The madness of the not-so-great Great Barrington Declaration

The video below features three doctors from prestigious universities (political libertarians and very, very fringe, nonetheless) who represent the small minority of experts who think that a strategy of pursuing herd immunity from COVID is more humane and scientific than the suppression strategy the U.K. has used and the U.S. has given half-baked lip-service to thus far. This tiny minority of the experts should be heard. At least they try to make a coherent case. But that case is rejected by most of the experts and it has serious weaknesses. And the stakes are enormous.

I'm sorry, but whatever the politics of these particular doctors, libertarian political philosophy rather than science is the major factor driving this sort of thinking. and to say that there is a real question of practicality would be an understatement. Most scientists disagree that the science points in the direction these doctors claim, and the question of morality is very much tied to the question of whether their approach would work. Its advocates are a small minority of the experts and their approach strikes me as utterly impractical. Discussion is great, and I'm all for it, but ideas need to be evaluated based on their merit and  I'm unpersuaded by this video that these doctors have anything constructive to contribute.  They say that they don't champion Trumpian neglect of the pandemic, and I believe them. But there are plenty of foolish and crazy people who DO advocate doing nothing who are pointing to this thinking as support for inaction. I post it here because I agree that deserves to be discussed, if for no other reason than the need to discredit a desperately flawed chain of logic.

Is it even possible, as these doctors suggest, to shield the elderly and those most at risk from COVID without shielding everybody by general restrictions and, when necessary, lockdowns? Is systematically isolating the one-third or so of the population that is at increased risk from COVID from those who are not a rational objective, much less an achievable goal? Most epidemiologists think not, and I would argue that common sense should cause us to dismiss the very notion as unworkable. Moreover, the notion that everyone isn't involved in the implications of public health policy for dealing with a pandemic is absurd! Creating a temporary and hermetically-sealed caste system whereby classes of individuals that are so large can be prevented from interacting with each other would be difficult even in a rigidly authoritarian society and absurd in a free one like ours.  Protecting lower-risk people IS protecting the higher-risk people, and it likely is impossible to do the second without also doing the first.

Despite what the Swedish doctor says, the percentage of the Swedish population that has temporarily obtained antibodies to COVID is a tiny fraction of the roughly two-thirds of the population herd immunity would require. And whether they have antibodies or not, most of them are no longer immune. Coronaviruses in general convey only brief immunity. In the case of COVID-19, we're probably talking about roughly three or four months. Even when a vaccine is available it will have to be administered to two-thirds of us every 120 days before the virus can be suppressed- if it even can be suppressed- and booster shots likely administered until the virus vanishes, it if ever does.

And it may well not. Ever. Everything we know about respiratory viruses calls that very concept into question. When, exactly, did we reach herd immunity from influenza? Isn't it great that we don't have to worry about the flu anymore? Why would we expect that COVID would be more vulnerable to the emergence of herd immunity than the flu has been? How would our failure to reach herd immunity for a virus for which immunity seems to be only short term and would require two-thirds of the population to be immune within the same 120-day window save those 130 million people they mention from starvation? If, as is now believed, immunity to COVID only lasts about three or four months, what would be the cost in lives of getting 60-70% of the population immune during the same three months? Perhaps once an effective vaccine is developed and booster shots can be given things will change. But as of now, many experts believe that the cost of seeking herd immunity before an effective vaccine is available and efficiently administered might well be two million deaths in the United States alone!

The crucial points are worth repeating: even if the concept of herd immunity were viable, given that immunity to coronaviruses, in general, seems to last only months, and most evidence suggests roughly 120 days as the length of time immunity typically lasts for COVID-19, how in the world couls herd immunity ever be reached without an effective vaccine widely administered not only once but repeatedly to the overwhelming majority of the population? And the notion that the elderly and other at-risk groups can be effectively isolated from the rest of the population completely enough to prevent catastrophe before an effective vaccine is developed seems ludicrous on its face. By all means, let's discuss the merits of the proposal these doctors put forth if for no other reason because it needs to be clearly understood that they are theoretical, ivory-tower proposals which would be not only impossible to implement but disastrous to even attempt in the real world. It needs to be stressed that these doctors represent a tiny minority of the experts- and for good reason! By all means, let them make their argument and be heard. But it would behoove all of us laypeople to wait until this approach is seen as practical by a far larger percentage of the experts before we buy into it!

And it won't be, because their proposal is so transparently without merit.