaces. Rapid testing, contact tracing, and isolation are also critical to controlling transmission. WHO has been advocating for these measures since early in the pandemic.
In the initial phase of the pandemic, many countries instituted lockdowns (general population restrictions, including orders to stay at home and work from home) to slow the rapid spread of the virus. This was essential to reduce mortality, prevent health-care services from being overwhelmed, and buy time to set up pandemic response systems to suppress transmission following lockdown. Although lockdowns have been disruptive, substantially affecting mental and physical health, and harming the economy, these effects have often been worse in countries that were not able to use the time during and after lockdown to establish effective pandemic control systems. In the absence of adequate provisions to manage the pandemic and its societal impacts, these countries have faced continuing restrictions.
This has understandably led to widespread demoralisation and diminishing trust. The arrival of a second wave and the realisation of the challenges ahead has led to renewed interest in a so-called herd immunity approach, which suggests allowing a large uncontrolled outbreak in the low-risk population while protecting the vulnerable. Proponents suggest this would lead to the development of infection-acquired population immunity in the low-risk population, which will eventually protect the vulnerable. This is a dangerous fallacy unsupported by scientific evidence.
Any pandemic management strategy relying upon immunity from natural infections for COVID-19 is flawed. Uncontrolled transmission in younger people risks significant morbidity and mortality across the whole population. In addition to the human cost, this would impact the workforce as a whole and overwhelm the ability of healthcare systems to provide acute and routine care. Furthermore, there is no evidence for lasting protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection, and the endemic transmission that would be the consequence of waning immunity would present a risk to vulnerable populations for the indefinite future …
Effective measures that suppress and control transmission need to be implemented widely … Continuing restrictions will probably be required in the short term, to reduce transmission and fix ineffective pandemic response systems, in order to prevent future lockdowns. The purpose of these restrictions is to effectively suppress SARS-CoV-2 infections to low levels that allow rapid detection of localised outbreaks and rapid response through efficient and comprehensive find, test, trace, isolate, and support systems so life can return to near-normal without the need for generalised restrictions. Protecting our economies is inextricably tied to controlling COVID-19. We must protect our workforce and avoid long-term uncertainty.
Japan, Vietnam, and New Zealand, to name a few countries, have shown that robust public health responses can control transmission, allowing life to return to near-normal, and there are many such success stories. The evidence is very clear: controlling community spread of COVID-19 is the best way to protect our societies and economies until safe and effective vaccines and therapeutics arrive within the coming months. We cannot afford distractions that undermine an effective response; it is essential that we act urgently based on the evidence.
[Emphasis added.]
Let’s take a closer look at Dr. Bhattacharya’s focus on herd immunity. The Cleveland Clinic wrote:
COVID-19, in its original form and in variants, has proven to be very infectious. At the start of the pandemic, researchers thought that having 60% to 70% of the people in the world immunized through vaccination or infection would equal the level of herd immunity needed for COVID-19. However, the contagiousness of the delta and omicron variant has made researchers rethink that number. Now that number could be as high as 85%.
On October 12, 2020, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus addressed the issue of COVID and herd immunity. He pointed out:
-
- Around the world, we’re now seeing an increase in the number of reported cases of COVID-19, especially in Europe and the Americas.
- There has been some discussion recently about the concept of reaching so-called “herd immunity” by letting the virus spread.
- Never in the history of public health has herd immunity been used as a strategy for responding to an outbreak, let alone a pandemic.
- WHO is hopeful that countries will use targeted interventions where and when needed, based on the local situation. We well understand the frustration that many people, communities and governments are feeling as the pandemic drags on, and as cases rise again.
- There are no shortcuts, and no silver bullets. The answer is a comprehensive approach, using every tool in the toolbox.
