Thread by @CherylRofer

The @nytimes article and a tweet from one of its authors suggesting that Ron DeSantis's approach to killing Floridians may become a model for other states have a strong air of the Great Barrington Declaration. 1/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bar…

@nytimes I linked to the Wikipedia article because the GBD website is unavailable now.

Their idea is to let Covid rip through the population to establish herd immunity, while allegedly protecting the more vulnerable. 2/

DeSantis may believe that he is doing something like that - there was a push to vaccinate the elderly, but he has banned masks in schools. Perhaps he also believes that Covid is no big deal for children. 3/

There is a model for the GBD - Sweden. They did little to mitigate spread, although they somewhat protected the elderly.

Economically, they did about as well as other Nordic countries that did more to prevent Covid deaths, but they killed many more Swedes. 4/

DeSantis may be gambling that the pain will be over by next year and Florida will be Covid-free, the miracle that Politico has already attributed to him.

But filling up hospital beds represents a surprisingly low number of Covid cases on the way to herd immunity. 5/

I want to look at the numbers more carefully tomorrow. But the bottom line is an immense number of deaths both from Covid and from the medical needs that can't be treated when the hospitals are overflowing with Covid patients. 6/6

Oh, and hey @nytimes, do you really think that's a good idea? 7/6