|
| Covid-19 and the new merchants of doubt
| September 13, 2021
|
| On 9 April 2021, Open Democracy reported that Oxford
| University professor Sunetra Gupta, a critic of public
| health measures to curb covid-19 and a proponent of
| "natural herd immunity," had "received almost £90,000 from
| the Georg and Emily von Opel Foundation." The foundation
| was named after its founder, Georg von Opel who is the
| great-grandson of Adam Opel, founder of the German car
| manufacturer. Georg von Opel is a Conservative party donor
| with a net worth of $2 billion. "Gupta's arguments against
| lockdowns--and in favour of 'herd immunity,'" the report
| further noted, "have found favour...in the British
| government."
|
| This is not the first time billionaires aligned with
| industry have funded proponents of "herd immunity." Gupta,
| along with Harvard University's Martin Kulldorff and
| Stanford University's Jay Bhattacharya, wrote the Great
| Barrington Declaration (GBD), which, in essence, argues
| that covid-19 should be allowed to spread unchecked through
| the young and healthy, while keeping those at high risk
| safe through "focused protection," which is never clearly
| defined. This declaration was sponsored by the American
| Institute for Economic Research (AIER), a libertarian,
| climate-denialist, free market think tank that receives "a
| large bulk of its funding from its own investment
| activities, not least in fossil fuels, energy utilities,
| tobacco, technology and consumer goods." The AIER's
| American Investment Services Inc. runs a private fund that
| is valued at $284,492,000, with holdings in a wide range of
| fossil fuel companies (e.g. Chevron, ExxonMobil) and in the
| tobacco giant Philip Morris International. The AIER is
| also part of "a network of organizations funded by Charles
| Koch--a right-wing billionaire known for promoting climate
| change denial and opposing regulations on business" and who
| opposes public health measures to curb the spread of
| covid-19.
| ...
<https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/09/13/covid-19-and-the-new-merchants-of-doubt/>

--bks

In article <shon6j$1l4$1@panix3.panix.com>,
bks@panix.com (Bradley K. Sherman) wrote:

> | with a net worth of $2 billion. "Gupta's arguments against
> | lockdowns--and in favour of 'herd immunity,'" the report
> | further noted, "have found favour...in the British
> | government."

We have some empirical data upon which to make rational arguments.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95699-9

Comparing the responses of the UK, Sweden and Denmark to COVID-19
using counterfactual modelling

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