Those Who Belittled Covid Now Think They Won. They’re Wrong.
The virus changed, facts didn’t
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On October 4, 2020, three experts in the field of medicine signed a declaration calling for a complete change in the way of battling the Covid-19 pandemic. The Great Barrington Declaration, which was written at the American Institute for Economic Research in Great Barrington, MA, called for a ‘focused protection’.
The authors criticized lockdown policies for causing physical and mental damages to the general public. Their aim was to reach herd immunity alongside shielding those who were considered vulnerable.
“The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk” — The Great Barrington Declaration.
In other words, the Great Barrington Declaration promoted a policy of mass infection to the general public, with no mention of masks, isolations, tests, distancing, or any other method of curbing the spread of the virus. The declaration enjoyed some success. The authors boast about more than 900,000 signatures, although as the option to sign is open to anyone, it was shown that at least some of those signatures are fake.
Many criticized the Great Barrington Declaration. Leaked Emails showed how Dr. Fauci and the director of the National Institue of Health wanted to make a ‘quick and devastating takedown’ of its claims. In Israel, the head of the public health service who’s spearheading the fight against Covid in the health ministry called a group of doctors who passionately promoted the declaration as “Covid deniers.” They sued for defamation and later dropped the suit.
Although hailed only by the minority of doctors and academics, the declaration gained attention as the pandemic progressed. A wave of anti-lockdown and anti-restrictions demonstrations flooded many countries, many of them promoting the ideas written in the declaration. Yet, most of the scientific world rejected the Great Barrington declaration and its notion of mass infection as a road to natural herd immunity from Covid.
