Covid-19 FAQ vs GBD (3): Shielding vulnerable

Covid-19 FAQ on the Great Barrington Declaration 
III: Shielding the vulnerable

by George J. Dance

from "A Defence of the Great Barrington Declaration from Its Powerful Critics", The Daily Sceptic, 22 March 2021. 

2) Nobody really knows how to “shield” vulnerable people. It sounds very simple: keep the older and more vulnerable people safe, and let everyone else go about their business. But it’s really not that straightforward. Practically, *how* do you keep those vulnerable people safe?(9)

The first thing to occur to a GBD signatory like myself is: “Offer them a vaccine first.” As noted, that is what the GBD authors have been championing, and it has actually become Government policy in some places. Granted, though, that vaccines are not magic; they will not prevent 100% of all Covid-related diseases or deaths; and in some places and for some people for they will not be available for a while. So what else can be done?

Take, for instance, multi-generational households. A great many students and other adult children live with their parents (according to one report, this is around a third of all homes in the UK). In some communities, grandparents often live in the same home as grandchildren. Sharing a home with an infected person is one of the most common ways of catching the coronavirus – one study from South Korea found that home contacts of an infected person were more than six times more likely to have the disease than other contacts. So the question is: where are all the high-risk people supposed to go to “shield” while their younger family members go out and about, merrily catching the virus? The authors of the Great Barrington Declaration have never given anything approaching an adequate answer.

The best answer to that question is to note the questionable assumptions in it. One is that seniors in multi-generational households will have to be removed, perhaps by Government-enforced orders, to quarantine camps or hotels (when GBD in fact advocates no such thing). The other is that, in the absence of lockdowns, everyone would rush out to quickly and even "merrily" catch the virus (when it is actually to each person’s advantage to hang back and let others build herd immunity by catching it instead).

Stripping those assumptions out, though, the problem of multi-generational households remains; and one can compare alternative solutions. The lockdown one is simple: prevent Mom from going to work, and her daughter from going to school, and Granny will have nothing to worry about. Yet even a champion of lockdowns like New York governor Andrew Cuomo has questioned how well that worked out: “I don’t even know that that was the best public health policy. Young people then quarantined with older people, [it] was probably not the best public health strategy… The younger people could have been exposing the older people to an infection.”(14)

The GBD solution, on the other hand, would be to let these people “live their lives”, which includes managing their own risks. Some common sense suggestions are: the daughter and mother should limit close contact with Granny; they should all give each other maximum space; they should let plenty of fresh air into the house; they should take Vitamins C and D and zinc, and drink tea, to build up their natural immunity. They could all be home-tested or temperature-checked regularly; anyone who felt even mildly ill could wear a mask. Perhaps Mom and Granny could take Ivermectin. Granny could even get a vaccine. (Yes, we have those now.) None of the above requires Government supervision. Not only are most families in situations like these able to manage such risks – as Hayek pointed out, their knowledge of their own particular conditions, which the Government lacks, makes them able to better manage their risks than it would be able to. 

If the daughter does catch Covid, she may have to leave home for a couple of weeks, going perhaps to a relative, perhaps to a hospital. After two weeks, though, when she is no longer infectious, she can not only return home but resume a closer relationship with Mom and Granny. Because she now has little to no chance of catching Covid, she has next to no chance of passing it on. By gaining immunity, she is no longer a threat to them but rather a shield; she can be an intermediary contact between Mom, Granny, and others who come to the door. The buildup of natural immunity is not just a means to the goal of "herd immunity," but something that is in itself beneficial. 

I realize that two of my own underlying premises – that individuals knowing their own local conditions may manage their own risks better than politicians writing general rules for everyone; and that infections that lead to full recovery and immunity are good things, not bad, because they can protect the more at-risk from infections – may be controversial with some. But I will skip arguing for them here, as this section is already too long.

3) The number of people isolating would be enormous. There were 14,843,119 people in the UK who lived in a household with someone aged 65+ in 2019, and 2,240,850 patients on the Shielded List – though some of these are over 65, so there’s some overlap.

I appreciate that the FAQsters try to give a precise number, rather than use the “defining who is vulnerable is complex” dodge the John Snow Memorandum resorted to.(3) I am also glad to see their scare quotes disappear from the word “Shielded”. I do think the estimated number is too high, not just because of “some overlap”, but also because (as I hope I explained well enough in the previous section) it does not seem necessary that everyone in a multi-generational household continue to be “isolated” or locked down. Certainly the GBD does not advocate a lockdown for all of them, or even a limited lockdown for seniors only. (On the contrary, it emphasises that those “who are more at risk may participate [in social life] if they wish”.(1)

That would have meant at least 15 million people being required to self-isolate, requiring food and medical attention at home while the virus was spreading unimpeded in the outside world. It’s unclear how we would have provided food and medical supplies to such a large number of people while the rest of the population was living through the worst pandemic in a century, with all the disruption and work absences that would entail.

