JB, on masks: "People believe masks protect vulnerable people & they end up taking more risks than they ought. They feel like they're protected by something that doesn't protect them." "Masks have not only been ineffective, they've been harmful." 2/n
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Sunetra Gupta (SG), on masks: "Logically, it's difficult to understand how it would work. Does it have a cost? I don't mind people engaging in their own games of contact tracing & masking if it has no cost." 3/n
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SG: "Mask wearing really has had a negative impact in all sorts of ways in terms of exposing the vulnerable." "Masking children is psychologically deeply damaging." 4/n
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Scott Atlas: "there's no evidence that a mask mandate was effective"; "a mask does not stop the spread of a viral infection"; "there's no scientific logic or rationale for children to wear a mask." END [excuse me while I throw up a little in my mouth]https://time.com/5861295/masks-covid19-spread-fighting/ …
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OK, gonna add to this thread to let you know what Scott Atlas & the 3 professors who guided the Atlas/Trump response to COVID-19 (Martin Kulldorff, Jay Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta), think of test/trace/isolate/quarantine. TL;DR: they hate it! 1/n
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Atlas on test & trace: "This was the wrong time & wrong disease to do that." "The point of testing is to save lives, not to document infection in low risk people." 2/n
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Atlas on test & trace (continued): "It was the wrong strategy, the wrong model. It was a misallocation of resources. And it caused fear in the public, that was the other contagion." "It was a rush to get tested, an obsession with testing." 3/n
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Jay Bhattacharya: "I wrote a paper on the futility of contact tracing." "It's punitive." Dr Kulldorff: "People have lost trust in contact tracing. So they won't do it if we get Ebola, when it is needed." [me: yes, he said test/trace is GREAT for Ebola but BAD for COVID
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Reader, I've tried my best to make sense of the words that were spoken at this roundtable. Jay Bhattacharya said "it's an illusion that we can control the disease spread." They all said masks, distancing & test/trace are useless. They offered no actual alternative, sadly 1/n
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They did say something along the lines of protecting the vulnerable something something, but they also said nothing works to control the disease, so, exactly how would they protect the vulnerable (they're against masks, distancing, or staying at home). 2/n
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In the past, they have talked about locking away ('shielding') the vulnerable, though I am unclear where they would put them (a castle? an island?). And locking away the vulnerable would mean locking a LOT of people away 3/n
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If we assume 'the vulnerable' are those who are at higher risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection or at increased risk of death if they get infected: -that's over 40% of the US population you'd have to lock away (ie. those with pre-existing conditions)! 4/n
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But wait, there's more! You'd also have to isolate: -Black, Latinx & Indigenous Americans -all people with disabilities -all elderly people A bit dystopian, no? Isolating all these people. IMHO this is an awful vision. 5/n
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I find this view really ghastly. What's more, it doesn't work. Sweden tried a 'herd immunity via natural infection' approach, as y'all know, with awful consequences. It tried 'shielding' elderly people in nursing homes, but there were a huge number of deaths in these homes. 6/n
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I am also unclear HOW Scott Atlas & his GBD advisors would isolate the vulnerable, including the elderly. How do we wall them off? We are the vulnerable & they are us. Many older people, for example, live with their children/grandchildren in multi-generational households. 7/n
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Multi-generational households are common. How do you isolate grandparents (lock them in a room? ugh). Atlas & the GBD don't believe in masks/testing/distancing & argue for infection of as many non-vulnerable people as possible. How would you then isolate the vulnerable?
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