YouTube removes UK MP's vaccine pass speech

YouTube censors David Davis MP’s speech against vaccine passports | Big Brother Watch:

October 14, 2021 - "YouTube has removed a video of former minister David Davis MP giving a speech against Covid passports during Conservative Party Conference. The video was uploaded by the non-partisan civil liberties NGO, Big Brother Watch. 

"YouTube removed Davis’ speech, filmed at a conference fringe event held by Big Brother Watch, for violating its policy on 'medical misinformation' but did not specify what content had breached the rules. In a notification email to Big Brother Watch, the platform said: 'YouTube doesn’t allow claims about COVID-19 vaccinations that contradict expert consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organization (WHO)'....

"In the censored speech, Mr Davis promoted the benefits of vaccination but warned that domestic vaccine passports are 'illiberal, demanding that we an ordinary British citizen produce our papers to do something which is normal in our daily lives.... We know from our history that a free society is a greater, a better, a more economically successful, a happier place to be,' Mr Davis said.

"Big Brother Watch, which is leading the national campaign against domestic Covid passes, said that the group ... is mounting an appeal.

"David Davis MP said:

This is an outrageous attack on free speech. Throughout the pandemic, we have seen blatant attempts by Big Tech to silence opposition voices challenging the conventional wisdom. This episode serves as a further example of the worrying trend of strangling free speech.
My speech at conference was carefully researched, wholly accurate and backed up with the latest scientific evidence.
This Government will shortly be bringing forward the Online Safety Bill. This harmful piece of legislation is nothing but a censor’s charter that only hands more power to these unaccountable Silicon Valley giants.
The unambiguous attempt by YouTube to censor my speech is a warning. If YouTube is happy to attempt to silence elected Members of Parliament, then they are also happy to censor anyone.... The Government must stop the erosion of free speech online. That starts with looking again at the wholly inadequate proposals in the Online Safety Bill.”

Mark Johnson, Legal and Policy Officer at Big Brother Watch said:

The removal of David Davis’ brilliant speech at our civil liberties event is a serious act of censorship from a platform with a growing track record of clamping down on free speech. YouTube has become increasingly intolerant of discussion around the pandemic.... The Government is doing nothing to tackle online censorship but stands to make the problem worse with broad rules clamping down on lawful speech in its new Online Safety Bill. This ought to be a wakeup call to politicians that freedom of speech is under severe threat in the digital world.

Read more: https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/2021/10/youtube-censors-david-davis-mps-speech-against-vaccine-passports/

[Update] YouTube U-turns over David Davis vaccination passports clip after protest | BBC News:
October 14, 2021 - "YouTube has reversed its decision to remove a video of David Davis arguing against Covid passports, following criticism from the ex-minister.... YouTube said the video was 'immediately reinstated following a review'. A spokeswoman for the company said: "We quickly remove flagged content that violates our community guidelines, including Covid-19 content that explicitly contradicts expert consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organization. With millions of hours of videos uploaded on our site each day, sometimes we make the wrong call.'"
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-58915092

Mask mandating for profit

Illustration courtesy Amazon.com.

Why Masks? Control, Power, and Revenue | Brownstone Institue - Jeffrey A. Tucker:

October 5, 2021 - "I was in a store the other day [where] the owner put on his mask when I walked in. I was the only person in the store. I said that he can take off his mask. He said that he despises masks but if he takes his off, he would get fined thousands of dollars just like the merchant next door. 

"He said that the same is true if he fails to enforce the mask mandate against me. I don’t get in trouble with the police. He does. I asked how in the world anyone would know. He said there are two ways. Another person could walk by the shop and see me without the mask and call public health who would then call the police. He could take a picture and the merchant would be fined. 

"He said that a second way is for the cops to directly enforce this. They come and sit in the parking lots, sometimes wearing plain clothes, watching for employees who fail to enforce the mandates. If they spot them, they walk in a few minutes later and issue all kinds of citations. They do this any time, any day. 

"What they are after is not public health. They want money. The average local government lost 6% of their revenue in 2020 after many years of anticipating 3-5% increases in revenue year after year. They are now desperate to make it up. Local and state governments don’t have little Federal Reserves to print money for them. They can only spend what they can tax or raise through bond sales.

