Grant, I am sorry to hear this. I do not underestimate the toll this pandemic is taking on everyone, including your partner. But the answer isn't in magical thinking, which I believe Martin offers, with "freedom" standing in opposition to mainstream epidemic control. 1/ https://twitter.com/gallagher_grant/status/1308464572576272385

We need to get community-wide spread down in states with high rates of new infections. Otherwise more deaths. Simply the case. Then we can target closures, scale-up testing, isolation, PPE etc. to keep rates low. 2/

Somehow we're now blaming public health experts for the failures to control the virus by @realDonaldTrump. We didn't have to be in this situation. We didn't. And the status quo isn't acceptable either. 3/

We need to care for each other--all of us--not say we're willing to sacrifice some for the benefit of others, which is what letting the virus spread in our communities does, with the notion that those are at risk can be protected from it as it courses through millions. 4/

I saw dozens of my friends die from HIV over past 40 years. Watched dozens of acquaintances meet the same fate. It was, is horrifying. I'm not going to write off anyone, suggest that they are expendable from COVID19 or any of the downstream effects of what is happening. 5/

But @MartinKulldorff is offering tantalizing promises: you are free now, go about your business, this virus will just go away on its own, as herd immunity rises across the population. We can have it all, our normal lives, the past back, everything as it was. 6/

Except we live here, now. Florida, which he holds up as an example just had a rash of infections and deaths, as did Arizona and other states that refused or delayed closures last winter, re-opened too early this spring. Those deaths are not acceptable. 7/

He has no "plan" to sequester the elderly--those who live in our communities by the millions today. Not in some theoretical place. Here now. 8/

He has no plan to figure out how to protect those who are at high risk of complications from #COVID19 who is not a senior citizen. Those with underlying conditions, which are common in the US. He has no operational plan for them, just a Pied Piper's promise. 9/

There are better & more humane ways to proceed, but an age-based approach, which relies on letting millions to get infected, many to get sick & die is barbarism. I say this not as a scientist, but as a human being, who watched many friends die from AIDS. No one is expendable. 10/