![]() Nursing homes should continue to stringently protect their residents, and retired people should be very careful. The declaration states that protecting the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses. Like many areas of public policy, the devil is in the details. No one wants to get sick or cause illness in others. The question is what can be done to minimize the problems that arise from the various economic shutdowns while waiting for an effective vaccine and herd immunity to develop. Those living alone suffer real pain from isolation, and the young have every reason to feel bitter over the loss of substantive education.” However, those who acknowledge the importance of herd immunity are not recommending “herd immunity” instead of vaccines. The declaration is not about allowing younger people who are less at risk to just run around willy-nilly without concern for the elderly and compromised.Ĭritics contend that the Great Barrington Declaration is arguing against a straw man (a large, general lockdown) I would contend it's the critics who are the ones aiming at a straw man of unfettered activity, laissez faire.Įven a recent New York Times essay criticizing “herd immunity” recognizes that “restrictions to limit death cause real harm, by no means limited to: serious stress on the economy, increases in domestic violence and drug abuse, declines in tests that screen for cancer and on and on. No government has stated that achieving herd immunity is its policy. OPINION: Herd immunity rests on naive and faulty logic. Recently several articles, some in the medical literature, decry relying on “herd immunity” and predict increased deaths if that were the main policy. At latest count, organizers say that more than 11,000 medical and public health scientists and 30,000 medical practitioners and over 500,000 concerned citizens have signed the declaration. ![]() In response to government lockdowns, the Great Barrington Declaration is a statement by public health experts from Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and elsewhere encouraging governments to promote herd immunity by lifting restrictions on the young and healthy and focusing protection on the elderly. We don’t know, yet, how well COVID-19 vaccines will work, even if they will. In the days before vaccines, herd immunity was how viral epidemics died out. Vaccines were a game changer, but even vaccines vary. Measles vaccines are really good and are long-lasting. Influenza vaccines help save lives but immunity is shorter, flu viruses mutate, and thus vaccines are repeated annually. Optimistic models predict herd immunity for COVID-19 might occur when 40% of the population has been infected other estimates are 60% to 70%. Actual prison data suggest transmission slowed when 60% were infected. The difference of one word can be huge. In the case of “herd immunity,” the pertinent words are “or” versus “and.” Herd immunity is the point at which enough people become immune to the virus that the outbreak dies out. Watch Video: Remdesivir approved by FDA as treatment for COVID-19 patients
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