As I originally wrote the very first time I discussed the Great Barrington Declaration, the idea of “focused protection” was long on claimed benefits but very short on policy specifics regarding how, exactly, those vulnerable to the worst outcomes from COVID-19 infection would be “protected” while ignoring that, even among the “low risk” population, a “let ‘er rip” policy like that espoused by the Great Barrington Declaration authors would still result in mass death and morbidity. Indeed, a number of respected public health scientists responded with the John Snow Memorandum, which argued that mass infection was not a viable strategy and explained why “let ‘er rip” would be far more harmful than letting the young develop “natural immunity” (more appropriately referred to as postinfection immunity) in a strategy to speed the achievement of “natural herd immunity.” (For a detailed explanation why the Great Barrington Declaration couldn’t have worked, I recommend this article, as well as an BMJ Rapid Response written by a Local Councillor in the UK who described in detail the practicalities that would have made a “focused protection” strategy almost certain to fail.

The Great Barrington Declaration was what I referred to as “magnified minority”; i.e., a document written by fringe physicians and/or scientists and then signed by a lot of other physicians and/or scientists in order to give the impression that the statements in the document are scientifically worthy of consideration. For purposes of the propaganda value of such a document, it doesn’t matter one whit if the signatories have the relevant expertise or not; all that matters is that they have advanced degrees after their names, in order to give the appearance to the public that a large number of experts endorse the document. Moreover, “magnified minority” is a common tactic by science deniers and has been used by, for example, cranks who claim that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, climate science deniers, and evolutionists. (Does anyone remember Scientific Dissent from Darwinism?)

The Great Barrington Declaration was the same tactic. It was also profoundly eugenicist, as I argued right from the start, in that it left the elderly and those with chronic illnesses to the tender mercies of SARS-CoV-2 while only paying lip service to actually protecting them.