The Great Barrington Declaration, Revisited
Released October 2020
By: the bec
Early October 2020, Doctors Jay Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta, and Martin Kulldorff met in the tiny Massachusetts town of Great Barrington. There, the three planned to create a video-recorded discussion of a focused approach to respond to the covid threat. While preparing, they wrote a succinct, one-page statement to summarize their position.
“Focused Protection” leverages resources to the advantage of the most vulnerable while encouraging healthy people to maintain their lives normally.
With this declaration, people of the world had available to them a way forward that offered a balanced approach that maximized protection while minimizing medical, societal, and individual risk from covid.
The self-evident logic of the declaration is just unarguable.
IN HINDSIGHT, the Great Barrington doctors have been demonstrated correct, as no non-pharmaceutical covid intervention seems to have had any impact in containing the virus. It was wrong to close schools, to force masking, to stand six feet apart, to close theaters, to limit church attendance, to close businesses….
And it was certainly wrong to mandate vaccines for healthy people.
Below the text of the Declaration, we’re including an article from Jay Bhattacharya published just two days ago, about the institutional response to him and the Declaration. We believe it will be of great interest to you.
The Great Barrington Declaration
As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.
Coming from both the left and right, and around the world, we have devoted our careers to protecting people. Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.
Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.
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.
Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home. When possible, they should meet family members outside rather than inside. A comprehensive and detailed list of measures, including approaches to multi-generational households, can be implemented, and is well within the scope and capability of public health professionals.
Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.
The two-hour recorded discussion among the doctors is below, but we recommend you listen more than watch, as the video quality is uncomfortable to view. There’s a tediousness to the presentation of the conversation, unfortunately. But the content is of great significance:
For a quick, one minute video summary of the GBD:
Just two days ago, Jay Battacharya wrote this piece in Tablet Magazine about the institutional response to him and the Declaration.
He began…
We live in an age when a high public health bureaucrat can, without irony, announce to the world that if you criticize him, you are not simply criticizing a man. You are criticizing “the science” itself. The irony in this idea of “science” as a set of sacred doctrines and beliefs is that the Age of Enlightenment, which gave us our modern definitions of scientific methodology, was a reaction against a religious clerisy that claimed for itself the sole ability to distinguish truth from untruth. The COVID-19 pandemic has apparently brought us full circle, with a public health clerisy having replaced the religious one as the singular source of unassailable truth.
The analogy goes further, unfortunately. The same priests of public health that have the authority to distinguish heresy from orthodoxy also cast out heretics, just like the medieval Catholic Church did. Top universities, like Stanford, where I have been both student and professor since 1986, are supposed to protect against such orthodoxies, creating a safe space for scientists to think and to test their ideas. Sadly, Stanford has failed in this crucial aspect of its mission, as I can attest from personal experience.
He writes that he lived and worked in ‘an environment in which slander, threats, and abuse aimed at lockdown critics could flourish.’
With so much speculation and acrimony right now, it’s essential to remember that various public health policy options had been presented early in the pandemic, available for public consideration.
We’ve all done what we each believe is in our best health interest. And here at The BEC, we pray for the health and safety of everyone.
Take your Vitamin D, get your rest, eat right, drink less alcohol, exercise, and enjoy your life to the very fullest!