Covid vaccines - thread banned users in First Post

Just on this point, I've noticed it going on a lot.

Whether it's presenting some European group called PACE as a widely accepted view or presenting individual and contentious declarations as a consensus. Constantly trying to reframe fringe stuff as mainstream. Very slippery altogether.

AEIR, the American Institute of Economic Research, the group that hosted these three individuals setting up the "Great Barrington Declaration" is all sorts of shady. Noami Wolfe, the anti-vaxxer, is a fellow.

Here's a good starting point

It cropped up a lot during the last two years of anti-Covid quackery on this forum, as an FYI, anyone can sign up as a medical professional to it

You pretty much quoted the whole thing, which suggests letting Covid run wild with no lockdowns (and makes dodgy claims about influenza and children). You are suggesting the Great Barrington Declaration now represents medical consensus..

Riight, can you back up that claim?

No that is not the consensus - effects yes, "devastating" no. And the consensus view also considers the implications of NOT locking down.

You keep running away from the question, how were hospitals meant to continue as normal in a society where covid was allowed to run rampant? How were vulnerable people to be protected if they went in for scans, in a world where the staff working there were interacting in such a world? How were hospital services to carry on as normal, dealing with the extra volumes of hospitalisations in such a world???

Covid had devastating effects on public health, which is why when cases reached peaks, countries made the decision to have lockdowns, to preserve their national health systems, and to save lives from the virus.

There was obviously a trade-off to that, one of which was that lockdowns themselves caused their own health issues, people were unable to get certain treatment, etc. That was factored into the decisions.

The health damage from the lockdowns can't be isolated on it's own, because, obviously, the lockdowns were working to reduce damage from the virus.

Am not aware of any consensus that the net damage from the lockdowns was higher than the damage from the virus. Which is the subtext of your "points" here.

Can you show us that consensus?

we knew there would be disastrous outcomes for many

but you know - we rolled the dice anyway

Right.

The lockdowns (and measures) prevented deaths from Covid, by reducing cases, especially during the early period (when we knew less about the virus) and during later peaks. That has to be netted off with the number of people who died as a direct result of lockdown measures.

There aren't many examples of countries with increasing cases that didn't have some sort of lockdown, but famously Sweden resisted lockdowns/measures, left it more up to the people, and in that year they suffered higher deaths than their directly comparable neighbours (with the same socio-economic factors, e.g. Norway)

Also Sweden's economy didn't seem to fare better with no official lockdowns

Even with lockdowns and measures the virus killed 6 million people around the globe in just over two years. Covid killed approx. one in every 300 Americans.

We don't know how many would have died if we had no lockdowns/similar measures. But judging from Sweden's numbers it would have certainly been higher, probably exponentially higher in countries with higher pop density, lower socio-economic factors (pretty much everywhere else). And keep in mind many people in Sweden chose to self-isolate, and self-mask adherence was high.

How many people died as a direct result of the temporary lockdowns? That's hard to quantify. There were almost certainly some deaths related to people having difficulty getting treatment in hospitals, or refusing to go. There was mention of increased related suicides, but stats didn't show significant increases. The economic hit is hard to quantify, but after the first lockdown of approx 1 to 2 months there was a quick economic rebound, and as we can see from Sweden's stat's they also took a similar economic hit.

According to you lockdowns work. According to 99% of anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers and conspiracy theorists on this forum for the last two years they "don't work".

Moving on from that. We had partial lockdowns to mitigate some of the economic damage and other effects from having a full lockdown. It was all a question of balance relative to the number of cases plus the situation in hospitals.

THE REAL CONSPIRACY THEORISTS BELIEVE THAT THE GOVERNMENT CARES

ABOUT THEM, THE MEDIA WOULD NEVER MISLEAD OR LiE TO THEM AND THE

PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY THAT MAKES BILLIONS OFF

SICK NESS WANTS TO CURE THEM.