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“Don’t Be Afraid of COVID” recently tweeted President Trump. Mr. Trump does not do nuance, as the WSJ pointedly notes. And much of the media, along with his political opponents, criticized Mr. Trump with relish after he was tested positive for downplaying the Coronavirus.
How to Live with COVID
But scientists generally agree with his fundamental point that Americans need to learn to live with the virus.
The Great Barrington Declaration
The media seems to be ignoring the message of a new declaration from scientists Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta of Oxford, and Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford. The three are infectious-disease experts, informs the WSJ.
Organized by Messrs. Kulldorff, Gupta, and Battacharya, “the Great Barrington Declaration recommends that people be allowed to live normally while protecting the vulnerable.” As of the WSJ’s deadline, the statement had been “signed by more than 2,300 medical and health scientists and 2,500 practitioners, and counting.”
Sweden Gets the Last Laugh
They describe their approach as “Focused Protection,” but it’s essentially what Sweden has done and even the World Health Organization is now recommending. Many European leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron are also slowly embracing it, though it still remains heresy on America’s left.
As the Great Barrington authors explain, “vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza.” Sixty-seven children under age 15 in the U.S have died from Covid-19.
Trump, a Textbook Case?
The virus isn’t going away even if Joe Biden wins the election and perhaps not even with a vaccine. Better treatments and protocols have improved outcomes enormously for high-risk individuals—of which Mr. Trump may turn out to be a textbook case.
The shame is that Covid has become so politicized that the calm reasoning of the Great Barrington scientists is drowned out by the fear and loathing of those who want to blame Donald Trump for every new infection. But it is the best advice for how we should cope with Covid.
