Re: Jay Bhattacharya, author of the Great Barrington Declaration, being selected for NIH.

in bhattacharya •  5 days ago 

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Yes this. I hate how some libertarians tried to pretend this was a rational and coherent document.

It was nonsensical given the evidence we had at the time. The biggest correlation with infections among the elderly and nursing homes was community transmission levels. The best way to protect the vulnerable was to reduce community transmission.

The authors of this document not only argued for the non-vulnerable to return to normal they downplayed our best low cost tools to control community spread like testing, tracing, isolation, and face masks.

And when vaccines became available, the authors frequently downplayed mass vaccination, particularly of children and young adults.

And as Adam notes, the "good" they were arguing in the document was already being implemented. Countries were doing focused protection of the elderly and high risk, on top of a layered strategy with other tools. It just wasn't sufficient.

It isn't a mystery. High risk individuals have to interact with the community at large. They have families. Nursing homes rely on a interconnected network of staff and contractors.

Research showed infected staff were the primary modes of transmission in nursing homes. It was a difficult problem to solve.

Their solution if anything was more draconian than anything else. They wanted high risk people to essentially isolate indefinitely. It was not a serious proposal.

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