What a nightmare! 15 million people placed under a Melbourne-style lockdown for months on end, unable to venture out even to buy food – many not even in their own homes. (Remember “where are all the high-risk people supposed to go”?). Fortunately, that is not what the GBD is advocating. To repeat; it does not call for replacing a lockdown of the non-essential with a lockdown of the vulnerable. It does not advocate locking anyone down.

Some or many seniors (like myself) will voluntarily isolate,. [Voluntary isolation is quite different psychologically from being locked down. For one thing, a person does not experience giving up control; for another, the person adopts rules that suit him and make it easier for him to obey them) In practical details, though, I expect it would be]* little different from life under lockdown here in Ontario – not coincidentally, during the “worst pandemic in a century”. So let me mention how I made it through that:

The Ontario Government, in its wisdom, has closed most of the stores in my neighbourhood, but left one grocery store and one big-box retailer. I was allowed to walk to those, but did not have to do even that: My wife could order food and medicine on an app, and the same day someone will drop the goods at my apartment door, knock, and leave them. Believe it or not, that is not yet another Government app, but that has been offered by a private company since our very first lockdown. The Government’s role has been limited to making sure my pension gets into my bank account, something it was already doing, so tackling the alleged logistical nightmare has actually cost it nothing.

The experience has reinforced my beliefs that: first, individuals with knowledge of their local conditions can sometimes do a better job of managing their risks than Government officials with out such knowledge; second, that a market economy, with free entry to local entrepreneurs (with their own knowledge of those local conditions, can help me and others manage our risks than better than whatever Government programs the FAQsters could devise. A free market, and a vital civil society, can accomplish many things more efficiently than a Government, and here is another example. 

It follows that the less of the market and society a Government disrupts [that is, the less their response resemles a lockdown]*, the more efficiently the nation will be able to deal with both routine programs and emergencies.

* [Written Oct. 7, 2020]

1. Great Barrington Declaration.

3. Nisreen A. Alwan et al., “Scientific consensus on the COVID-19 pandemic: we need to act now” The Lancet, October 15th, 2020.

14. Bernadette Hogan and Aaron Feis, “Cuomo wonders if coronavirus quarantine may have backfired in some cases”, New York Post, March 26th, 2020.

Read full article here

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Covid-19 FAQ vs GBD (4): How many would die?

Anti-virus: The Covid-19 FAQ on the Great Barrington Declaration 
IV: How many would die? 

by George J. Dance

from "A Defence of the Great Barrington Declaration from Its Powerful Critics", The Daily Sceptic, 22 March 2021.  

 4) “Focused protection” would still mean a very large number of deaths among the wider population. Applying a rough age-based infection-fatality ratio based on this table,[15] and assuming half the wider population caught Covid and only a small number (5%) of pensioners ended up getting it, that would still mean 90,000 extra deaths. If 15% of pensioners caught Covid in this scenario, it would mean 175,000 deaths. However, even this is likely to be an underestimate, for reasons discussed in our next point.(9)

The FAQsters' mathematics seems sound enough; what looks more questionable is their initial assumption, that over 40% of the adult population would need to be infected before reaching the herd immunity threshold (HIT). Consider that:

• they estimate an initial R number of 2.5-3.5% for Covid-19,(16) implying a HIT of 67-72%,
• estimates of the number of Brits who have already caught Covid-19 range from 15% to more than 20%,(17, 18) and
• over 30% have had at least one dose of a vaccine.(19)

Given these numbers, it is a stretch to think that a further 40%+ would need to acquire immunity before hitting the HIT. Given that vaccinations are rising much faster than infections, it is almost impossible to believe that all of those 40% would end up gaining immunity via infection instead. 

As with all of their points after their first point – "We have vaccines now" – the FAQsters are ignoring that first point, and arguing as if we do not have vaccines now.  They have simply recycled old anti-GBD arguments from last October, when there were no vaccines, and the coming of vaccines has not induced them to even re-examine, much less question, those earlier arguments and assumptions.

Vaccines or not, the above was never a good argument. It rests on the questionable assumption that lockdowns would somehow prevent all those deaths – whereas in fact the same number of people would be just as susceptible, at the very same risk of hospitalization and death, with a lockdown or without. Either way, the same number of people would have to be infected to reach the HIT, and ceteris paribus the same number of people could be expected to die in the process. All that a lockdown could do would be to reduce the R number, ‘flatten the curve,’ and slow down the death rate. Merely slowing down the death rate is not ‘saving lives’, but just kicking the corpses down the road.