"So Covid compliance enforcement has, to some extent, become a form of taxation done in the name of public health. Even at the federal level. 'If you break the rules,' says Biden, 'be prepared to pay.' Last month, the White House announced a doubling of fines for non-compliers, as high as $1,000 for first offense and $3,000 for the second offense. 

"At this point, hardly anyone really pretends that these things are somehow slowing or stopping the spread. They don’t do anything but they provide great opportunities for government to further pillage private enterprise. It’s a remarkable example of how a bogus practice hatched in the name of health became captured by special interests hoping to make a buck. 

"What matters here is that the merchants don’t have to actually believe in these mandates. They really don’t care either way. They would mostly rather see the faces of the customers and they would probably like to enjoy the freedom to breathe. But they ... mask up and make others do the same to avoid the tax.... They cannot just engage in civil disobedience because doing so threatens their very existence. They are barely hanging on as it is. And when they tell you to strap one on your face, even if you know it is dumb, it is not just a simple matter of asserting your right to breath. The merchant is being threatened and blackmailed to elicit your compliance."

Read more: https://brownstone.org/articles/why-masks-control-power-and-revenue/

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

Theaters, clubs challenging NYC vaccine mandate

NYC Theaters Sue Bill de Blasio, Claiming Vaccine Mandate Obstructs Free Speech | Reason - Rikki Schlott: 

September 22, 2012 - "A group of small theater and comedy club operators filed a lawsuit against New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on September 16, claiming disparate enforcement of vaccine mandates unfairly discriminates against their venues and violates constitutional protections provided by the First and 14th Amendments. Represented by Pacific Legal Foundation and Mermigis Law Group, the Theater Center, the Players Theater, the Actors Temple Theatre, the Soho Playhouse, and Broadway Comedy Club are challenging de Blasio's 'Key to NYC' proof of vaccination order in federal court.

"In effect since September 13, the mandate requires many indoor businesses to allow entry only to employees and customers able to provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination. The order applies to indoor dining, recreation, fitness, and entertainment establishments. Failure to comply can result in fines to the businesses of up to $5,000 and possible criminal charges.

"The lawsuit claims that unequal enforcement of the 'Key to NYC' mandate amounts to discrimination based on content of speech and type of speaker, citing exemptions provided for religious services and performances at community centers and schools. 'A theatrical production put on by a community center or high school drama department is treated more favorably than a production put on by one of our clients,' the theaters' lawyer Daniel Ortner said in a September 17 statement. 'This violates the First Amendment.'

"Religious services are regularly held without restriction in the very same theaters within mere hours of other performances subject to the mandate. In fact, the Actors Temple doubles as a nondenominational Jewish synagogue and the Orbach Theater rents its facilities to a religious group for Sunday morning services. While theatrical and comedy performances are subject to enforcing proof of vaccination under the 'Key to NYC' mandate, attendees of religious services are not required to be vaccinated, and mask mandates are reportedly only loosely enforced despite congregational singing....

"'Plaintiffs seek only to be allowed to operate on equal terms as other similar venues, without regard to the content of the speech or to the identity of the speakers that they host," [the suit] reads.'"The same rules should apply to all speakers, regardless of their message.' They also challenge the restrictions from a logistical basis. The long shutdown has stretched their budgets thin, and the theaters have been struggling to issue refunds to those who bought tickets before the mandate went into effect.

"The suit also claims that the mandate unfairly 'stigmatizes businesses that are already struggling to bounce back.' Very few cases of COVID-19 have been traced to theaters. Meanwhile, other countries, like South Korea, opened theaters before other businesses because they were deemed safer than most forms of gathering....

"The theaters are requesting injunctive relief of $1 plus attorney's fees, seeking merely to end what they consider arbitrary restrictions on their freedom to practice comedy and the arts. Al Martin, owner of the Broadway Comedy Club, put it simply: 'We're not the TSA of vaccine cards, we're a comedy club.'"

