The Declaration is found at https://gbdeclaration.org/,
The website has a helpful FAQ.
The John Snow Memorandum, published in The Lancet takes a somewhat contrary position.
What's right and what's wrong about the Declaration?
Is implementation more important than principle in assessing the Declaration?
Is the importance of the Declaration not as much in what it says, but in making the point that different pandemic tactics and strategies should be canvassed?
If pandemics are so threatening to survival of the human species, why are we having this debate only now, after the pandemic? Isn't the absence of a policy debate on how to respond to a pandemic, pro and con a Barrington Declaration approach, itself a failure of governments around the world?
I am agnostic on whether the Declaration is correct. But can we say that public health policy addressing a pandemic should not default to lockdown without considering the possibility of more effective responses?
Should the goal be, by debate, to seek better responses, not a single best response?
The global synchronization of public health restrictions follows 'the Chinese method' ; the PRC is an authoritarian regime and can easily command their citizens to certain behavioral measures. Focused protection, as explained in the GBD, is a reasonable approach, with respect to human liberty and liberal market societies. There is no single best method, and medicine is much more an empirical practice than a science, in terms of workable applications.
Catching mosquitoes with fishing nets, to police the virus, will lead to the end of open societies and political authoritarianism will win the game. Rational hygienic measures, in accordance with a more human-species-appropriate life-style, will be the best response to this 'mysterious attack' on our very health.
How can it be correct? It does not cite any sources and does not present any facts. It is not a scientific piece of work but a political one. It's funded by those who seek to increase their own economic profits withous any consideration for the human costs of this pandemic.
Now that the pandemic has happened it has left devastating effects. Psychological effects need to be looked into. Mental health of people usually go unnoticed. It will be good to discuss measures that address psychological effects left by the pandemic
A less than convincing statement. Swedish government followed the idea of herd immunity. This proved to be more than controversial, and led to Sweden having some of the highest infection and mortality rates in Europe.
Another issue is the evolution of the virus. The SARS-CoV-2 virus is said to be evolving using antigenic drift. This brings into question the effectiveness of herd immunity.
As of now, there is no scientific basis to support a policy of herd immunity against Covid-19. The declaration is, as the WHO Director-General said, "scientifically and ethically problematic".
As someone who, by virtue of age (I won't be seeing 70 again!) is moving inexorably into the CoVID-19 cross-hairs, I take issue with those who sweepingly dismiss the Great Barrington Declaration " It's funded by those who seek to increase their own economic profits withous any consideration for the human costs of this pandemic." I don't know who is financially backing the project, but some of the signatories are not lightweights, and I don't think that they would knowingly align themselves with ruthless, swashbuckling rip-off capitalists. Yes, CoVID-19 is cutting swathes through the elderly and vulnerable, but I don't think that we can simply shut down economic and commercial activity for an indefinite period and ignore the human costs of this course of action. If you go to the World Bank website, and enter 'Life expectancy of Russian men', you will see that life expectancy at birth of Russian men in 1989 was 69 years. It did not return to that level until about 2011. In 1990, the old Soviet Union fell apart, and its economy crashed into chaos, and life expectancy fell by between four and seven years. There was a similar, but not so severe dip in female life expectancy during this time. The creation of prolonged unemployment is bad for health!
Bw
Chris Ide
Christopher William Ide
Thank you for such a thoughtful addition to this discussion.
The point about Life Expectancy of Russian men is a good example of lateral thinking and, at least, worth thinking about in connection with The Great Barrington Declaration.
Regards
On the role of skepticism in responding to COVID-19:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238019-even-the-best-science-doesnt-have-the-final-word-on-covid-19/
To Nirmal. Check this (death rates 2010-2020 in Sweden). https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/?fbclid=IwAR2hNSr_elLSGAcBdE-kVRff-Qfn0GBOJGIHdtlTHeiKaOWkBLSYBbyDhKw
Mikko Ketovuori
Thank you for the statista link. Interesting and likely relevant.
It seems to show that Swedish mortality has negligible change in 2020 compared to previous years. That seems to oppose arguments against Sweden having avoider lockdowns, and a point in favor of the Swedish strategies against CoV.
If the number of deaths is an accurate depiction of what is going on in Sweden, and if CoV has added a number of deaths, then why is the number of deaths level? Are there fewer deaths from, say, flu, due to other non-pharma responses to the pandemic? Are there any inferences one can make based on the statista chart of Swedish deaths?
In short: People tend to die (100%) and at least in the long run we all are dead (Keynes). In Japan the number of suicides has gone up (sorry, no reference)... while perhaps, at the same time there has been less influenza deaths. The media fuss around this epidemics has been so furious that making a reasonable argument based on statistics is somewhat boring. In 1968 there was this Influenza called Hong Gong flu that killed approximately 4 milj. people. Perhaps, this Covid will be almost same size, who knows? Anyway, 1968 they did not shut down the societies nor economy. If we look the difference between now and then, the plausible explanation is massive info provided by Internet and Social Media driving mass instinct per se. E.g. Fear.