Today, though, now that "We have vaccines", the idea that anywhere near that number would be infected and die in the absence of lockdowns looks like pure imagination. Dressing up imagined assumptions in mathematical dress (as in computer modelling) may give them a patina of scientific validity; but with maths (as with logic), the conclusions reached remain just as imaginary as the starting premises. 

[Six months after I wrote the above, there is evidence that vaccinated people are being infected and infecting others; so the FAQsters' may be right that 40% of Britons will eventually catch Covid-19. However, equally strong evidence shows that most vaccinated have strong protection against hospitalization and death. So, with more than 2/3 of Britons now fully vaccinated, their estimates of both deaths and hospitalizations still look implausibly high.]

 5) The health service would be overwhelmed in this scenario, leading to a potentially much higher death rate among the rest of the population. On top of the deaths we could expect based on the fatality rates from the pandemic so far, so many other people in the rest of the population would be hospitalised in the Great Barrington scenario that the NHS would be totally overwhelmed. Applying the hospitalisation rates from this article to the rest of the population, and assuming 50% of the younger population caught COVID along with 5% of pensioners, that would mean 860,000 people would be hospitalised. If 15% of pensioners accidentally caught the virus, it would mean around 1.1m hospitalisations. This would overwhelm the health service. There are only 4,123 adult critical care beds in England, so many or most patients requiring hospitalisation would not be able to receive full treatment, and would have a much higher mortality rate.

Since this argument is so similar to the previous one – with the same oudated assumptions, and the same failure to re-examine them – a reply can be brief. 

The only difference I can see this time is an added assumption that an increase in infections and hospitalisations would happen almost immediately; that, without lockdowns, everyone’s first thought would be to run out and happily (“merrily”) catch COVID-19. To which the best reply would be to remind the FAQsters of their next point: "Young people don't want the virus either." No one wants to catch Covid, ceterus paribus, and that gives everyone a reason to voluntarily distance. 

[Voluntary distancing, like lockdown, can slow the spread of a disease It is not meant to stamp out the disease, or to prevent hospitalizations and deaths; it is meant slow them down, to reduce the R number, and  'flatten the curve': the same hospitalizations (and deaths) happen over a longer time, and are kept below the point at which they "overwhelm" the health care system. It works no differently from lockdowns.

[How well voluntary distancing works compared to lockdown measures is an empirical question, best decided by comparing outcomes in countries that relied on it (Sweden, Japan) to those that relied on lockdowns.]

*  - [written October 6, 2021]

9. All quotations in italics are from: “Claim: The Great Barrington Declaration gives a good alternative to lockdown”, Anti-Virus: The Covid-19 FAQ.

15. Smriti Mallapaty, “The coronavirus is most deadly if you are older and male — new data reveal the risks”, Nature, August 28th, 2020.

16. “Claim: 99.5% survive Covid – we’re overreacting”, Anti-Virus: The Covid-19 FAQ.

17. “COVID-19: 15.3% of England’s population estimated to have had coronavirus by mid-January”, Sky News, February 3rd, 2021.

18. Ashley Kirk, Anna Leach and Pamela Duncan, “One in five in England have had Covid, modelling suggests”, The Guardian, January 10th, 2021.

19. “As It Happened: Vaccines for 20m in UK a magnificent achievement”, BBC, February 28th, 2021.

Read full article here

Covid-19 FAQ vs GBD (5): Youth and Long Covid

Anti-virus: The Covid-19 FAQ on the Great Barrington Declaration 
V: Youth and Long Covid

by George J. Dance

from "A Defence of the Great Barrington Declaration from Its Powerful Critics", The Daily Sceptic, 22 March 2021. 

6) Younger, healthier people don’t want this virus either. Just because younger, healthier people who catch the coronavirus die at lower rates than the elderly or those with pre-existing medical conditions, it doesn’t mean that it’s fine for them to catch the virus. (9)

"Lower rates" sounds deliberately misleading; the FAQ's own cited source says that “For every 1,000 people infected with the coronavirus who are under the age of 50, almost none will die” and “The IFR [is] close to zero for people between the ages of 15 and 44” (15) . But that does not mean that young people have no risks at all. It is prudent for them to manage their risks, too.