Not only did the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration actively oppose attempts to control the spread of COVID, but Drs. Kulldorff and Bhattacharya went on the offensive attacking the reputation and good-faith efforts of immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In a December 12, 2022, opinion piece for Newsweek titled “How Fauci Fooled America,” they wrote:
Unfortunately, Dr. Fauci got major epidemiology and public health questions wrong. Reality and scientific studies have now caught up with him. Here are the key issues: Natural immunity. By pushing vaccine mandates, Dr. Fauci ignores naturally acquired immunity among the COVID-recovered, of which there are more than 45 million in the United States. Mounting evidence indicates that natural immunity is stronger and longer lasting than vaccine-induced immunity … While anyone can get infected, there is more than a thousand-fold difference in mortality risk between the old and the young. After more than 700,000 reported COVID deaths in America, we now know that lockdowns failed to protect high-risk older people. When confronted with the idea of focused protection of the vulnerable, Dr. Fauci admitted he had no idea how to accomplish it, arguing that it would be impossible. That may be understandable for a lab scientist, but public health scientists have presented many concrete suggestions that would have helped, had Fauci and other officials not ignored them.
What can we do now to minimize COVID mortality? Current vaccination efforts should focus on reaching people over 60 who are neither COVID-recovered nor vaccinated, including hard-to-reach, less-affluent people in rural areas and inner cities. Instead, Dr. Fauci has pushed vaccine mandates for children, students and working-age adults who are already immune — all low-risk populations — causing tremendous disruption to labor markets and hampering the operation of many hospitals.
School closures. Schools are major transmission points for influenza, but not for COVID. While children do get infected, their risk for COVID death is minuscule, lower than their already low risk of dying from the flu. Throughout the 2020 spring wave, Sweden kept daycare and schools open for all its 1.8 million children ages 1 to 15, with no masks, testing or social distancing. The result? Zero COVID deaths among children and a COVID risk to teachers lower than the average of other professions. In fall 2020, most European countries followed suit, with similar results. Considering the devastating effects of school closures on children, Dr. Fauci’s advocacy for school closures may be the single biggest mistake of his career.
Masks. The gold standard of medical research is randomized trials, and there have now been two on COVID masks for adults. For children, there is no solid scientific evidence that masks work. A Danish study found no statistically significant difference between masking and not masking when it came to coronavirus infection … Hence, masks are either of zero or limited benefit …The evidence is in. Governors, journalists, scientists, university presidents, hospital administrators and business leaders can continue to follow Dr. Anthony Fauci or open their eyes. After 700,000-plus COVID deaths and the devastating effects of lockdowns, it is time to return to basic principles of public health.
[Emphasis added.]
The WHO, the CDC, and Our World in Data are quick to acknowledge there are many reasons why we don’t really have the most complete understanding of the number of those infected and the number of those who died from COVID. There was such a disparity in the ability, and sometimes the willingness, of those in governments around the world to keep track. Too many were in crisis mode in the earliest days of the pandemic. Testing was inadequate. Hospitals were overrun. Despite these severe limitations, we do have some data. Our World in Data explains:
Research has shown that these figures are an underestimate of the total pandemic death toll. This is because of limited testing, poorly functioning death registries, challenges in determining the cause of death, and disruptions during the pandemic.
The CDC puts it this way:
It is not possible to know the exact number of people who have experienced illness from COVID-19 in the United States, because not everyone who contracts COVID-19 will seek medical care or get a test for SARS-CoV-2. COVID-19 also is no longer a nationally notifiable disease, meaning COVID-19 cases are no longer reported to CDC. For these reasons, CDC surveillance (or tracking) systems cannot identify all COVID-19 illnesses in the United States. Therefore, CDC uses continuously updated surveillance data, data from the latest scientific reports, and mathematical modeling to estimate the impact of COVID-19 on the US population.
[Emphasis added.]
The data reveals that as of December 15, 2024, there were 777.07 million cumulative confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 7.08 million cumulative confirmed deaths in the world.