Read more: https://reason.com/2021/09/22/nyc-theaters-sue-bill-de-blasio-claiming-vaccine-mandate-obstructs-free-speech/

Biden misleading about Covid, Johnson suggests

Sen. Ron Johnson Drops Truth Bomb on True Number of ‘Fully Vaccinated’ People Dying with Covid | Becker News - Kyle Becker: 

October 1, 2021 - "Senator Ron Johnson [R-WI] took to the Senate floor on Thursday to unveil some Covid facts that the mainstream media have been censoring.... Johnson referred directly to public health figures from England, because health authorities in the United States are obfuscating the facts or misleading Americans with their Covid reports.

"'Let’s look at some data,' Sen. Johnson said. 'The type of data we are not getting from our healthcare agencies, so we have to look, unfortunately, to England and Israel, that are more transparent.... I will give you the highlights ... from Public Health England [PHE].... 

"'This is from [PHE's] Technical Briefing number 23, dated September 17th, 2021. It covers cases for about seven-and-a-half months,' he continued. 'What the data shows for that seven-and-a-half month period in England, there were about 750,000 new Covid cases. About a little under 600,000 of those were Delta variant – about eighty percent. The number of deaths associated with those 600,000 Delta cases was 2,542,' Johnson added. 'Which gives us a Case Fatality Ratio of about 0.4. Now, again, case fatality is higher than infection fatality because these are actually registered cases and there are all kinds of infections that never get registered.... [T]o put this in context, an infection fatality rate for a bad flu season is slightly under 0.2,' he went on. 'Half of this. Just to put things in perspective.'

"'Now, President Biden – and this has been parroted by media and news media – said that what we are currently experiencing is a "pandemic of the unvaccinated",' Johnson said. 'They don’t really give us any data to back that up. They just proclaim, pronounce that 99 percent of people with Covid now are unvaccinated. But they don’t give us the data.

"'Well, we have data from England,' he went on. 'And here’s the data. So, of the 600,000 cases in England, 43% were the unvaxxed, 27% were with the fully vaxxed, another 30% were with partially vaxxed, or just undetermined.'

"'Here is another quote from President Biden,' he continued. 'President Biden said, "if you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized. You’re not going to an ICU unit. You’re not going to die. You’re not going to get Covid, if you have these vaccinations".... I kind of doubt it,' he said. 'Because in England, of the 600,000 new cases of Delta, of the over 2,500 deaths, 63% of those deaths, 1,613 people, were the fully vaccinated. Twenty-eight percent were with the unvaxxed.'

"A fact check of Public Health England’s technical briefing shows that he is right. Here is the information that was reported. The circled number cited by Sen. Johnson is in the category '>14 days post dose 2' which means 'fully vaccinated' as it is commonly used.

Courtesy Becker News

"'Now, this is information the American people have probably never heard,' he said. 'This information, by conveying it, I will get attacked. I will be vilified. I will be censored. I will be suppressed. So, that is one of the reasons I come to the floor of the Senate to reveal this information that the American people need to know,' he concluded."

Read more: https://beckernews.com/sen-ron-johnson-drops-truth-bomb-on-true-number-of-fully-vaccinated-people-dying-with-covid-42177/

Genesis of the Great Barrington Declaration

A Short History of the Great Barrington Declaration | Brownstone Institute - Jeffrey A. Tucker:

July 17, 2021 - "Laura Ingraham on her Fox television show in July 2021 correctly celebrated the re-opening of the US economy, so long as it lasts.... What actually drove the opening of the economy, she continued, were the red states of South Dakota, Florida, Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, and others.... She further pointed out that it was not only the governors. It was business people who protested through letters and sometimes opened their shops in defiance. It was parents who demanded the schools open during impassioned speeches at school-board meetings. It was also brave scientists who dared risk their reputations and professional standing by speaking out....

"That latter group is not given nearly enough credit. The reference is to the Great Barrington Declaration that appeared on October 4, 2020. It was this document that had a decisive effect in challenging the lockdown narrative and causing tens of millions to take a second look. It was one of the proudest moments of my life to be part of its appearance. My experience has convinced me that good ideas — strategically timed and placed — can make a huge difference in the world.