I wish I could tell those young people to also get vaccinated. Unfortunately, they are not legally allowed to do so at this time [March 2021]; governments have monopolised the vaccines, and nobody is allowed to take them until their government lets them. As not just a Covid libertarian but a full libertarian, and in light of my earlier vaccine comments: I would like to see a legal vaccine market for those excluded from the Government program. That need not drain vaccines from the Government program: one possibility is a Right to Try law, letting people import, buy, and sell vaccines that have been authorised in other countries; a ‘Dallas Buyers Club’-type solution. Alas, governments have put themselves in charge; and they have decided that no one can receive a vaccine without their permission.

I can only advise those who do not want catch the virus, and cannot legally be vaccinated, to take the common-sense steps I mentioned earlier:  limit contacts, give other people their space, avoid crowded and closed-in spaces, take extra vitamins and zinc, and discuss with your doctor what else you can do.

Many sufferers of the coronavirus have found it to be an unpleasant few weeks, have been hospitalised, or have developed “Long Covid” – symptoms that persist long after the initial infection. The evidence for “Long Covid” is growing, although it remains inconclusive. Doctors from intensive-care units have written about their experience of watching as even young patients die from the disease. Hospitalisation rates, although highest for the elderly, have been accelerating in the UK across all age groups. Even for young people, Covid risks being far worse than just a bad cold or bout of the flu.

I know little about “Long Covid”, but I suspect I am not alone. As the John Snow Memorandum put it, “we still do not understand who might suffer from long COVID,"(3)  nor do we understand precisely what their 'suffering' entails. “Long Covid” is being used as a blanket term for a number of distinct syndromes and a whole host of symptoms, ranging from observed physical damage like scarring of the lung tissue, right through to purely patient-defined symptoms like “breathlessness, muscle pains, palpitations and fatigue”(20) (all of which I have suffered from myself through the lockdowns). The bottom line: the risks and harms of Long Covid are largely unknown.

Which appears to be the point. Normally one would expect extreme interventions to be supported by strong evidence; but if people are afraid enough of the unknown, a very lack of evidence can be used to justify extreme measures. That was the case in the March lockdowns, and it appears that a similar tactic is being tried here. Fortunately, this new variant of alarmism may not work as well. “We have to close everything, or millions may die!” has a certain cachet; “We have to close everything, or millions may have an unpleasant few weeks!”, not so much.

3. Nisreen A. Alwan et al., “Scientific consensus on the COVID-19 pandemic: we need to act now” The Lancet, October 15th, 2020.

9. All quotations in italics are from: “Claim: The Great Barrington Declaration gives a good alternative to lockdown”, Anti-Virus: The Covid-19 FAQ.

15. Smriti Mallapaty, “The coronavirus is most deadly if you are older and male — new data reveal the risks”, Nature, August 28th, 2020.

20. “Long COVID: let patients help define long-lasting COVID symptoms”, Nature, October 7th, 2020.

Read full article here

Covid-19 FAQ vs GB Declaration (6): Conclusion

Covid-19 FAQ on the Great Barrington Declaration 
VI: Conclusion

by George J. Dance

from "A Defence of the Great Barrington Declaration from Its Powerful Critics", The Daily Sceptic, 22 March 2021.

 7) Natural herd immunity is bad for other reasons. Allowing a virus to go on jumping from person to person is a significant risk: it encourages the evolution of new variants, which might be more dangerous, undermining our response and our treatments. Even if a population develops herd immunity to a disease by infection, that doesn’t mean the disease will go away. Changes in the population (such as new births and migration) and waning immunity will mean that people will continue to be susceptible to the disease over time, and new outbreaks could still occur in the future. Every person who catches the disease gives it another opportunity to mutate; only with eradication can we be sure it will not develop into a more dangerous form. [9]

This is just more alarmism: more argument that we must lock down society, not because of what we know, but because of what we do not know. What it ignores is that, if natural immunity is 'bad' for those two reasons – virus mutation and immunity waning - then immunity from vaccination must be 'bad' for the same reasons. Viruses are always mutating (the SARS-CoV-2 has mutated constantly since last January), and there is always a possibility that a mutation will both be resistant to immunity (although none has to date) and more dangerous (though natural selection seems to imply that a less dangerous virus – one that keeps more of its hosts active in the community – would have an edge in spreading). And of course vaccine immunity, like acquired immunity, can also wane. The only way to end the chances of either occurring, as the FAQsters conclude, is through through global eradication of the virus, or Zero Covid.

Which brings us back to the FAQsters’ original point. Since “eradication” or Zero Covid (rather than herd immunity) is the end they have in sight, reaching that end could well be years or even decades in the future. (Eradicating smallpox took almost 200 years from the first vaccine.)[21] So how do we live until then? Do we have a free society, in which people manages their own lives (which includes managing their own health risks), or one in which a government manages their lives and risks for them?

