A top Trump health official met Monday with a group of doctors who are proponents of the controversial “herd immunity” approach to COVID-19, even as other experts warn of its deadly and dangerous consequences.
The doctors — Martin Kulldorff, a professor of at Harvard, Sunetra Gupta, a professor at Oxford, and Jay Bhattacharya, a professor at Stanford — all whom are epidemiologists and study infectious diseases, were invited to the meeting by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Scott Atlas, an adviser to Trump who other experts have cast doubt on for his statements about COVID-19, including his endorsement of herd immunity.
In the meeting, the three doctors told Azar that allowing the virus to spread uncontrolled among young, healthy people while protecting older adults and those at higher risk for serious illness would build up enough population-immunity to stop it from spreading widely while avoiding lockdowns and other mitigation measures that have had a damaging impact on the economy.
“We had a very good discussion. He asked many questions and we put forth our case, to protect the people who are vulnerable and the idea of trying to do lockdowns to eliminate this disease is not realistic,” Kulldorff said.
Other experts argue allowing COVID-19 to spread uncontrollably would lead to unnecessary deaths, illness and hospitalizations, even if the U.S. attempted to isolate vulnerable people from the rest of the population while the virus spreads.
Herd immunity is typically accomplished when enough people are vaccinated against a virus, but one has not yet been approved for COVID-19.
The idea of allowing the virus to spread uncontrollably is gaining traction in the White House, where Atlas is advising President Trump, who is battling his own case of COVID-19.
Atlas told The Hill in an email he attended the meeting and supports the declaration the group put out endorsing herd immunity.
“Their targeted protection of the vulnerable and opening schools and society policy matches the policy of the President and what I have advised,” he wrote.
William Hanage, an associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard, who noted that most experts are not pushing for continuous lockdowns everywhere all the time, agreed that a better job needs to be done of handling the unintended economic and social consequences of public health measures, but argued that speeding up herd immunity without a vaccine is not the answer and could also overwhelm hospitals.
“It’s quite dangerous, for multiple reasons,” he said.
“If you do this, you’ll get more infections, more hospitalizations, and more deaths.”
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SCOOP: Trump health official meets with doctors pushing herd immunity https://t.co/sfWgFzBCo0 pic.twitter.com/o0xEc7TFM5
— The Hill (@thehill) October 5, 2020
I thought that has been what they are up to. It’s the only logical explanation why they are acting the way they are.
I looked up these three “experts” to see if they have been discredited. Didn’t find anything negative except for a photo of Jay Bhattacharya. He looked like he had ingested some controlled substances.
We have to rid ourselves of Donald and his minions before they kill us all.
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