"The world locked down in mid-March 2020. There were oblique suggestions coming out of the White House that this disaster could last until August, which I simply could not fathom. Sure enough, by August the lockdowns were not only still in place, but disease panic was everywhere and worse than ever. I was living in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The streets were mostly empty. The shops were closed by law. No concerts. No movies. No school. No church. People huddled in their homes.... When you did see people at the store, they shuffled like penitents at a medieval burial, covering their bodies in wool, wearing huge masks, gloves, and sometimes even goggles.... The one thing on everyone’s mind was avoiding this one pathogen that they could not see. So it was throughout the whole country in various degrees. 

"In September, I was scrolling through Twitter and bumped into some posts by an epidemiologist at Harvard University. He was writing against lockdowns. I thought, wow, this must be the loneliest man in the world. I dropped him a note and invited him for dinner. He gladly accepted. The next weekend I met the man who would become a great friend over time: Martin Kulldorff. I invited a few other people in the region who had been writing anti-lockdown posts. We gathered and all became fast friends. In the midst of disease panic, we not only interacted like normal people; we had huge discussions on the pandemic and policy response. All of us learning from Martin about the dynamics of viruses and how to deal with them. The meetings ended up lasting the entire weekend.

"Soon after, Martin called me with an idea. The problem, he theorized, is that the mainline journalists out there who are writing about Covid know absolutely nothing about the topic. They, therefore, defaulted to medieval superstition. Let’s have a meeting, he suggested, that includes several scientists, plus journalists so that we can at least provide an alternative. When should this take place? In two weeks.

"Sure enough, it all came together. The participating scientists were Martin, plus Jay Bhattacharya from Stanford University and Sunetra Gupta from Oxford University. There were only three journalists, but they were important people. We filmed the event for posterity. It became clear the next day, however, that something else needed to be done.

"Following interviews and discussions, Martin suggested that the three scientists draft an open letter. With a mind toward marketing, I told him that open letters always struck me as slightly lame. They seem aggressive just from the naming. It would be better to write a short statement of principles, a declaration of sorts. He liked the idea. It was his thought that it be called the Great Barrington Declaration after the town of its drafting. My first thought was: There will be some people in this town who will not like this but, whatever, no one has intellectual property in the name of a town.

"That evening, it was written. The statement was not radical. It said that SARS-CoV-2 was primarily a threat to the elderly and infirm. Therefore, it is they who need protection. The virus otherwise would be extinguished via herd immunity obtained through exposure, same as any respiratory virus in history. Society should be opened in the interest of a holistic view of public health.

"My friend Lou Eastman put together a website, pretty much overnight. The next morning, the interviews began. I’ve never seen anything go so viral, so quickly. The site alone ended up being viewed some 12 million times. Thousands of news stories appeared the world over. Eventually, 850,000 plus people signed the declaration, among which were tens of thousands of scientists and medical practitioners.

"Looking back at how and why this happened the way it did, my theory is that the lockdown had frozen debate and speech. Everyone in a position to oppose them had become afraid to speak for fear of shaming. Media was working 24/7 to say that lockdowns were the only option, so anyone against them was a 'Covid denier.' It was brutal. It went on for months. Someone needed to stand up and say the unsayable. That is what these scientists did.

"The Great Barrington Declaration changed everything. The negative press backfired. Why would these famous scientists risk everything to write this Declaration if there was not some truth in what they said? Among those who were interested was Ron DeSantis who had already opened the state of Florida to great howls of media protest. He eventually invited the scientists to a public forum to reach the entire nation.

"The rest unfolded as if scripted by a great novel. The good sense of the Declaration gradually overwhelmed the nonsense idea that destroying markets and society was good for health. The document came to be translated to dozens of languages, and the signatures poured in. The smears got worse by the day. Even the town council jumped into the fray and denounced the document....

"Still, the effect was realized. The openings cascaded through the country, slowly at first and then faster and then all at once. I rarely see the Great Barrington Declaration credited for this, but I know the truth. I was there with a front-row seat at a great philosophical theater. I saw how a simple idea can change the world."

