[ad_1]
The “Great Barrington Declaration” of three scientists from elite universities against the crown measures has hundreds of thousands of signatories. But the move is medically dangerous and donors have their own agenda.
There are also opponents of protection measures in Switzerland.
Photo: Ennio Leanza (Keystone)
The authors of this statement will likely achieve their goal: They have already won about 475,000 signatories, and it should be a million, and that will be easy. Because the “Great Barrington Declaration,” which went online in early October, is being enthusiastically celebrated on the Internet by opponents of the Corona measures. Several thousand signers join every hour.
The reason for the enthusiasm: The authors of the statement offer a supposed way out of the unpleasant side effects of the pandemic, and they are also professors at the world-famous universities of Oxford, Harvard and Stanford. All three complain that the measures have already caused too much suffering: children received fewer vaccinations, those with heart disease no longer received adequate treatment, and mental illness increased. The younger members of society, in particular, would have to bear the consequences for years to come. Your solution: “targeted protection.” Young and healthy people should finally live their lives again and thus allow society to become infected with Sars-CoV-2 towards herd immunity; the elderly and the sick must, however, be cared for.
But whether you call it “targeted protection” or “herd immunity”: This strategy was discussed at the start of the pandemic and quickly scrapped. In Europe, the Netherlands, Great Britain and Sweden considered going this route. But they left when their case and death rates skyrocketed. Contrary to expectations, the infections also affected the elderly and vulnerable people.
The theses have already been refuted by specialist colleagues
All three authors hardly write anything about how they want to avoid this in their one-page statement. In any event, biostatistician Martin Kulldorff (Harvard), epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta (Oxford), and public health expert Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford) remain astonishingly vague. All three had already drawn attention in recent months with bold theses about the pandemic that other scientists had smashed to pieces.
Sunetra Gupta claimed in a widely criticized article in March that half the British population was infected with the virus and therefore immune. A major misjudgment, as the evidence has shown. To date, with Sars-CoV-2 already claiming 43,000 lives in Britain, less than 10 percent of the population has developed antibodies against it. This gives an idea of the consequences that would have if the virus could spread without hindrance.
“Unethical and simply not feasible,” as Robert Lechler, president of the British Academy of Medical Sciences, calls it. It is not possible to sustainably protect such a large group of people without exposing them to considerable risk, he writes in an article he wrote because of the “Greater Barrington Declaration,” out of concern. Also, the virus is not harmless to young and fit. They can also become seriously ill and suffer long-term consequences, such as chronic exhaustion and mental losses, even if they are mild.
However, the statement garnered wide support. In addition to more than 400,000 “concerned citizens,” they have already supported some 25,000 physicians and nearly 10,000 medical and public health scientists, at least that’s how the signatories are classified. However, there are many strange identities in the group of supposed scientists. “Dr. Person Fakename”, discovered the British broadcaster Sky in the list “, Dr. Johnny Bananas, Hard Buzz Doctor” or “Dr. IP Freely”, “I pee freely”, that is, “I pee freely ”.
Co-financed by climate deniers
When asked why more attention is not being paid to who signs the statement, Jay Bhattacharya responded to broadcaster Sky: “We don’t have enough resources to verify each signature.”
Martin McKee, professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, however, believes there are calculations behind this. The longer the list of supposed scientific supporters, the more it will appear that a considerable proportion of the scientific community is actually in favor of the path to herd immunity. This is not the case. McKee recalls the methods of the tobacco industry, which has been interfering in public debate for decades, downplaying smoking, passive smoking, and e-cigarettes one after another.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the declaration was signed in Great Barrington, Massachusetts of all places, at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) located there. His donors include American oil billionaire Charles Koch, a notorious climate change denier, and his foundation has already donated at least a five-figure sum. The institute also benefits from its own investments in oil and tobacco companies, among others.
The think tank’s stated goal is to promote a “truly free society”, “with free markets and limited government.” In other words: AIER wants to manipulate public opinion, for an unbridled economy. The institute has already issued several reports on the topic of climate change, all of them trivialized. If you don’t have to worry about the weather, you can keep doing unscrupulous business. And those who don’t fear Corona too.
