Saying that Wikipedia is "accurate and reliable" is like saying the corporate media is "trustworthy".
E.g. the complete absence of any demographics vs. time graph (and near-complete absence of demographic information in general) on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement
One can take a look at the talk page of that article to see the fervent resistance of editors to include more demographic information. One person compared it to debunking JFK assassination conspiracy theories without mentioning that JFK was in fact killed.
The entire "Demographic statistics" section is only a reference to the 8-12% Muslim population in France, which can charitably be described as misleading, since, in addition to giving no information on the rate of change or past statistics, is a very low estimate:
[Sickle cell] screening suggests that in 2000, 19% of all newborn babies in Metropolitan France had at least one parent originating from one of the risk regions. The figure for [..] 2015 [is] 38.9 %. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_France#Statist...
The scary thing is, he's essentially been proven right: China is facing a big issue where the rest of the world has herd immunity, but it's still resorting to draconian lockdowns. Bhattacharya was never a COVID denier, nor antivax, his main point was that isolation should have been targeted at the most vulnerable rather than applied nationwide.
The society-wide isolation orders were widely ignored precisely because most people knew they weren't at risk. An isolation plan targeted at those at risk may have been taken a lot more seriously.
The society-wide isolation orders allowed elderly people and those at risk as well as those who live with them to work from home without employer retaliation, reducing spread and saving lives until vaccine availability.
Society wide isolation orders were widely ignored as people realized the actual risks became clear. You point out that Bhattacharya did not propose using force to isolate the elderly, yet you neglect to mention the fact that no force was used to enforce the society-wide isolation orders either. A targeted isolation order may have been more stringently adhered to, leading to lower infections among those at high risk (real high risk, not this idea that 40% of people were "high risk").
16% of Americans are over 65. Of those who died under 65 (retirement age in the US), composing roughly 1/4 of all COVID deaths in the US, many of those were high risk (obese, diabetic, etc.) The estimate of 40% does not seem unreasonable.
And for the vast majority of them, COVID would not have caused serious health issues vaccination or not.
> This would not have happened if Bhattacharya's incredibly naïve plan of just closing off nursing homes had been followed.
Again, you have zero evidence to back up this claim. Toothless society-wide lockdowns may have been even less effective than a forceful targeted lockdown. Under Bhattacharya's plan, more drastic measures (but more limited in scope) could be applied to the populations that actually stood a risk. It is baseless to say this would have had worse outcomes since this plan was never put into action.
> 16% of Americans are over 65. Of those who died under 65 (retirement age in the US), composing roughly 1/4 of all COVID deaths in the US, many of those were high risk (obese, diabetic, etc.) The estimate of 40% does not seem unreasonable.
Over 80% of COVID deaths were among people over 65. And even then, people under 70 had a mortality rate of under 5%. You can call 100% of the population "high risk" if you choose any mortality rate over 0.00% as the threshold for "high risk".
I think quarantine orders were largely followed in major cities where the risks of a run away outbreak was worse. The goal was only secondarily to reduce deaths but primarily to protect the acute medical care system from collapse under a major outbreak. “Flatten the curve” didn’t mean end the local epidemics but to reduce the rate of infection to make the rate of people needing acute medical care lower than the rate the hospital systems able to service patients. Except for a few cases we succeeded. Death is a much more exciting metric to count, but it was never our objective in the public health response. Death was mitigated with the vaccine, and secondarily by the public health orders. (Note outside of China I don’t think there has been any actual lockdown or quarantines despite people abusing that word. Advice to stay home and business closure is not a lockdown. A lockdown means you’re forcibly restricted.)
Also - asking people to wear a mask caused hysterical backlash. Can you imagine if we had set up concentration camps for the elderly?
Bhattacharya's main point is that "Flatten the curve" is really "widen the curve". Reasonable to do for the at-risk population that are likely to get hospitalized and could create a shortage of hospital resources if they were infected all at once. Not so much for the vast majority of people, and especially not reasonable for children who were at minimal risk. Again, people talk about the need to reduce the load on medical without considering the fact that most non-elderly people who got covid didn't end up in the hospital.
> Note outside of China I don’t think there has been any actual lockdown or quarantines despite people abusing that word. Advice to stay home and business closure is not a lockdown. A lockdown means you’re forcibly restricted.
This is untrue, in much of Canada and the UK people were forbidden by law to go outside without good reason.
1. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
I also think GGP was wrong about the doctor. My guess is GGGP was referring to Kary Mullis, who was always quite the character. I don't see where his contributions have been erased, but discussing some of his erratic behavior along with his accomplishments is something that many conspiracy theorists were not happy with. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis
And you do not notice what the problems are with that solution compared to using lockdowns to keep spread under control until countermeasures (vaccines) are available?
This is the basis of Bhattacharya's thesis: focus the isolation efforts on the elderly people who actually end up in hospitals when they get infected, not just blindly applying lockdowns across all of society.