Eliminating the disease in even a single country where it has taken root will involve further draconian intrusions (which will select for more contagious variants) for the foreseeable future. And even if that does lead to eradication in my or the FAQsters’ lifetime, it does not eliminate the risk of more pandemics in the future, and of the same cycle of interventions playing out again. If hypothetical risks like these, based on nothing but fears, are reasons for a lockdown now, then they are reasons for lockdown forever.  

To repeat what I said earlier, it will take some time before the end gets here, and until then either option – let people live their lives, or keep them locked down – is still very much a live one. The arguments for the lockdown option have always been weak, but for now the coming of vaccines has made them even weaker.

Sources (accessed March 9th-March 10th, 2020)

1. Great Barrington Declaration.
2. Gerritt Olivier, “Terrifying citizens with overwhelming statistics is no help during a pandemic”, Business Day, February 20th, 2021.
3. Nisreen A. Alwan et al., “Scientific consensus on the COVID-19 pandemic: we need to act now” The Lancet, October 15th, 2020.
4. “What is Anti-Virus”, Anti-Virus: The Covid-19 FAQ.
5. “Claim: Covid is only a problem for the elderly and vulnerable,” Anti-Virus: The Covid-19 FAQ.
6. Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson, “PM’s new policy guru takes Trump to task”, The Times, November 21st, 2020.
7. Jessica Elgot, Heather Stewart and Peter Walker, “Tory rebels fire warning shot as 42 MPs vote against stricter Covid measures”, The Guardian, October 13th, 2020.
8. Sam Bright, “CONSERVATIVES DIVIDED: Scourge of Lockdown Sceptics Neil O’Brien MP Receives Government Backing”, Byline Times, January 27th, 2021.
9. All quotations in italics are from: “Claim: The Great Barrington Declaration gives a good alternative to lockdown”, Anti-Virus: The Covid-19 FAQ.
10. Gavin Yamey, “This thread is brilliant”, Twitter, March 8th, 2021.
11. Dominic Lawson, “The second wave of Covid has drowned the sceptics’ delusions”, The Times, January 17th, 2021. 
12. Dominic Lawson, “This vaccine needles the lockdown sceptics”, The Times, December 6th, 2020.
13. Matthew Impelli, “Authors of Anti-Lockdown Great Barrington Declaration Suggest COVID Could Be Over in 2 Months With Vaccine”, Newsweek, December 7th, 2020.
14. Bernadette Hogan and Aaron Feis, “Cuomo wonders if coronavirus quarantine may have backfired in some cases”, New York Post, March 26th, 2020.
15. Smriti Mallapaty, “The coronavirus is most deadly if you are older and male — new data reveal the risks”, Nature, August 28th, 2020.
16. “Claim: 99.5% survive Covid – we’re overreacting”, Anti-Virus: The Covid-19 FAQ.
17. “COVID-19: 15.3% of England’s population estimated to have had coronavirus by mid-January”, Sky News, February 3rd, 2021.
18. Ashley Kirk, Anna Leach and Pamela Duncan, “One in five in England have had Covid, modelling suggests”, The Guardian, January 10th, 2021.
19. “As It Happened: Vaccines for 20m in UK a magnificent achievement”, BBC, February 28th, 2021.
20. “Long COVID: let patients help define long-lasting COVID symptoms”, Nature, October 7th, 2020.
21. Anna Medaris Miller, “It took 184 years to eradicate smallpox after a vaccine was developed — a reminder of what we may face with the coronavirus”, Business Insider, May 8th, 2020.

    Read full article here

Portrait of a Covid charlatan

The Impersonator: Eric Feigl-Ding, COVID-19, and an implicit far-left agenda | Substack - Jordan Schachtel, The Dossier:

October 26, 2020 - "If you’re on social media and you follow news related to the coronavirus pandemic, chances are you’ve stumbled upon some panicked pandemic posts coming from a man named Eric Feigl-Ding,* a nutritionist and longtime democrat political operative who has succeeded in impersonating a medical professional, and is generating a cult following in the process. With one hysterical tweet after another, Feigl-Ding went from having a small social media following to accumulating a massive army of influence. Feigl-Ding’s consistent elevation of fear and panic, doom and gloom, and his relentless themes of chaos and destruction ,,, brought his accounts millions of clicks and views, and hundreds of thousands of new followers. And he did it all without having a clue what he’s talking about.

"At the beginning of 2020, Feigl-Ding was an unpaid, visiting scientist in Harvard’s nutrition department. His academic research centered entirely around nutrition, diet, and exercise. If Eric Feigl-Ding was interested in pandemics and the study of viruses, his research and academic credentials did not reflect that. When the coronavirus pandemic began to make waves in the media, everything changed. Feigl-Ding, an aspiring politician, appeared to see an opening to influence the masses and build up his brand....

