The TSAP Supports The Great Barrington Declaration

More than six months after the COVID lockdowns and related restrictions began in March, it is becoming increasingly clear that that such an unprecedented "strategy" wasn't really the wisest idea, to put it mildly.  In fact, it was not even really a strategy so much as a panic move that was only supposed to last two or three weeks and was based on the (later revealed to be false) premise that it was somehow utterly necessary to keep hospitals from being overrun.  Fair enough, I guess.  But then they subtly moved the goalposts to a pipe-dream "zero COVID" strategy with no end in sight, which quite frankly makes about as much sense as a "zero flu" strategy.  If that isn't mission creep, I really don't know what is.  And such a sledgehammer approach really hasn't worked very well, and has had far too much collateral damage.  The "cure" was worse than the disease.

That's why a group of distinguished infectious disease experts (Prof. Sunetra Gupta, Prof. Martin Kulldorf, and Prof. Jay Bhattacharya) have come up with the Great Barrington Declaration, which calls for a change in strategy to what they call Focused Protection, in which young and healthy people (who are statistically at similar or less risk from COVID as they are from seasonal flu, traffic accidents, etc.) essentially go back to the true normal and build up herd immunity while carefully protecting older and more vulnerable people (who are at far greater risk) in the meantime, and still respecting human rights.

Sweden basically did such a strategy for the most part, as did some US states like South Dakota, and to a lesser extent Florida, Georgia, Texas, etc.  And despite being hit rather hard, they did not turn out worse than many of the strictest lockdown countries and states, but rather closer to the middle of the pack. Controversial and imperfect as that strategy may be, honestly in the long run it is really the only way out of this pandemic nightmare for good at this point, and we just have to accept that.  It is simply an inevitable outcome, and any safe and effective vaccine will come too late.  As for treatments, they apparently already exist, and many have existed for decades now.

(For more practically detailed versions of this general strategy, devised months ago, see here and here by Bill Sardi, as well as here by Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai.)

Objections can be very easily debunked here, by the way.  It is not a left-wing vs. right-wing thing, or even solely for libertarians, as a strong communitarian case can also be made for such a strategy as well.  Thus, it is more properly thought of as a humanitarian imperative that transcends politics.

Thus, the TSAP hereby supports the Great Barrington Declaration, with the caveats that its words not be misinterpreted and that such protections of the vulnerable be largely voluntary, nuanced, and not too heavy-handed.  It's not that COVID-19 shouldn't be taken seriously (it should be!), but we need to keep things in proportion, as a disproportionate response does far more harm than good in the long run.

As the authors of the declaration so eloquently say, "Public health is not simply the absence of disease.  Together we can restore it in full.  Do it now!"  And we at the TSAP couldn't agree more.

So what are we waiting for?  Let's stop making the perfect the enemy of the good, and get real already.

UPDATE: Dr. Mikko Panunio of Finland adds that Vitamin D may very well be the silver bullet we've all been looking for, reducing not only death rates from COVID but also likely slowing the transmission of the virus as well according to recent studies, effectively creating a sort of quasi-herd immunity in the meantime.  Thus, recommending Vitamin D supplements to the general population would be an excellent and highly practical addition to the Great Barrington Declaration strategy for returning to the true normal sooner than later.  This advice echoes Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai's and Bill Sardi's advice (which also notably include Vitamin A, Vitamin C, zinc, quercetin, selenium, etc. as well as Vitamin D) given months ago.  Too bad it took over six months for such an idea to even begin to enter into the mainstream, as far too many lives have been cut short and/or ruined from both COVID as well as the wrongheaded countermeasures that did more harm than good.

And regardless, it bears repeating:  the critics' apocalyptic estimates of mass death that would allegedly result from the Great Barrington Declaration strategy relative to the status quo can be very easily debunked by noting that 1) the status quo at best delays the inevitable and still presents us with all of the exact same dilemmas the critics rail against, but with added collateral damage on top of it, and 2) yet another study confirms that the actual infection fatality rate of 0.1-0.3% is globally far lower than the doomsayers claim it is, more like a really bad flu season, albeit with very wide variation and nuance.  Even the WHO inadvertently admitted as much.  And as of October 8, the WHO did a startling about-face and now strongly discourages the use of lockdowns due to their truly massive collateral damage.

Most ironically of all, the Great Barrington Declaration strategy is not at all unorthodox, but rather simply a reversion to the scientific community's time-tested pandemic playbook which prevailed for nearly a century up until the powers that be panicked and summarily threw it out the window in March 2020.  And in that playbook, large-scale quarantines and closures were dismissed as ineffective and counterproductive for these types of pandemics.  It is only because the Overton window shifted so much and so quickly that yesterday's heresies became today's orthodoxies practically overnight.  And now is our chance to shift it back to its rightful place, and yesterday is not soon enough.

Please note that the authors of the GBD have added an informative FAQ for clarification and more detail.  It should go without saying of course, but neither the TSAP nor the GBD authors advocate or condone anyone deliberately getting infected or infecting others.  Fortunately, the idea that this is a widespread practice (via "COVID parties" or otherwise) is apparently just another urban legend.  Which is good, because we want the effective herd immunity threshold to kick in at as low a level as possible, with as little overshoot as possible, thus minimizing total casualties of all varieties.  So keep calm and carry on, but still keep washing your hands, don't touch your face, stay home when you're sick, stay away from anyone who is sick or thought to be infected, and all that jazz regardless.  That is, use common sense.

See also "A Rational Path Forward" by the folks at Rational Ground as well.

As for how long immunity lasts, see here.

2021 UPDATE:  See the rebuttal here to the specious claims against the GBD.