Censoring for me, but not for thee
Jay Battacharya and Martin Kulldorff, two of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, have been whining for months about how unfairly they have been treated, how they have been criticized and even censored for their views on COVID policy. Yet now, at the Brownstone Institute, that illustrious citadel of liberal freedom, we find them saying this (my bold):
In public health, it isn’t enough to be trusted by only half the population. Since widespread trust is essential, the only solution is for public health to eschew coercion and embrace its traditional principles. Public health should never again manipulate or deny authentic scientific results to manipulate the public’s behavior. It should dismiss practitioners who use public health as a weapon in a cultural or political war. It should reject slander, censoring, and ad hominem attacks.
Their sense of grievance is so boundless that I suspect they have no clue how clueless they are. And then there’s this:
Trust in vaccines can only be regained through honest, open dialogue, science-based policies, public education, long-term thinking, a strengthened vaccine safety monitoring system, and voluntary vaccinations. That is, it should return to the traditional principles of public health.
Who knew that requiring vaccines was not a traditional principle of public health? I always learn something useful at the Brownstone Institute.
The rest of their post is an exercise in “encouraging vaccine hesitancy by “explaining” it”. They engage in idle speculation about the causes of vaccine hesitancy which just so happens to show that people are skeptical of vaccines because of “vaccine fanatics” in the public health establishment. And of course Krispy Kreme:
Encouraged by public health officials, Krispy Kreme offered free donuts to the vaccinated. Some people may have wondered: “If they understood public health, they wouldn’t try to fatten people with donuts. Maybe vaccines are also bad for my health?”
Words fail me . . .
Just to review…
The Great Barrington Declaration is a statement advocating an alternative approach to the COVID-19 pandemic which involves “Focused Protection” of those most at risk and seeks to avoid or minimize the societal harm of COVID-19 lockdowns. … (Wikipedia)
In other words, just because a vaccine for Covid is available doesn’t mean you should take it, or even avoid getting infected. Else, where would ‘herd immunity’ come from.
Herd immunity for Covid-19
Lancet – February 2021
“Current lockdown policies are producing devastating
effects on short and long-term public health”, states
the declaration. “Keeping the measures in place until a
vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with
the underprivileged disproportionately harmed…our goal
should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm
until we reach herd immunity.” The authors recommended
policymakers adopt an approach they termed “focused
protection” …
Within weeks, an opposing group of experts, also
numbering in the thousands, had put their names to the
John Snow Memorandum. The document, named after one
of epidemiology’s greatest historical figures, defended the
restrictions to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2 as “essential
to reduce mortality, prevent health-care services from
being overwhelmed, and buy time to set up pandemic
response systems to suppress transmission”. It described
focused protection as “a dangerous fallacy unsupported
by scientific evidence” and warned that “uncontrolled
transmission in younger people risks significant morbidity
and mortality across the whole population”. The
memorandum concluded by asserting that “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”. …
Sounds like pretzels to me.
Amazingly (or not) similar to the reactions of people to preventive measures in the US during the Spanish Flu. Despite the technological advances of the last one hundred years, too many human minds still live in caves.