"But ... Feigl-Ding’s frequent use of Harvard-associated credentials to elevate his baseless COVID-19 proclamations greatly upset some of his colleagues (despite many of them advocating for the same draconian measures proposed by Feigl-Ding to 'combat' the virus), and landed him in hot water.... Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard, described him as a 'charlatan exploiting a tenuous connection for self-promotion.' The Association of Health Care Journalists also took notice, reporting that he has 'precisely zero experience in infectious diseases.' An unnamed source at Harvard told the Chronicle on Higher Education in April [2020] that Feigl-Ding has 'been asked many times to stop promoting himself as having specialized knowledge.' In [the second half of 2020], Feigl-Ding updated his profile to show that he is no longer associated with Harvard.... 

"In order to sell his purported expertise on COVID-19, Feigl-Ding has repeatedly misrepresented his credentials.... [P]rior to the pandemic, Ding clarified that he was a PhD nutritionist, and not a medical doctor. He has since removed the PhD label from his account.  [He] has continued to muddy the waters surrounding his credentials, taking it to new heights ... in a pro-Biden Super PAC (funded by Silicon Valley billionaires) ad about the coronavirus pandemic. It features 'Dr' Feigl-Ding in a lab coat with tie ensemble that is associated with the attire worn by a medical doctor.... 'Joe Biden has a plan,' Feigl-Ding says in the ad. 'He listens to medical experts. Joe Biden will do what needs to be done so we can live a healthy, normal life again.' Many reporters were falsely led to believe that Feigl-Ding was one of the medical doctors featured in the ad spot.....

"Feigl-Ding has long been a far-left activist who advances his agenda under a healthcare reform label. In 2018, he ran unsuccessfully for a congressional seat in Pennsylvania. Universal healthcare and medicare for all, or socialized medicine, was the centerpiece platform of his congressional run. According to Science Magazine, Feigl-Ding was supported in his run by political networks associated with far-left democrat mega donor George Soros, and FEC records reflect that. Feigl-Ding’s ties with Soros go back many years. In 2008, he received a Soros scholarship for his medical school studies (he would later drop out).... Feigl-Ding finished an unimpressive third place in the PA-10 2018 Democratic Primary. 

"Feigl-Ding remains closely connected to the Soros network. He currently serves as Treasurer of the The Paul and Daisy Soros Fellows Association (PDSFA). And through his Twitter and Facebook feeds, Feigl-Ding has utilized his unwarranted credential as a 'COVID-19 health expert' to promote his far-left politics, disguised as healthcare expertise, to hundreds of thousands of people....

"Feigl-Ding’s political aspirations did not cease with his failed congressional run. During [the 2020] election cycle, he ... contributed over $110,000 of his own money to a non-profit he founded called Health Justice For All. His organization’s website claims to be 'building a grassroots network to expose Big Pharma, to fight for affordable medications, and to elect a bold new generation of leaders who will not stop fighting Big Pharma until there is health justice for all.' However, there is nothing particularly health oriented about this organization. FEC records show that Feigl-Ding uses Health Justice for All to run attack ads against Republicans and supportive ads for Democrats.

"Social media’s foremost COVID-19 hysteric has leveraged his baseless pandemic panic promotion to achieve newfound fame. [During the presidential race last year] the hyper-political nutritionist turned 'COVID-19 expert' ... dedicated his social media feed to nonstop promotion of Joe Biden’s candidacy for president. What happens next is anyone’s guess, but it’s safe to say that Eric Feigl-Ding’s rise to 'public health' stardom has delivered plenty of opportunities to resurface as a true contender in the future political arena."

Read more: https://dossier.substack.com/p/the-impersonator-eric-feigl-ding

* signatory of the John Snow Memorandum

Why are hospitals firing Covid-immune workers?

Hospitals Should Hire, Not Fire, Nurses with Natural Immunity | Brownstone Institute - Martin Kullforff:

October 1, 2021 - "Among many surprising developments during this pandemic, the most stunning has been the questioning of naturally acquired immunity after a person has had the Covid disease. We have understood natural immunity since at least the Athenian Plague in 430 BC.... We have lived with endemic coronaviruses for at least a hundred years, for which we have long-lasting natural immunity. As expected, we also have natural immunity after Covid-19 disease, as there have been exceedingly few reinfections with serious illness or death, despite a widely circulating virus. 

"For most viruses, natural immunity is better than vaccine-induced immunity, and that is also true for Covid. In the best study to date, the vaccinated were around 27 times more likely to have symptomatic disease than those with natural immunity, with an estimated range between 13 and 57. With no Covid deaths in either group, both natural and vaccine immunity protect well against death. 

