Reddit’s Censorship of the Great Barrington Declaration

However valid and legitimate the points in the Great Barrington Declaration are, you can't take the number of signatures seriously when anyone can sign it with junk.

Signatures like "Dr Johnny Bananas", "Dr Person Fakename", "Dr I.P. Freely", "Dr of Hard Sums" doesn't really add a legitimate weight to it. Not sure if you can reliably solve that problem though.

That shit is really fucking transparent. Let's see how they try to paint this as damaging to the young. Remember, they're building up to talk about how bad isolation is for The Children(TM).

> The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates,

... and lower exposures to practically everything you'd vaccinate against. It's not like there's a 6 month window and the vaccines don't work after that.

> worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes,

Cardiovascular disease overwhelmingly occurs in older, COVID-vulnerable people.

> fewer cancer screenings

Cancer is far more common in older, COVID-vulnerable people. Young people get few routine cancer screenings, because such screenings don't make sense.

> and deteriorating mental health

Obviously you're going to have "deteriorating mental health" in a pandemic. However, there is literally zero reason to think that protective measures are going to cause more mental health problems than death all over the place. You have the fear either way.

> – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come,

Speculation.

> with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden.

Speculation.

> Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.

There are a bunch of "experts" who think that school improves mental health. When you dig into why they think that, they have almost nothing. People who liked school think it's good. People who did not like school think it's bad. I'm definitely convinced that school sucked for my mental health.

> We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young.

Thousand-fold my ass, unless by "young" you mean under maybe 12. Notice that they want to send young adults back to work.

Also, it not killing you doesn't mean that it won't fuck you up. "We" also know that COVID often causes permanent damage to various organs in people who don't die of it, including young people.

> The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk.

There is, of course, no practical way to do that. Guess what, assholes: these groups you want to isolate are all mixed up with one another. They live together, and they cannot afford to do otherwise. The fact is that "the underprivileged" are the ones just about least able to send Junior to school and somehow keep him away from Grandma when he gets home.

That declaration is cheap low-effort propaganda from an association of rentiers who are afraid they won't get their rents.

So the AIER is located in Great Barrington Mass.

This declaration seems to be named after that area.

This article does not indicate a y relationship between AIER and the declaration or between AIER and the scientists that supposedly signed the declaration.

Oh and what a surprise a few more minutes if googling and it seems like they are funded by the Koch brothers.

Just more propaganda from some right wing billionaires.