There are many lessons to be gleaned from the U.S. pandemic response. House Democrats don’t care to study them.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis last month issued a deeply partisan report demonizing doctors who purportedly espoused “a dangerous and discredited herd immunity via mass infection strategy.” The report took aim at the Trump administration’s embrace of the October 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, in which epidemiologists Martin Kulldorff (Harvard), Sunetra Gupta (Oxford) and Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford) advocated protecting the elderly and vulnerable while allowing schools and businesses to reopen. This wasn’t a strategy to infect masses of people on purpose. The goal was to minimize deaths and social and economic harm until the country reached herd immunity through infection or vaccination.
The Great Barrington strategy of “focused protection” helped minimize the pandemic’s collateral damage until vaccines became available. The Biden administration then undertook a strategy of herd immunity via vaccination. But when this strategy failed, it doubled down with vaccine mandates.
One of the most predictive political metrics in the US is how much formal education one is plagued with.
In the new NYT/Harris poll showing Biden with 33% approval (😬), only 20% of those with no HS approve of Biden, compared to 55% of those with graduate degrees: the Dem base. pic.twitter.com/9I2z1lbRHa
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 11, 2022