"During the last decade, I have worked closely with hospital epidemiologists.... [T]he task of the hospital epidemiologist is to ensure that patients do not get sick while in the hospital, such as catching a deadly virus from another patient or a caretaker. For that purpose, hospitals employ a variety of measures, from frequent hand washing to full infection control regalia when caring for an Ebola patient. Vaccinations are a key component of these control efforts.... Infection control measures are especially critical for older frail hospital patients with a weakened immune system. They can become infected and die from a virus that most people would easily survive. A key rationale for immunizing nurses and physicians against influenza is to ensure that they do not infect such patients. 

"How can hospitals best protect their patients from Covid disease? It is an enormously important question, also relevant for nursing homes. There are some obvious standard solutions, such as separating Covid patients from other patients, minimizing staff rotation, and providing generous sick leave for staff with Covid-like symptoms. Another goal should be to employ staff with the strongest possible immunity against Covid, as they are less likely to catch it and spread it to their patients. This means that hospitals and nursing homes should actively seek to hire staff that have natural immunity from prior Covid disease and use such staff for their most vulnerable patients. 

"Hence, we are now seeing a fierce competition where hospitals and nursing homes are desperately trying to hire people with natural immunity. Well, actually, not. Instead, hospitals are firing nurses and other staff with superior natural immunity while retaining those with weaker vaccine-induced immunity. By doing so, they are betraying their patients, increasing their risk for hospital-acquired infections. 

"By pushing vaccine mandates, White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci is questioning the existence of natural immunity after Covid disease. In doing so, he is following the lead of CDC director Rochelle Walensky*, who questioned natural immunity in a 2020 Memorandum published by The Lancet. By instituting vaccine mandates, university hospitals are now also questioning the existence of natural immunity after Covid disease.... 

"I work at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, which has announced that all nurses, doctors and other health care providers will be fired if they do not get a Covid vaccine. Last week I spoke with one of our nurses. She worked hard caring for Covid patients, even as some of her colleagues left in fear at the beginning of the pandemic. Unsurprisingly, she got infected, but then recovered. Now she has stronger and longer-lasting immunity than the vaccinated work-from-home hospital administrators who are firing her for not being vaccinated. 

"If university hospitals cannot get the medical evidence right on the basic science of immunity, how can we trust them with any other aspects of our health?"

Read more: https://brownstone.org/articles/hospitals-should-hire-not-fire-nurses-with-natural-immunity/

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Tyler Cowen, "A Dangerous Libertarian Strategy for Herd Immunity," Bloomberg, Oct. 15, 2020. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-10-15/great-barrington-declaration-is-wrong-about-herd-immunity

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Kevin Kavanagh, "Viewpoint: The “Not So” Great Barrington Declaration," Infection Control Today, Oct. 16, 2020.https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/view/viewpoint-the-not-so-great-barrington-declaration

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Apoorva Mandavilli & Sheryl Gay Stolberg, "A Viral Theory Cited by Health Officials Draws Fire From Scientists," New York Times, Oct. 19, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/19/health/coronavirus-great-barrington.html

John Parkinson, "Experts Forcefully Push Back on Barrington Declaration," Infection Control Today, Oct. 20, 2020. https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/view/experts-forcefully-push-back-on-barrington-declaration 

Bryan Vartabedian, "Great Barrington Declaration and What It Says About Us," 33 Charts, Oct. 20, 2020. https://33charts.com/great-barrington-declaration-covid19/

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Union of Concerned Scientists, "The Dangerous Fringe Theory Behind the Great Barrington Declaration and Herd Immunity," EcoWatch, Oct. 26, 2020. https://www.ecowatch.com/herd-immunity-coronavirus-2648499239.html

Samantha Putterman, "Great Barrington herd immunity document widely disputed by scientists," Politifact, Oct. 27, 2020. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/oct/27/facebook-posts/great-barrington-herd-immunity-document-widely-dis/

Will Wilkinson, "The Useful Libertarian Idiocy of The Great Barrington Declaration," Niskanen Center, Oct. 27, 2020. https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-useful-libertarian-idiocy-of-the-great-barrington-declaration/

Elizabeth Yuko, "Can Herd Immunity Save Us?," Rolling Stone, Oct. 27, 2020. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/covid-herd-immunity-great-barrington-declaration-1080991/

Stephen L. Archer, "5 failings of the Great Barrington Declaration’s dangerous plan for COVID-19 natural herd immunity," The Conversation, Nov. 2, 2020. https://theconversation.com/5-failings-of-the-great-barrington-declarations-dangerous-plan-for-covid-19-natural-herd-immunity-148975