Mikko Ketovuori@ I would agree with you. In the UK, the Hong Kong 'flu pandemic coincided with my first year in Medical School. Well over 30K people in the UK died, and we didn't turn a hair!
The death toll from CoVID-19 in the UK is now >70K, but throughout the pandemic, (certainly in England and Wales, and I doubt if Scotland and Northern Ireland will be much different) those most severely affected have been the elderly - about 75% of deaths have occurred in the => 75 years old age group, with just under a quarter of the total deaths being in the => 90 year old group.
While each individual death will be a tragedy for family, relatives and friends, many of those who have died from CoVID-19 infection will have had other serious health problems, which would have significantly compromised their life expectancy anyway, so I would not expect the overall number of UK deaths to be greatly increased, compared to earlier years.
Happy New Year, anyway, to you and all other Researchgate members and staff.
Bw
Chris Ide
Mikko Ketovuori
In your reply you stated: making a reasonable argument based on statistics is somewhat boring. You also wrote in relation to 1968 flu: If we look the difference between now and then, the plausible explanation is massive info provided by Internet and Social Media driving mass instinct per se. E.g. Fear.
Is it possible that government reactions in many counties is about the mass instinct of politicians and the political class? (1) Don’t allow pandemic death and illness (so well publicized by the media) to impair electoral prospects in future elections. (2) Economic and budgetary costs of government lockdowns and other measures will be laid at the feet of taxpayers (i.e. not the politicians who set policy). (3) Lockdowns obscure government failure to prepare effective measures alternative to lockdown and shift the blame to citizens. (4) Lockdowns have (arguably) no electoral cost, and lots of pluses.
Or maybe there is a more cynical explanation?
Thank you Chris William Ide@ and Robert Shour@ for your answers.
The background which on I build my arguments are based on the theory of Socionomics and especially its main principle: Shared unconscious impulses to herd in contexts of uncertainty lead to the emergence of mass psychological dynamics that manifest as social mood trends. E.g. I do not believe in conspiracy theories, but instead as one man famously ones said: they do not know what they are doing... which makes sense, especially explaining the acts of politicians!
If you are interested, I will attach my unfinished article (which unfortunately is still in Finnish) on "Infectious diseases and the collective atmosphere as cyclical phenomena". What I am going to do, is to find articles about the Hong Gong Flu and make my case, that indeed, Covid 19 is the first Internet are pan-epidemics - nothing more. Perhaps, if you like, we could make a English version of it together (in some high ranked Journal like Nature...)
By the way Robert, I did like your Golf article... perhaps IQ, Golf and democratic society have some kind of correlation together? In Russia and Eastern Europe there are only few Golf courses, while in Nordic countries and western societies there are more of them...
Sweden's management of the pandemic relates to the Great Barrington Declaration.
Here are two articles worth thinking about:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/ethics/dont-be-too-quick-to-judge-swedens-covid19-policy by Vaclav Smil Dec 29, 2020
and
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/swedish-covid19-data-exposes-our-fatal-lockdown-hysteria/news-story/673291a65d3ad15d49fe22846c1d60c8
Dec 30, 2020 by Sanjeev Sabhlok
Mikko Ketovuori
Thank you for mentioning the golf article. Then you might also like
Preprint A human's rate of thought without language
and
Preprint Problem solving rate negates language organ
.The ideas in these articles derive from a book
The Intelligence of Language – I: How language emerges from collective problem solving eBook: Shour, Robert: Amazon.ca: Kindle Store
https://www.amazon.ca/Intelligence-Language-language-emerges-collective-ebook/dp/B01GW67MJM
and
Article A theory of intelligence: networked problem solving in anima...
Best regards
Mikko Ketovuori
About your January 3, 2020 reply that read in part:
If you are interested, I will attach my unfinished article (which unfortunately is still in Finnish) on "Infectious diseases and the collective atmosphere as cyclical phenomena".
Here are my suggestions:
1) Post the article as a preprint online on RG (in Finnish) and if applicable on arxiv before sharing it. That might help inhibit someone else using and claiming credit for your ideas before final publication.
2) Use Google translate (or another translation app) to get an approximate translation from Finnish to English if that helps with translation.
3) After you have done your best to improve the app translation, post the English translation on RG and message people, asking if they would be willing to proof read all or even one page of the English draft to help you with the translation. You might find some kind souls to assist.
Best wishes
Here is point of view posted on RG sceptical about some public policies including lockdowns:
Deleted research item The research item mentioned here has been deleted
Thanks Robert Shour@
I am not really worried about that someone would steal my ideas. At the moment we are developing a new model of publishing articles based on co-operation and mass intelligence: https://agilepublishing.fi/missio
and I know Cambridge University Press is planning similar concept... e.g. life in general is not about me and my (precious) writings... it is more that valuable ideas spread and will be used for common good...
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