Lockdowns Were Never Mainstream

In a poetic moment of triumph for science, reason, and sanity, Jay Bhattacharya has been nominated to lead the NIH. The NIH whose former head Francis Collins called for a “quick and devastating take-down” of Jay, Martin Kulldorff, and Sunetra Gupta’s Great Barrington Declaration. In the same email, Collins smeared Dr. Bhattacharya as a “fringe epidemiologist.” We know about these emails only because of a FIOA request. What unfolded in the days after the Declaration was nothing less than a coordinated attack from government, media, and academia to smear the man who had the gall to simply make a statement that summarized one of the most fundamental realities of epidemiology.

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 Great Barrington Declaration was authored on October 4th, 2020, and called for an end to the already-failed lockdown policies, focused protection for the elderly and disabled, and for the young and low-risk to return to just making their own decisions about risk. Read the Declaration here. 

Immediately after the Declaration was released to the public, a barrage of attacks from media, academia, and government officials ensued. “Anti-lockdown,” “Let it rip,” “pro-infection” were phrases commonly used. Even today, the headlines describe Jay as a “Contrarian” and “Lockdown Critic” and my favorite: “Unorthodox.” 

Nothing could be further from the truth. The history of evidence-based pandemic policy, epidemic mitigation, and public health practices supported the approach outlined in the GBD. The views espoused by the authors were mainstream. Marc Lipsitch, a Harvard epidemiologist wrote in 2011 after the H1/N1 response:

“Ideally, data on the economic costs (including indirect costs for socially disruptive measures such as school dismissals) and the public health and economic benefits of interventions would be formally weighed within a cost-benefit or cost-effectiveness framework to inform policy decisions.” 

This paper typified the analysis of experts in pandemic policy and epidemiology in the decades preceding Covid. Yet Dr. Bhattacharya calling for cost-benefit analysis somehow makes him “Fringe.” 

The same Marc Lipsitch, who signed on to the Jon Snow Memorandum (a polar opposite, maximum intervention approach with many signatories having pharmaceutical interests), was already moderating his lockdown support in a debate with Jay in November 2020. In the debate, Lipsitch concedes the realities of costs, harms, and many other points that have been Bhattacharya’s recurring themes that earned him the “contrarian” moniker. To Lipsitch’s credit, he had the integrity to actually debate the issue. 

Another example of this moderate, measured policy opinion is found in a report authored by Boston University bioethicists for the ACLU in 2008, (in what now seems like an alternate universe from what the ACLU has devolved into) “The Need for a Public Health – Not a Law Enforcement/National Security – Approach” states 

Coercion and brute force are rarely necessary. In fact they are generally counterproductive—they gratuitously breed public distrust and encourage the people who are most in need of care to evade public health authorities. • On the other hand, effective, preventive strategies that rely on voluntary participation do work. Simply put, people do not want to contract smallpox, influenza or other dangerous diseases. They want positive government help in avoiding and treating disease. As long as public officials are working to help people rather than to punish them, people are likely to engage willingly in any and all efforts to keep their families and communities healthy.

In the long-past-Bush era, it was the academic left that was advocating for human rights and restraint of government overreach in the face of a pandemic. A mere 12 years later, suddenly the same exact ideas are “right-wing.” 

The above examples are simply non-controversial summaries of what the majority opinion and mainstream lefty academics believed. In the pre-Covid world, the ideas that human rights should be upheld even in crisis, that vulnerable communities should be prioritized, and that disease spread was inevitable, were not even in question.

This brings us to the most glaring example of intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy of the academics who piled on the personal attacks of Dr. Bhattacharya. 

This letter was dated March 2, 2020, before the Covid Lockdowns happened in the US. It was sent to Vice President Mike Pence and was signed by over 800 public health experts. Below is a selection of quotes.

“Sustained human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus in the United States (US) appears today inevitable.”

“…careful and evidence-based mitigation of public fear.”

“A successful American response to the COVID-19 pandemic must protect the health and human rights of everyone in the US. One of the greatest challenges ahead is to make sure that the burdens of COVID-19, and our response measures, do not fall unfairly on people in society who are vulnerable because of their economic, social, or health status.

“As the coronavirus spreads in our communities, governments must mount a fair and effective response that maintains public trust, is grounded in science, and leaves no individual — particularly the vulnerable — behind. This will not only better protect the health and security of each of us, but also the economy,”

“People residing in close living quarters are especially vulnerable to COVID-19 and will need special attention both to minimize transmission risk and address their healthcare needs in the context of an outbreak.”

“Other critical healthcare programs must be maintained during this crisis. People with chronic conditions depend on continuity of care to maintain their health. Whether it is dialysis for kidney disease, chemotherapy for cancer, or opioid agonist therapy for opioid use disorder, lapses in these programs can have disastrous implications for patients.”

Read the letter in its entirety here.

Clearly, this was just an early draft of the Great Barrington Declaration, right? The language of balance of the government response with the importance of protecting the vulnerable, along with the admission that the spread of the coronavirus is a biological inevitability, rather than a policy decision. It was not crackpot nonsense, but a somewhat boring mainstream position.

The letter was authored by none other than Yale epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves. The same Gonsalves who dedicated a considerable portion of his time post-March 2020 to attacking Jay and his colleagues. 

At some point after the US locked down on March 15th, Gonsalves, along with many other academics and scientists, fell completely silent in the face of the worst example of human rights violations in our lifetime. The cancelling of cancer screenings and surgeries, closing of schools, closure of government services, and shutdown of the livelihoods of working-class Americans somehow did not trigger a reproof or objection. Despite his letter from March 2nd warning about how harmful just such measures would be, he fell in line with Fauci, Birx, and everyone else who went along with the lockdown narrative. 

But Gonsalves did not stay silent for long. He became the most vocal and vehement supporter of every harsh measure imaginable and went further by attacking critics of the response, specifically the authors of the GBD. In October 2020, Jenin Younes thoroughly documented the constant barrage of overtly political attacks against Bhattacharya, Kulldorff, and Gupta. Her article is replete with examples of Gonsalves unhinged against any objection or criticism of harsh pandemic response measures. Surveying the bulk of negative, sometimes defamatory media articles about Dr. Bhattacharya, they often cite Gonsalves as a source or quote him directly. The sheer amount of time and effort that Gonsalves dedicated to this pursuit was impressive. 

As of this writing, Gonsalves has either deactivated or deleted his Twitter account. Is it a sign of the turning of the tables, or perhaps simply a retreat to the leftist progressive echo chamber of Bluesky? Time will tell. 

As we celebrate the nomination and eventual confirmation of Dr. Bhattacharya, we will continue to hear the terms “contrarian,” “critic,” “anti-lockdown,” and yes, even “Fringe” describe him. For posterity’s sake, let us admit that this is nonsense. Lockdowns were a security state-driven pandemic response rooted in fear, panic, and authoritarianism. They were never mainstream. 

Republished from the author’s Substack