Thread by @DoctorChrisVT

If you haven’t GREAT barrington declaration I can’t recommend it. It’s tough read. So great, so grand, the words don’t fit easily into a human eyeball. The tone is subtly repellant but it’s also unkind, fraudulent, political, arrogant and entirely pointless.

https://twitter.com/stuartjdneil/status/1315052261639323648

Here’s the declaration - a page of assertions written by three Profs who have the trappings of credibility.

First if you’re going to declare anything about the pandemic (and really let’s not) you need to declare with kindness. Instead this has a sort of “we the undersigned hereto and forthwith in perpetuity” vibe that sounds like primary school children trying on some Shakespeare.

The “we have devoted our careers to protecting people” part is fraudulent in the literal sense that lots of the signatories don’t exist. There are some wonderful threads on the fake signatories. (I like Dr Johnny Bananas the most).

https://twitter.com/NafeezAhmed/status/1314529971923279873

It’s also deeply political despite its claims to the contrary. Even if all the stuff about it being funded by the Koch brothers isn’t true or even if you love the Koch brothers (lord knows we all need chemicals) if you’re “declaring” about public health in the current context...

...of massive global death it may be best to avoid even a whiff of right wing think tankery. Otherwise some people might not listen to your vital message.

And that’s especially important if your message might seem to some people to possibly align with “that sort of stuff”.

If you launch your public health declaration in a way that feels linked to an ideology, even by accident, people may *think* that you *think* that old people don’t matter because they’re not economically productive.
Even though your message was pure science and apolitical.

I have no idea if all the links to the American Institute for Economic Research but it’s sloppy to risk the allegation. bylinetimes.com/2020/10/09/cli…

So it’s unkind, fraudulent, political and it’s also arrogant at a time when humility is the only evidence based emotion. Oxford professors, Nobel Laureates, Presidents, mathematicians, doctors, epidemiologists have all been consistently wrong about all aspects of this pandemic.

But aside from the tonal problems it’s not a serious document. It’s lazy and careless. It doesn’t propose anything realistic or detailed. It’s just bar-room bluster.

The authors give a single example about their main proposal of “focussed protection”: that nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and doing frequent testing.

Of course it would be great if nursing homes could use staff with acquired immunity. The problem is that quite a lot of staff got really ill acquiring the immunity. We also don’t have an assay for immunity. We also don’t really understand how long immunity lasts. Etc

The idea itself isn’t exactly bad. It’s just childish and naive and unhelpful.

It has all the realism of saying that nursing home staff should be paid properly and tested daily and provided with adequate PPE. Declaring these things assertively doesn’t make them happen.

The document also asserts that schools should be open for in person teaching. They pretty much are.

What’s not clear is what the writers of the declaration feel about teachers in perhaps their 50s. Or 60s. Or younger teachers with older or vulnerable family members. Or children who live with at risk people. Or any of the other messy detail that policy needs to deal with.

Everyone apart from the writers and signatories including Jonny Bananas gets that there isn’t a perfect way forward. That there will be early deaths no matter what policy we adopt.

All we can do is approach the science and each other with humility and kindness.