Austin Williams, "‘Great Barrington Declaration’ on COVID-19 ‘herd immunity’ draws criticism from experts," Fox News, Nov. 2, 2020. https://www.fox29.com/news/great-barrington-declaration-on-covid-19-herd-immunity-draws-criticism-from-experts

Tyler S. LeComer, Arushi Saini, and Barune Thapa, "In Condemnation of the Great Barrington Declaration," Harvard Crimson, Nov. 4, 2020. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/11/4/lecomer-saini-thapa-condemn-great-barrington-declaration/

Brooks B. Gump, "The Great Barrington Declaration: When Arrogance Leads to Recklessness," U.S. News & World Report, Nov. 6, 2020. https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/2020-11-06/when-scientists-arrogance-leads-to-recklessness-the-great-barrington-declaration

Alicia Ault, "Great Barrington Coauthor Backs off on Struck Reliance on Herd Immunity, Medscape Today, Nov. 9, 2020. https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/940637

Talha Khan Burki, "Herd immunity for COVID-19," The Lancet, Nov. 24, 2020. https://www.thelancet.com/article/S2213-2600%2820%2930555-5/fulltext

Nafeez Ahmed, "Ministry of Defence Funds Man Behind Great Barrington Declaration," Byline Times, Dec. 2, 2020. https://bylinetimes.com/2020/12/02/ministry-of-defence-funds-man-behind-great-barrington-declaration/

Alex Lieske, "In defense of The Great Barrington Declaration," Rational Ground, Dec. 21, 2020. https://rationalground.com/in-defense-of-the-great-barrington-declaration/

Leo Mirani, "The Great Barrington Declaration Ruffles Locals’ Feathers," New Yorker, Dec. 21, 2020. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/28/the-great-barrington-declaration-ruffles-locals-feathers

2021

"Over 13,000 medical and public health scientists sign on to Great Barrington Declaration," North State Journal, Jan. 8, 2021. https://nsjonline.com/article/2021/01/over-13000-medical-and-public-health-scientists-sign-on-to-great-barrington-declaration/

Alec Marsh, "Sunetra Gupta: ‘There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of how we live with germs’," Spears, Jan. 27, 2021. https://www.spearswms.com/sunetra-gupta-spears-liquid-lunch/

"Great Barrington Declaration Scientists with Gov. DeSantis in Florida," American Institute for Economic Research, Mar. 18, 2021. https://www.aier.org/article/great-barrington-declaration-scientists-with-gov-desantis-in-florida/

Dave Naylor, "Great Barrington Declaration on COVID lockdowns sees boom in popularity," Western Standard, Mar. 30, 2021. https://westernstandardonline.com/2021/03/great-barrington-declaration-on-covid-lockdowns-sees-boom-in-popularity/

David Climenhaga, "Kenney's Surrender to Covid: Has the Great Barrington Declaration Become the Great Edmonton Declaration?", Albertapolitics.ca, Apr. 27, 2021. https://albertapolitics.ca/2021/04/kenneys-surrender-to-covid-has-the-great-barrington-declaration-become-the-great-edmonton-declaration/

Ryan MacGreal, "Did Doug Ford Test the 'Great Barrington Declaration' on Ontarians?," Raise the Hammer, June 29, 2021. https://www.raisethehammer.org/article/3807/did_doug_ford_test_the_great_barrington_declaration_on_ontarians 

Federica Angeli, Silvia Camporesi & Giorgia Dal Fabbro, "The COVID-19 wicked problem in public health ethics: conflicting evidence, or incommensurable values?," Nature, June  30, 2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-021-00839-1 

Jeffrey A. Tucker, "A Short History of the Great Barrington Declaration," Brownstone Institute, July 17, 2021. https://brownstone.org/articles/a-short-history-of-the-great-barrington-declaration/

Jay Bhattacharya & Martin Kulldorff, "The smear campaign against the Great Barrington Declaration," Spiked, Aug. 2, 2021. https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/08/02/the-smear-campaign-against-the-great-barrington-declaration/

David Gorski & Gavin Yamey, "Covid-19 and the New Merchants of Doubt," British Medical Journal, Sep. 13, 2021. https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/09/13/covid-19-and-the-new-merchants-of-doubt/

Heather Bellow, "Those who penned Great Barrington Declaration a year after it sparked worldwide firestorm: 'This is our crucible'," Berkshire Eagle, Oct. 13, 2021. https://www.berkshireeagle.com/coronavirus/those-who-penned-great-barrington-declaration-a-year-after-it-sparked-worldwide-firestorm-this-is/article_b862f134-2619-11ec-81eb-93dc5df41642.html