Great Barrington Declaration: Epidemiologists say life should resume as normal
<i>&#x27;Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health.&#x27;<p>&#x27;&lt;…&gt; Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.&#x27;<p>&#x27;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.&#x27;</i><p>I will not sign this declaration, as I&#x27;m not convinced that the net outcome of what they are proposing would be any better than the current lockdown&#x2F;isolation arrangements.  Where&#x27;s the evidence, where are the longitudinal studies?<p>For starters, given the many administrative stuff-ups worldwide with COVID-19 since its outset, much of what they are proposing would be impractical to implement and or it would end up ineffective—or even harmful.  The third quote is outrageous given that it&#x27;s come from medicos—the fact is we still just do not know or have sufficient information about herd immunity.  (Looking past the emotion of this declaration to the practicalities of its implementation, one sees many shortfalls to worry about.)<p>Right, the evidence for what they are proposing will be of <i>overall</i> benefit is, at best, shaky.  COVID-19 has been devastating and unfortunately, some of its side&#x2F;indirect effects are very troubling.  However, if we increase the risk of COVID-19&#x27;s direct effect by allowing more people to catch it by trading off its side&#x2F;indirect effects then how do we actually measure the <i>true</i> net benefit?  Moreover, how much trade-off would we consider acceptable?  Despite what they say about knowing more about COVID-19, there is no proof that their proposals will be anything other than just hit and miss (like many other responses to COVID-19 over the last eight months or so).<p><i>I&#x27;d suggest that it&#x27;d be very hard and likely unproductive measurement, as in a sense we&#x27;re trading off apples for oranges—we&#x27;re not measuring a straightforward comparison in the utilitarian sense where we normally compare positive utiles against negatives ones and end up with an overall result.</i><p>Probably, the most serious question that none of these <i>&#x27;Great Barrington Declaration&#x27;</i> people is asking is why do so many people in modern-day society have so little resilience when they are forced out of their comfort zones into unusual situations such having to be in lockdown.<p>I see this as a big deal; because there&#x27;s reasonable evidence that the &#x27;softness&#x27; of modern-day living is making many people less resilient to life&#x27;s knocks and tribulations than those of previous generations were.  We see evidence everywhere, from people not coping with lockdown to increased numbers of those suffering from PTSD (for instance, nowadays we see an increased percentage of soldiers with PTSD than say compared with those who went through World War II).<p>Detailing the evidence would take a whole essay so I&#x27;ll just say this.  From personal experience, I know that my parents who were of the Great Depression and WWII generation had much more resilience than I do and I reckon I&#x27;ve more than many people who are younger than me.  Right, that&#x27;s just me—a sample of one—and that&#x27;s statistically insignificant.  It seems to me that a better place to begin is with the American journalist Tom Brokaw&#x27;s wonderfully researched book <i>The Greatest Generation</i>.  It tells the stories <i>&#x27;of a generation of America&#x27;s citizen heroes and heroines who came of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War and went on to build modern America&#x27;</i>  As Brokaw points out in the book, these people managed to overcome the trials and tribulations of a very hard life and just get on with it without whingeing or whining.&#x27;<p>The book review:  <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bookbrowse.com&#x2F;reviews&#x2F;index.cfm&#x2F;book_number&#x2F;128&#x2F;the-greatest-generation" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bookbrowse.com&#x2F;reviews&#x2F;index.cfm&#x2F;book_number&#x2F;128...</a><p>Wiki entry:  <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Greatest_Generation" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Greatest_Generation</a><p>Brokaw&#x27;s bio:  <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Tom_Brokaw" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Tom_Brokaw</a><p>To my mind, this intergenerational decrease in resilience was a big deal even before COVID-19 and I&#x27;m very surprised that it&#x27;s not more prominently and openly discussed now since the virus has pushed the issue into the fore.  We really do need some hard statistics on this.<p>Furthermore, it seems to me that <i>population resilience</i> should be the subject of much research if for no other reason than it is important to know how the population would cope if it were to experience a much more extensive pandemic than COVID-19, one in which a much higher percentage of the population died.  After all, it has happened before with the plague epidemics where it&#x27;s estimated that at least one third of the population perished—that&#x27;s at least 33% dead whereas COVID-19 is low single digits at its highest (also note the death rate from the 1918-19 Spanish Flu was higher than COVID-19 with over 50 million dead).<p>There&#x27;s also a more personal reason too:  I would like to know why many of those who I know, like me, have found the lockdown actually somewhat enjoyable whereas others cannot stand the isolation and seem to be going mad.  Personally, being in lockdown, I&#x27;ve found the time to do many things that I would otherwise not have had time for, and also I&#x27;ve been able to avoid a few &#x27;tiresome&#x27; people without having to offer excuses.