Read more: https://brownstone.org/articles/a-short-history-of-the-great-barrington-declaration/

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

Covid-19 FAQ vs GB Declaration (1): Introduction

Covid-19 FAQ on the Great Barrington Declaration 
I: Introduction

by George J. Dance

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

The Great Barrington Declaration (GBD),(1) under which thousands of scientists and medical practitioners have called for a end to lockdown policies, was drawn up last October 1st-4th, was announced on October 5th, and was already being denounced by October 6th. Over the next month, the GBD and its message were virtually buried beneath an “avalanche of scathing criticism condemning it as ‘very dangerous, unscientific, unethical, total nonsense, dangerously flawed, conspiratorial and grotesque’. Among the critics were prominent role-players such as World Health Organization director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, British chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance, and US infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci”.(2) Defenders of the lockdown consensus even released a counter-manifesto, the John Snow Memorandum,(3) (ironically named for epidemiology’s most famous dissenter from a scientific consensus).

At the time I read everything I could on the topic and made copious notes, hoping to write my own perspective on the GBD. Long before I was in a position to do that, though, the debate had moved on, and I never had an opportunity to revisit the subject.

Fortunately, there is a new FAQ in town: Anti-Virus: The COVID-19 FAQ.(4) This new FAQ may not be the best place to go for scientific advice about the disease; the ‘doctors’ behind it seem to mainly have doctorates in economics and psychology (though I have read that there is an anonymous scientist involved), and some of their claims, such as “Covid still has a high fatality rate among younger people”, seem supported more by semantics than by science. (“Younger” in context turns out to be “younger than 65”).(5) But at least the FAQ has revived the Declaration and assembled a ‘best of’ the criticisms levelled against it, making it worthwhile to revisit the debate.

Before getting to that, it is helpful to look at background context. A major player in the Anti-virus FAQ is a Member of the UK Parliament, Neil O’Brien, introduced (by The Times) in November as Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “new policy guru”.(6) Johnson has faced a backbench rebellion from a group of lockdown sceptics within his Conservative Party, the Covid Recovery Group (CRG); concerns have been expressed that the CRG could defeat the Government in Parliament, should the opposition Labour party vote with them (unlikely as that seems, with Labour leader Keir Starmer reading the same polls as Johnson).(7) At least one cabinet minister has privately lashed out at both the CRG and the GBD.(7) Johnson’s new policy guru has now taken the fight against lockdown sceptics and scepticism to the public, apparently with Government backing;(8) and the COVID-19 FAQ seems an integral part of his messaging.

Strangely, though, there is little talk of lockdowns or lockdown sceptics on the FAQ at all. Its first paragraph briefly mentions those who say “that governments shouldn’t try to contain the virus with lockdowns”, but only to lump them in with those who believe that “Covid isn’t particularly dangerous”, rebrand the lot as “Covid Sceptics,”. and then attribute a number of absurd beliefs to them, including but not limited to:

• “the number of infections is much lower than it really has been”
• “health systems were under less strain than they really were”
• “the fatality rate and number of deaths were lower than they have been in reality”.(4)

That stated, the FAQsters turn their full attention to the alleged Covid Sceptics and their alleged claims. The underlying strategy seems to be not to defend lockdowns directly, but to avoid mentioning or discussing them: to keep readers from thinking about them as much as possible, changing the subject to “Covid Sceptics” and their “absurd claims”. It also gives lockdown zealots lots of bullet points to easily repeat and cite, while making the lockdown sceptics spend their time and energy rebutting same, thus both (1) discrediting opposition to lockdowns and (2) suppressing any real discussion of them.

The FAQ's page on the GBD follows the same script. Titled “The Great Barrington Declaration gives a good alternative to lockdown”, that page begins by quoting the position it is opposing (from the GBD): 

Lockdowns are a very bad idea – they cause economic havoc, stop people getting medical attention for non-COVID problems, and increase loneliness, isolation, and mental health problems. Instead, we should be shielding the vulnerable, and allowing younger, healthier people to live their lives, building natural herd immunity when they catch the virus.(9)

Then it drops the subject of lockdowns, and never gets back to it. 

Instead, the FAQsters try to rebut the GBD claim with seven counter-claims of their own, meant to add up to a comprehensive refutation. It is best to take those in turn.

