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Collins and Fauci played critical roles in designing and advocating for the pandemic lockdown strategy adopted by the United States and many other countries. In emails written four days after the Great Barrington Declaration and disclosed recently after a FOIA request, it was revealed that the two conspired to undermine the declaration. Rather than engaging in scientific discourse, they authorized "a quick and devastating published takedown" of this proposal, which they characterized as by "three fringe epidemiologists" from Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford.
Across the pond, they were joined by their close colleague, Dr. Jeremy Farrar, the head of the Wellcome Trust, one of the world's largest nongovernmental funders of medical research. He worked with Dominic Cummings, the political strategist of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Together, they orchestrated "an aggressive press campaign against those behind the Great Barrington Declaration and others opposed to blanket COVID-19 restrictions."
Ignoring the call for focused protection of the vulnerable, Collins and Fauci purposely mischaracterized the GBD as a "let-it-rip" "herd immunity strategy," even though focused protection is the very opposite of a let-it-rip strategy. It's more appropriate to call the lockdown strategy that has been followed a "let-it-rip" strategy. Without focused protection, every age group will eventually be exposed in equal proportion, albeit at a prolonged "let-it-drip" pace compared to a do-nothing strategy.
When journalists started asking us why we wanted to "let the virus rip," we were puzzled. Those words aren't in the GBD, and they are contrary to the central idea of focused protection. It's unclear whether Collins and Fauci ever read the GBD, whether they deliberately mischaracterized it, or whether their understanding of epidemiology and public health is more limited than we had thought. In any case, it was a lie.
We were also puzzled by the mischaracterization of the GBD as a "herd immunity strategy." Herd immunity is a scientifically proven phenomenon, as fundamental in infectious disease epidemiology as gravity is in physics. Every COVID strategy leads to herd immunity, and the pandemic ends when a sufficient number of people have immunity through either COVID-recovery or a vaccine. It makes as much sense to claim that an epidemiologist is advocating for a "herd immunity strategy" as it does to claim that a pilot is advocating a "gravity strategy" when landing an airplane. The issue is how to land the plane safely, and whatever strategy the pilot uses, gravity ensures that the plane will eventually return to earth.
The fundamental goal of the GBD is to get through this terrible pandemic with the least harm to the public's health. Health, of course, is broader than just COVID. Any reasonable evaluation of lockdowns should consider their collateral damage to patients with cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and other infectious diseases, as well as mental health and much else. Based on long-standing principles of public health, the GBD and focused protection of the high-risk population is a middle ground between devastating lockdowns and a do-nothing, let-it rip strategy.
Comment: Anti-Empire puts some visuals to the horror: