More than 5,000 scientists to whom Joe Biden won’t be listening…

by philg

“Biden Vows to Lock Down Country to Curb the Coronavirus if Scientists Say It Is Needed” (Slate):

Former Vice President Joe Biden said he would not hesitate to issue a nationwide stay-at-home order if scientists said it was necessary. In his first interview since officially becoming the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, Biden was asked about what he would do if, as some are warning, there is a surge of COVID-19 infections in January alongside the regular flu season. “I would shut it down,” Biden told ABC’s David Muir in a joint interview with Sen. Kamala Harris. “I would listen to the scientists.”

Welcome news for Science Karens across the nation, certainly. By working through the Harris-Biden administration, the nerds can decide which Americans can leave their houses, who can work, who can learn, etc. Where can Joe Biden and President Harris find a list of scientists who should not be listened to? The signers of the Great Barrington Declaration:

As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity.

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. We call this Focused Protection.

Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent PCR testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home. When possible, they should meet family members outside rather than inside. A comprehensive and detailed list of measures, including approaches to multi-generational households, can be implemented, and is well within the scope and capability of public health professionals.

The true crazy talk:

Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.

Who are the non-scientists behind this unscientific approach to COVID-19?

  • Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring of infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations.
  • Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases.
  • Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.

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26 thoughts on “More than 5,000 scientists to whom Joe Biden won’t be listening…”

  1. I’m amazed they haven’t locked Jay Bhattacharya in a padded cell at the Hoover Institution with Peter Robinson yet. Three months from now I expect them both to disappear.

    • The Trump Administration has been an enormous accelerant for the Left’s authoritarianism. I doubt a single major news outlet in this country will cover the Great Barrington Declaration except in the most marginal and facetious ways.

    • I wish I’d had a the opportunity to talk with Steve Bannon on election night in 2016. I would have asked him: “Do you really believe you’re going to be able to handle the enormous backlash of resistance from the liberal and increasingly left-wing establishment in this country? Because they run the show. Not you. Do you have a plan for that other than Twitter?”

    • I would have told him: “Remember, Mr. Bannon: Sonny and Sal made it to the airport in Dog Day Afternoon, but they didn’t get on the plane.”

    • >> “I wish I’d had a the opportunity to talk with Steve Bannon on election night in 2016” …

      @Alex,
      did u anticipate this so long ago (asking, mostly because what were the indicators, if i could understand such a thing.)
      Also, I am a bit surprised that he didn’t start a war or conflict to divert attention & get the heat off himself… would have been easier no >?

    • @disvad:

      Yes. I did anticipate it, but like so many others, I think I assigned it to the realm of things that were possible but avoidable. I told my father the night of the election: “Now he’s won, and that’s great. But we know Donald Trump pretty well (we lived in NJ) and he’s got a lot of baggage.” The biggest problem is that I knew then that he would the full court press of resistance coming down on him and his family, and everyone associated with him, for the next four years. I told my father: “They’re not going to be satisfied until he and everyone else is in prison.”

      And then I did what a lot of other people did and put those terrible thoughts as deeply as possible into the back of my mind.

      I should probably write a long essay about my thoughts regarding Trump over the years, but nobody would read it, and it wouldn’t matter. Suffice to say, that yes, I think he was on Thin Ice since Day -1. And a lot of people were out there on the ice trying to make him fall through.

    • @disevad:

      The war may come anyway, and not just here, but everywhere. We’re entering probably the most dangerous period in history since the days leading up to World War I. I agree with Kissinger about that.

    • “Our leaders and [China’s] leaders have to discuss the limits beyond which they will not push threats, and how to define that,” Kissinger said. “You can say this is totally impossible, but if it is, we will slide into a situation similar to World War I.”

      https://www.nationalreview.com/news/henry-kissinger-calls-on-u-s-china-to-set-limits-on-threats-or-risk-world-war/

      The problem if Trump is reelected is that he likes to do foreign policy like a 15 year-old girl talks about her family’s troubles on TikTok.

    • @disevad:

      One last thing: he has placed the Republican Party in an absolutely impossible position. It is lose-lose-lose everywhere. He has become the worst thing that has happened to Republicans in the history of this country because he:

      1) Doesn’t know anything
      2) Is a narcissistic sociopath

    • thanks, @Alex, for your elaborate response, appreciate a genuine perspective. Since I didn’t know about him before the election, I didn’t realize there was so much baggage with him.
      Interestingly, when I now see some of his older interviews (pre 2016 years), the interviewers seemed to be a lot more respectful towards him, almost in awe.. ! Ha!

      >>> “The war may come anyway, and not just here, but everywhere. ”
      I hope you are wrong! , if you were following India related news, there has been a lot of tensions with Biden’s fav. country – Chyna . So far Modi has held onto its own & has put Chyna on a backfoot (with good support from trump, France, Australia, etc.)

      In ramayana it’s said that: “Bhaya bin hoye na preet ” , which means => “There can be no love/friendship without fear.” ….

      If he (trump) maintains ‘enough fear’, with a path for reconciliation, there is a hope for equilibrium to be maintained.

    • @Anonymous: My perspective, especially on election night and during the conversation I had with my father, was based on living in New Jersey, having worked at a very liberal law school, having read Donald Trump’s “The Art of the Deal” when it was released, and knowing a little more than usual about his background, personality (I saw him on TV dozens of times and actually met him at his Atlantic City casino as a young person) and his style of business dealing and personal life, including some members of his family. My biggest concerns the night of his election were:

      1) What else is hidden in the background of Trump’s life over the past 20 or 30 years that will come to light during the course of his Presidency and prove to be damaging?

      2) The entire liberal pantheon has been shocked and angered to the core, including practically every professor at every law school in the United States. And they are going to be looking for everything they can find to undermine his Presidency, attack his character, question his authority, and establish a grave sense of doubt about his legitimacy in the public mind. They have a lot of influence.

      3) His reality-show persona on the Apprentice may be an act, may not be an act? If he tries to run the country like a reality TV show, instead of sobering up and realizing this is not a game, he will have serious problems.

      4) The Southern District of New York might as well be called “Hillary Clinton’s Back Yard.” If there’s anything wrong with his business dealings, SDNY is going to be all over him like a cheap suit.

      And a lot of other concerns large and small, including people he’s hosted at Mar-a-Lago (like Jeffrey Epstein) and how much Donald Trump actually knew about the business of being President and how quickly he could learn what he needed to know.

      If you read through the original “Conservatives Against Trump” piece in the National Review from February 2016, there were many other people I respect, much more luminary than myself, who had serious concerns about his fitness to be President, and what it would mean for the Conservative movement and the Republican Party after 8 years of Obama. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that some of their worst fears were prescient.

      https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2016/02/15/conservatives-against-trump/

  3. So, Phil, I guess you’re full on campaigning for Trump now. Don’t be ashamed to admit it. It’s your right.

    • I don’t think he’s ever campaigned for or supported Trump. He’s asked pointed questions, some of which are valuable, but there has never been a moment on this blog that Philip Greenspun has campaigned for Donald Trump. And I’ve been here for a long time and read almost everything he’s written. I think you confuse intellectual independence with partisan advocacy.

    • Oh this is pretty typical divisive tribalism. If you don’t fully, no reservations whatsoever, support the right candidate, you’re obviously doing the same for the wrong candidate! No questions allowed, voter.

    • Jim: I’m not sure that if I were to campaign for Trump it would help him win in Maskachusetts! Or anywhere else, for that matter, since nobody listens to me and my political ideas are far outside of the mainstream (e.g., that the 14th Amendment should be respected and therefore Kavanaugh should not have been allowed to promise to hire only female-identifying clerks nor should Trump have been allowed to say that he was considering only female-identifying judges to appoint to the Supreme Court).

      Democrats are much more interesting to write about than Republicans because their thinking and reasoning are more interesting. What’s interesting about a Republican who says “I like Trump because he cut corporate taxes and I didn’t want to see every American corporate acquired by an Irish, English, or Canadian company”? But a group of physicians who support the party that made it illegal for Americans to refuse to buy health insurance and say that their support is due to “science”? That’s blog fodder! (see https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2029812 )

    • Just so you know, Phil, I’m writing you in on my ballot. I’m in California so it doesn’t matter anyway.

      Love the defensive posture so many assume when they don’t agree.

  5. I am not sure how Biden can force schools and universities to reopen. Trump has tried all ways he could so maybe you expect Biden to be more effective than Trump (a possibility?).

    In any case, some of the largest local universities in terms of population are open including Boston College, Boston University, Northeastern. If you are missing the sight of undergrads, just walk around town and there are thousands of them. Long lines can be found at every stores on Newbury in Boston.

  6. I wouldn’t put Phil as pro-Trump bur rather as anti-idiot. And, yes, dear collectivists, every single one of you is a dangerous idiot. Of a kind which gave the world GULAG, and Red Guards and Auschwitz.

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