Remember, Dr. Bhattacharya had written in The Wall Street Journal:
If it’s true that the novel coronavirus would kill millions without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines, then the extraordinary measures being carried out in cities and states around the country are surely justified. But there’s little evidence to confirm that premise …
How about 7.08 million deaths and counting? Dr. Bhattacharya, of course, was gambling that the pandemic would never be that lethal.
Here is the available data that Our World in Data collected for cumulative confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States:
As of December 14, 2024, there were 103.44 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States. And according to Our World in Data, there were 1.21 million cumulative confirmed deaths due to COVID-19 in the United States:
Importantly, the CDC attempts to offer a profile of the evolving impact of COVID in the United States. Here is their most recent data for the very short period of October 1, 2024, to December 14, 2024:
So, let me ask you, as we anticipate Dr. Bhattacharya at the head of the National Institutes of Health, how well did he and the Great Barrington Declaration do in predicting the extent of the COVID-19 pandemic? In anticipating the numbers of infections and deaths? Appreciating COVID’s ability to re-infect? Anticipating the vulnerability of young people to infection, death, and Long COVID? Let’s start with their extreme opposition to masking.
A simple study in Arizona reveals how wrong they got it:
As for their fierce desire for us to adopt Sweden’s herd immunity COVID policy and Dr. Bhattacharya’s nasty attacks on Dr. Fauci for not following Sweden’s lead, Nele Brusselaers’ study in Nature magazine, “Evaluation of science advice during the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden,” reveals the utter failure of the policy and the unnecessary pain experienced by the Swedish people:
The Public Health Agency was systematically incorrect in their risk assessments, and ignored scientific evidence on suppression strategies, airborne transmission, pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic spread, face masks, children and COVID-19, ‘long-COVID’ … and insufficiently implemented and adapted their pandemic response plan, which was constructed for an influenza pandemic. It seems misinformation or incomplete information were communicated deliberately by the authorities to the public, facilitating the spread of the virus in the society … Although the Public Health Agency took an autocratic lead in the handling of the pandemic, this agency lacks competence in politics, economy, social and behavioural sciences, ethics, and others —competences, which were not complemented sufficiently elsewhere.
We are about to reach the five-year mark since COVID-19 appeared in January 2020. These days, there has been an almost collective decision to put COVID behind us, as if wishing would make it so. Testing has moved from hospitals and walk-in clinics to individuals testing in private. There are almost no easy ways to access up-to-date numbers on local surges, on positive tests, emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and COVID deaths. Many towns like Great Barrington don’t conduct COVID wastewater tests, probably the most reliable indicator remaining about the state of COVID infections in our community.
Caitlin Rivers, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, provides continuing updates in her “Force of Infection” substack. She posted the following about increases in COVID emergency department visits on December 30, 2024:
And, yes, according to the CDC, Americans continue to die:
- November 9, 2024: 526
- November 16, 2024: 510
- November 23, 2024: 438
- November 30, 2024: 451
- December 7, 2024: 391
- December 14, 2024: 391
- December 21, 2024: 196
The Great Barrington Declaration’s focus on herd immunity, their “Focused Protection,” never adequately accounted for the persistence of the virus, its ability to mutate, and the subsequent continued vulnerability of our population. Significant numbers of Americans were re-infected.
So too Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and his colleagues drastically underestimated the vulnerability of so many Americans to develop Long COVID. Using data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Surveys from 2022 and 2024, the CDC revealed the ages and percentages of those who developed Long Covid:
- 18 to 29 years: 18.4 percent
- 30 to 39 years: 18.5 percent
- 40 to 49 years: 22.2 percent
- 50 to 59 years: 21.2 percent
- 60 to 69 years: 14.9 percent
- 70 to 79 years: 11.3 percent
- 80 and older: 14.0
And by gender:
- Female: 21.0 percent
- Male: 13.9 percent
Lastly, let’s not forget what Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told us: “Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza.” He never truly appreciates the danger children face from Long COVID.
