The nation’s “top infectious disease expert” and COVID guru Dr. Anthony Fauci and the National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins colluded to conduct a “quick and devastating” take-down of a document advocating for a lockdown-free COVID-19 response strategy, newly released e-mails show.
The e-mails, released on Friday by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, revealed retiring NIH Director Collins telling Fauci in October 2020 to discredit the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) — an international document signed by nearly 900,000 physicians that warns against “the damaging physical and mental health impacts” of lockdowns and other forceful measures while calling for achieving herd immunity through “focused protection” of the most vulnerable.
Per the declaration,
Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health — leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden.
Mere days after the declaration was released on October 4, 2020, Collins notified Fauci, along with NIAID Deputy Director for Clinical Research and Special Projects Clifford Lane and Deputy Ethics Counselor of NIH Lawrence Tabak about how the proposal from “three fringe epidemiologists” was getting a “lot of attention” and called for a “quick and devastating published take down of its premises.”
Collins further seemed to express mild dissatisfaction with his subordinates for their lack of initiative: “I don’t see anything like that on line yet — is it underway?”
Ten minutes later, Fauci e-mailed his boss an op-ed by Matt Reynolds of Wired UK entitled “There is no ‘scientific divide’ over herd immunity” that Fauci said “debunks this theory.” The piece called out the three scientists — Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard University; Sunetra Gupta, an epidemiologist at Oxford University; and Jay Bhattacharya, a public-health policy expert at Stanford University — who penned the GBD for not “following the scientific method of testing their hypotheses in a rigorous way and publishing their findings for critique.”
But Fauci was wrong: The piece did not debunk the basic premises of the declaration. Reynolds admitted, for example, that “lockdowns disrupt cancer care and other health services, and have a significant negative impact on mental health,” adding, “They [the authors of the GBD] are right. Almost.” That “almost” is explained in that the United Kingdom, where Reynolds lives, was not “in lockdown,” and “pubs, restaurants, schools and universities are all largely open.” That statement implied lockdowns were irrelevant since they were a “past” measure, which would not be enacted ever again. Just ask Austria, Germany, or the Netherlands.
The op-ed further lamented, “There is nothing [in the GBD ] about test and trace or mask-wearing,” which the author called “two interventions that we know are effective at stopping the spread of Covid-19” — they are not, as shown by real-life evidence and multiple studies (see here and here) — “and don’t require any curtailing of our individual behavior” — which they certainly do.
Another “wobbly” argument, as Reynolds called it, was that the GBD failed to provide a meaningful definition of “vulnerable” populations. Anyone is at risk of so-called long COVID, and it would be impossible to “seal off” every elder, Reynolds argued, and pointed out that the signatories had no meaningful expertise in COVID-19 — as if anyone did back in 2020! — and implied that their advice was not “based on science.”
A part of the e-mail exchange was not included in disclosures by the subcommittee in its year-end report, but was posted in a series of tweets by Phil Magness, who serves as an education director at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), a libertarian think tank that sponsored the declaration.
According to Magness, after Collins expressed his agreement with the Wired article, Fauci then sent him an op-ed in The Nation magazine entitled “Focused Protection, Herd Immunity, and Other Deadly Delusions.”
The piece attacked the far-left Jacobin magazine for breaking “solidarity” with the “official” approach to lockdowns by running an interview with none other than Martin Kulldorff, along with another Harvard professor, Katherine Yih, who spoke about how lockdowns hurt the poor.
“Locking down society is a blunt instrument whose goal has been to keep the overall numbers down at all costs. Lockdowns have been vastly unfair in their impact and have exacerbated disparities in wealth and power,” said Dr. Yih. Both professors stressed that the vast majority of the population should proceed with life as usual to achieve herd immunity — “a scientifically proven phenomenon just like gravity.”
The Nation — and Fauci — rejected this argument: “We certainly won’t get there [out of the pandemic] by giving cover to the [Trump] White House and governors like Ron DeSantis … to conduct business as usual. Business as usual for these men has led us to this precipice [COVID deaths]. Are we really going to follow them over the edge?” (The outcome of Biden’s COVID policies has been no better.)
Collins replied, agreeing with the article that the central message of GBD was indeed a “deadly delusion.”
Over the next weekend, Collins launched the smear campaign against the GBD in The Washington Post.
“This is a fringe component of epidemiology. This is not mainstream science. It’s dangerous. It fits into the political views of certain parts of our confused political establishment,” Collins told the outlet.
The revealing e-mails come as President Biden, who once promised to “shut the virus down,” continues to tilt at windmills to counter the spread of the Omicron variant.
On Tuesday, Biden is set to announce new COVID measures to fight the Omicron variant that are anticipated to “go beyond” his already revealed “Action Plan” against Omicron.
Meanwhile, prominent scientists believe the emergence of the Omicron variant will speed up the achievement of herd immunity.
Speaking on Fox News on Saturday, Dr. Robert Malone called the strain a “Christmas present,” since it is extremely infectious, causes a “very low” rate of severe reactions and deaths, and produces a strong immune response.
