To the editor:
As Great Barrington readies itself for summer with the promise of warmer weather and of relaxed restrictions regarding COVID-19, it’s worth calling attention to the fact that people doing a Google search of the town, even now, will still encounter an entry in the first few results they see for the Great Barrington Declaration, the Social Darwinist doctrine put forward last fall by the Great Barrington-based American Institute for Economic Research (AIER).
It is a doctrine that latched itself like a parasite onto the good name of Great Barrington and garnered attention from those as far up the ladder as the people who were working in the White House last year. For those who need a reminder about or are simply not familiar with the declaration, it is a doctrine which advocated for herd immunity, achieved not through COVID-19 vaccinations, but rather through allowing for as many people to be exposed to the virus as would be needed to create this immunity.
Purportedly seeking to protect the business community from governmental restrictions, AIER essentially would have allowed the “dismal science” of economics to trump the actual science used by the U.S Center for Diseases Control. Right now, we are hearing daily of the nightmarish state of public health in India where their hospitals and health care workers are being swamped by the number of cases present in their country.
The fate of our hospitals and health care workers was not worthy of consideration by the amoral AIER doctrine and if our society had chosen their proposed path, our frontline workers would be suffering in a way similar to their counterparts in India right now. At the same time, in the state of Massachusetts, we are also hearing on a daily basis the number of infections shrinking from the thousands to the low hundreds and the number of deaths from the dozens to only a handful.
These numbers are the result first of the public safety measures proposed by the CDC, and secondly, of the sacrifices we have all made in abiding by them for the public good and for our own opportunities to stay healthy long enough to benefit by access to the vaccines. Now that the vaccines are here and businesses are reopening to a populace that is thrilled to head out into public without a mask and without fear of becoming sick, I am left to wonder where the AIER is on this topic now?
To my knowledge, they have offered no follow-up nor any kind of retraction. And what of those who signed the declaration — in secret or otherwise? Have they made the choice to receive any of the vaccinations or are they still rolling the dice on getting and transmitting the virus?
Things will never be the same, but they are headed back to something close to normal. None of that is thanks to the AIER. It’s thanks to government taking the lead during a crisis and allowing people to see not just that it’s relevant again, but that it always has been.
Bob Jandrue
Housatonic
