THREAD:
I literally just realized something. Either by design or default, the #onpoli government recently conducted a large-scale test of the core thesis of the "Great Barrington Declaration".

Spoiler alert: it didn't go well.
1/

The Great Barrington Declaration is a scam that was cooked up by the American Institute for Economic Research, a libertarian propaganda entity disguised as a research institute and funded by the usual right-wing billionaires.
2/

They found a few contrarian scientists to sign onto it and published it with a bug splash last year. The thesis is that lockdowns are more harmful than the pandemic and governments should shift to a "focused protection" model that insulates seniors at high risk of death.
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You can read the Declaration here:
https://gbdeclaration.org/ 
4/

The scientific community immediately objected, presenting clear, evidence-based arguments against the thesis and challenging the notion - never detailed - that you can protect high-risk populations while letting everyone else go about their business.
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A major problem is the idea that you can reach herd immunity by letting everyone get infected, which is a core premise of the GBD.
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Scientists countered: (a) infected people lose immunity over time, (b) widespread transmission raises the risk of more dangerous variants, (c) there are lots of bad outcomes short of death, (d) a small % of a huge number is still a big number.
7/

The Lancet published the John Snow Memorandum, a counter-argument that outlined the evidence-based case against the GBD. You can read it here:
https://www.johnsnowmemo.com/ 
8/

It occurred to me today that the #onpoli government just conducted a large-scale test of the GBD this spring.

They ensured all high-risk seniors were vaccinated and then relaxed emergency measures for the general population.

How did that work out?
9/

Surprise! The global scientific consensus was right and the climate science denying libertarian propaganda outfit was wrong.
10/

The worst wave of infections and hospitalizations in Ontario came after seniors and health care workers were vaccinated.

Relaxing emergency measures led to exponential growth in community transmission and overwhelmed hospital ICUs across the province.
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Most of the people in hospital are in their 60s, 50s and 40s. Some are as young as teenagers. A teenage girl died a couple of weeks ago after her whole family was infected.
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A small percentage of a very big number is still a big number.

Death is not the only negative outcome from COVID infection.

If there are too many infections at once, the hospital system gets overwhelmed and has to ration or delay treatment for everyone.
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Was the #onpoli government decision to test the GBD at scale deliberate, or just a side-effect of the general corporate libertarian ethos of the Conservative Party? Is it realistic to think the government hadn't heard of the GBD? It's very popular among Conservatives.
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I hope some investigative journalists are digging hard into the decision to open the economy when the Science Table was begging them to tighten restrictions and to wait and see whether hospitalization followed the projections before finally, belatedly taking action.
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Tens of thousands of people have been infected who would not have been infected if the government listened to its own science advisors. Thousands have been hospitalized. Hundreds have died.

All predicted and preventable.
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Did they get sick, did they need to be hospitalized, did they die because the #onpoli government wanted to test a right-wing libertarian declaration that contradicted the global scientific consensus? We deserve to know the truth.
17/17

PS I'd love to know what #onpoli #Covid19 experts think about this @DFisman @jkwan_md @SteiniBrown @imgrund @TheAmirImani @birgitomo @deonandan @IrfanDhalla @drandrewb @NaheedD