President Donald J. Trump listens as White House medical advisor Dr. Scott Atlas delivers his remarks during a press conference Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2020, in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House. (Official White House photo by Tia Dufour)
When Joe Biden claimed "no serious" doctor agrees with Dr. Scott Atlas' coronavirus strategy of loosening coronavirus restrictions for the healthy while protecting the vulnerable, the White House coronavirus adviser got the last word.
CBS News anchor Norah O'Donnell noted to Biden that Atlas is "advocating young people go about their business and older people sequester."
"Nobody thinks he makes any sense," Biden responded in the Oct. 25 "60 Minutes" interview. "Nobody. No serious doc around the world."
Atlas shot back in a tweet, the Washington Examiner reported.
"'NOBODY!' Ummm ... tell that to the 11,000+ (so far) epidemiologists and ID scientists from Harvard, Stanford, Oxford etc. who aligned with this. Boy, those Flat Earthers sure don't give up," he wrote.
Joe Biden (Video screenshot)
Atlas was referring to The Great Barrington Declaration, launched earlier this month.
As WND reported, the petition organized by professors Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard, Dr. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford and Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya of Stanford states that as "infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection."
A recent study published in the British Medical Journal found the sweeping lockdowns lead to more COVID-19 deaths and a prolonging of the pandemic than if the government were to let herd immunity build up in young populations, the National Post of Canada reported.
The researchers did a a reanalysis of data modeling used by the U.K. government as guidance for implementing blanket lockdowns.
They concluded that that while strict public health measures bring cases down, the number of deaths rise in the long run.
The authors described the lockdown model as a postponement of the pandemic.
Not a death sentence
In a Fox News interview earlier this month, Kulldorf
said most of his "colleagues in infectious disease are in favor of risk-based strategy or an age-based strategy where we protect the elderly or other high risk groups while the younger resume life more or less normally."
Gupta and Bhattacharya, who joined Kulldorf in the interview with Laura Ingraham, emphasized that herd immunity should be the objective, contending it could be achieved in a relatively short amount of time.
COVID is not a "death sentence," Bhattacharya argued, alluding to survival rates calculated by the Centers for Disease Control of nearly 100% for those under 70 and nearly 95% for those who are older.
"I think we've created this idea in the public mind that it is something so unique and so deadly that we should utterly end all normal existence as a result of it," he said.
A service member conducts a temperature check during a flu vaccination event for Army family members and military retirees at Fort Bliss, Texas, Oct. 9, 2020. (U.S. Army photo by Michelle Gordon)
"That's not right. We can have a much better way. Protect the vulnerable. Shield them for a short period of time until we reach a level where there is population immunity," the Stanford professor said. "And for the rest of the world, let us live our lives."
The CDC last month issued new estimates that showed people under 50 years infected by COVID-19 have nearly a 100% survival rate. It broke down to a 99.997% survival rate for 0-19; 99.98% for ages 20-49; 99.5% for 50-69; and 94.6% for those over 70.
Those who died of coronavirus, according to the CDC, had an average of 2.6 comorbidities, meaning more than two chronic diseases along with COVID-19. Overall, the CDC says, just 6% of the people counted as COVID-19 deaths died of COVID-19 alone.
The World Health Organization said in early October it estimated 10% of the world's population has been infected, meaning that by the U.N. body's own account, the infection fatality rate for COVID-19 is only 0.13%. That's a little more than one-tenth of 1%, which the WHO says is the rate for the seasonal flu.
The WHO's estimate in March of a death rate of 3.4% sparked panic worldwide, fueling the catastrophic lockdowns.
The Great Barrington Declaration argues that #COVID19 #lockdowns should be replaced with Focused Protection. Please sign.https://t.co/07nispEacW #GBdeclaration
— Martin Kulldorff (@MartinKulldorff) October 5, 2020
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