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.

Read full article here

Covid-19 FAQ vs GBD (2): Vaccines & antivaxxers

Covid-19 FAQ on the Great Barrington Declaration 
II: Vaccines and anti-vaxxers

by George J. Dance

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

 1) We have vaccines now. The Great Barrington Declaration was misconceived right from the beginning, for reasons we’ll discuss below. But now that we have very effective vaccines, the case for “natural herd immunity” – that is, letting the virus burn through certain parts of the population – is weaker than ever. There is now an end in sight, and a great many people now have the possibility to *never get the virus* in the first place.(9)

I am glad the FAQsters have an "end in sight", but it would be more helpful to know what particular end they are visualising. Is it when the most at-risk are vaccinated? When enough are vaccinated to reach the herd immunity threshold (the point at which enough people are immune that a virus no longer spreads epidemically)? When the virus is eliminated in one's country? When it is eradicated world-wide? Many countries are nowhere near even that first “end”, while achieving the last could take decades. Whatever the end, it will take some time before it arrives, and until then either option – let people live their lives, or keep them locked down – is still very much a live one.

At first glance, it seems to me that the coming of safe and effective vaccines not only weakens, but demolishes, the best argument for lockdowns: that they are the only way to stop the disease from spreading. It does not weaken the GBD goal of reaching “herd immunity” (ie, reaching the herd immunity threshold [or HIT]) – safe and effective vaccines make it possible to hit the HIT quicker, with a much reduced danger of death, than not having them. Nor do they weaken the GBD position that people be allowed to live their own lives now: The more people vaccinated, the more attractive that alternative becomes to more of them. 

So the FAQsters seem to be arguing only against the word “natural”, which sounds like very much like a strawman argument (the major premise of which is that the GBD authors and signatories oppose vaccination).

It is common to find posts on social media calling the GBD authors anti-vaxxers, some by those who signed the John Snow Memorandum. (At least one Snowjobber makes a regular hobby of it.)(10) And such talk  has also seeped into the professional media. Take for instance Dominic Lawson of The Times, the FAQsters' comrade in the war on lockdown sceptics, even employing the same "Covid sceptic" terminology (“I am reminded of [an old joke] by the COVID-19 sceptics (or lockdown sceptics, as some call themselves).”)(11) Here is Lawson pontificating that, and why, lockdown sceptics oppose vaccination: 

For those who have opposed the Government’s overall strategy of (intermittently) strict enforcement of social distancing until the arrival of a vaccine, the good news has confounded their predictions and analysis – and many of the most prominent among them have reacted with churlishness, even outright hostility. They are the same people who eulogised what they perceive to be Sweden’s approach: to go for “herd immunity” via naturally acquired infections (whatever the cost in lives) rather than clamp down with legislative force… But rather than admit that [Oxford researcher Sarah] Gilbert (and [Health Secretary Matt] Hancock) had proved their no-alternative-to-herd-immunity-through-naturally-acquired-infection strategy wrong, prominent “lockdown sceptics” have instead cast doubt on the vaccine approved by the MHRA.(12)

It seems necessary, then, to spell out and deal with that "no-alternative-to-herd-immunity-through-naturally-acquired-infection strategy" strawman.

The GBD contains just one sentence about vaccines. "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." (1) That arguably downplays the importance of vaccines, but understandably so, since there were none at the time it was written. However, to argue that it or its authors oppose vaccination is to twist it out of all recognition.    

Since vaccines have become available, the GBD authors have increasingly emphasized their role. In this quote from an early December interview, for instance, one can question Dr. Bhattacharya’s timeline, but not his belief in vaccination: "I think if we use the vaccine correctly we can get back to normal within two months. Let’s say, if we have 50 million people vaccinated, who are at the highest risk, at that point we can open society up."(13)

[Having safe and effective vaccines does not weaken, but strengthens, both the chances of reaching "herd immunity," and the case for letting people live their normal lives until we reach it. It does weaken the case for leaving them all locked up in the interim. And simply calling lockdown sceptics antivaxxers does nothing to help that case.] 

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.

Read full article here