According to Cleveland Clinic pediatrician Kimberly Giuliano, M.D.: “We really don’t know where long COVID comes from … Kids can also experience long COVID symptoms.” Dr. Giuliano says the most common ones seen in children include fatigue, difficulty concentrating and mood swings.
According to the Cleveland Clinic and, again, contrary to the assumptions made by Dr. Bhattacharya, there is a higher percentage of children with COVID now developing Long COVID than the 15 to 18 percent we have seen in adults:
The CDC conducted a study which found the following:
During March 1, 2020–January 31, 2022, a total of 781,419 patients aged 0–17 years with COVID-19 and 2,344,257 patients aged 0–17 years without COVID-19 were identified (Table 1). The median age of both patients with and without COVID-19 was 12 years … Patients with COVID-19 were significantly more likely than were those without to develop the following assessed post-COVID symptoms: smell and taste disturbances … circulatory signs and symptoms … malaise and fatigue … and musculoskeletal pain … Patients with COVID-19 were also more likely than were those without to develop the following assessed post-COVID conditions: acute pulmonary embolism … myocarditis and cardiomyopathy … venous thromboembolic event … acute and unspecified renal failure … type 1 diabetes … coagulation and hemorrhagic disorders … type 2 diabetes … and cardiac dysrhythmias …
So, what is so troubling about the possible appointment of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to head the National Institutes of Health? His Great Barrington Declaration was just one part of a coordinated campaign to undermine the work of immunologists and medical professionals like Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Peter Hotez, and to actively advocate against measures like masking, vaccine mandates, and social distancing. This campaign created an atmosphere of doubt and disbelief, of cynicism and suspicion that still haunt us today.
Despite the compelling evidence that shows young people are vulnerable to COVID and that large numbers of them have developed Long COVID, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is unrepentant. He remains focused not on what he got wrong but on what he imagines are the faults of others. As the Mercury News reports in its piece “Skeptics challenge COVID pandemic policy at Stanford symposium,” he recently helped to host a conference for Stanford University’s Department of Health Policy. The Mercury News writes:
In the early days of the COVID pandemic, Stanford neuroradiologist Dr. Scott Atlas, tapped as President Trump’s coronavirus czar, cast doubt on the usefulness of wearing masks. Influential surgeon Dr. Marty Makary urged the lifting of pandemic restrictions, asserting that half of the nation had ‘herd immunity’ in the spring of 2021. The following month, more than 21,000 people died of COVID-19.
These and other dissenting voices — dismissed as cranks by many of their scientific peers during the pandemic — are featured speakers at a Friday symposium, organized by Stanford University’s Department of Health Policy, about how to best manage future contagions …
‘There was a very wide range of things that we got terribly wrong during the pandemic,’ including school closures and mask mandates,’ said Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford professor of medicine and health economist, who suggested the Pandemic Policy conference. He said he hopes it will spur vigorous academic debate and open dialogue to inform future strategies.
[Emphasis added.]
As the Mercury News notes, there was, of course, a response from many other pandemic experts:
‘My goodness, what’s happening at Stanford?’ Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine, posted on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. ‘This is awful, a full on anti-science agenda.’ Pantea Javidan of Stanford’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences said the symposium ‘provides a platform for discredited figures who continually promote dangerous, scientifically unsupported or thoroughly debunked approaches to COVID. … Their positions assail scientific consensus and promote fringe positions.’
‘It’s an election year,’ said Martha Louise Lincoln of San Francisco State University. ‘People seeking to position themselves as potential advisors to a new administration’, she said, ‘likely advocate weaker, cheaper public health protections that tolerate disease, ask little of government, and leave it to individuals to protect their own health.’
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya has a track record advocating policies that seek to limit the government’s intervention to protect the public health. Like his laissez-faire hosts at AIER and their collective Great Barrington Declaration, they leave it to individuals to protect their and our health. If Donald Trump and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya have their way, COVID, along with new viruses sure to come, will continue to sicken and kill even more of us.
