Professor Gupta

[LadyLindaT]

May I just point out that this Oxford Professor who is all over the media at the moment is a Professor of Zoology?

She doesn't answer what 'shielding the vulnerable' would look like, though.

I'm currently supporting someone having cancer treatment. My Mum went through the same clinic. None of the Specialist Nurses or Consultants are under 60. Who would replace them?

I chat to bus drivers, so far, four are or have someone vulnerable in their household. My Practice Nurse is vulnerable. Half of my DD's Staff are vulnerable.

We'd have to fully lock down, sacrifice a few hundred thousand, if not a million, at least. While we recruit to make up for the vulnerable Staff across all work sectors and for those people who rely on vulnerable relatives for childcare and voluntary work.

As said, she funded by a Trump think tank, who desperately wants the NHS. She believes in herd immunity and is happy to sacrifice anyone not fit and healthy and working class.

@Ecosse, you seriously think that Professor Gupta cares about the effect on the poor? They care about young people because they are workers and nothing else.

@LadyLindaT

May I just point out that this Oxford Professor who is all over the media at the moment is a Professor of Zoology?

Haven't RTFT but just chipping in to say (in case no one else has already) that SARS-Cov-2 (Covid) most likely had a zoonotic source i.e. was transmitted from animals to humans.

So I'd say that as an epidemiologist in a Zoology department, Gupta is perfectly placed to comment on the pandemic, and if pointing out her department was an attempt to discredit her, then it betrays quite substantial ignorance.

That said, I vehemently disagree with the conclusions that Gupta has drawn.

She was awful when interviewed. All she could say was that this should have previously been done and this is the result of these past actions. Nothing useful to say about where to go from here.

World Health Organisation (WHO) says...

"Herd immunity is achieved by protecting people from a virus, not by exposing them to it . . . Attempts to reach ‘herd immunity’ through exposing people to a virus are scientifically problematic and unethical. Letting COVID-19 spread through populations, of any age or health status will lead to unnecessary infections, suffering and death."

www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/herd-immunity-lockdowns-and-covid-19

So what Gupta and some others are advocating will, according to the WHO (not me) lead to "unnecessary infections, suffering and death."

@Ponoka7

This kind of hyperbole really does no one any good. Healthy 60 year olds are not at serious risk of death from COVID and these are not the individuals who’d need protected.
People who say it is unfair to shield vulnerable people at home for their own safety never say why it is ok to lock everyone at home instead.

With better focused testing, we could have a system for example where family and friends of shielders could receive weekly tests to visit them safely. That would be much better than testing DC every time little Johnny gets the sniffles.

The American Institute for Economic Research which sponsored Gupta and the Great Barrington Declaration is known for other great policy suggestions and articles such as ...

"Brazilians Should Keep Slashing Their Rainforest"

"Capitalism Is Cleaning the World Every Single Day"

@Ecosse, who said they were healthy? Go to any hospital, there's a lot of serious obesity in the Staff, including those over 50. They are the ones filling up the hospital beds and taking the ventilators. We've got to stop thinking that the elderly are bed blocking this time, they aren't, they are dying, or being housed into back up care homes. The younger population are filling the beds.

How do we replace the Staff and the child carers without a long lock down first? Explain please. I'm a CV GM who two households rely on for childcare. So are many others at my GCs school.

The people who I've talked about are vulnerable, not just over 60. My Mother's heart specialist spoke about his own heart issues.

It isn't a hyperbole it's a question that needs answering and Gupta won't answer it.

China took lockdown seriously - and now look at the fun their able to have! A proper Halloween - in Wuhan itself...

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8894943/Crowds-gather-Wuhan-celebrate-Halloween-ten-months-coronavirus-burst-life-there.html

They're able to do this now because they locked down completely and got on top of the virus. They didn't mess around with "yes - you can go to the pub if you're having a substantial meal - e.g. pie with a salad on the side".

The approach advocated by the Great Barrington Declaration very much represent a minority view amongst infectious disease and public health experts.

www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-barrington-declaration-an-open-letter-arguing-against-lockdown-policies-and-for-focused-protection/

acmedsci.ac.uk/more/news/navigating-covid-19-through-the-volume-of-competing-voices

www.wired.co.uk/article/great-barrington-declaration-herd-immunity-scientific-divide

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/07/why-herd-immunity-strategy-is-regarded-as-fringe-viewpoint

www.cnbc.com/2020/10/15/dr-fauci-says-letting-the-coronavirus-spread-to-achieve-herd-immunity-is-nonsense-and-dangerous.html

Also note how those who are very quick to criticise the Imperial modelling on Covid-19 (which has been fairly accurate if you actually read the paper) never seem to criticise the Oxford (Gupta) modelling from the same time (March) which suggested that as much as 50% of the population had already been infected, that the true Infection Fatality Rate may be as low as 0.1% and that the epidemic was 'on the way out'.

All of those claims have since been shown to very inaccurate (and were widely criticised by other experts at the time).

www.standard.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-half-uk-population-oxford-university-study-finds-a4396721.html

www.ft.com/content/5ff6469a-6dd8-11ea-89df-41bea055720b?

@Flyonawalk

Sunetra Gupta is an Oxford professor and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration. She argues that lockdown is ineffective as a means of controlling infection and that it has an unacceptably harmful effect on society, especially the poorest and youngest.

Her views have been sidelined by the media in favour of sensationalist headlines demanding another lockdown. Please look up online and read her views. I find her arguments sensible and humane.

This is the woman who argued we already had herd immunity in July

reaction.life/we-may-already-have-herd-immunity-an-interview-with-professor-sunetra-gupta/[hmm]

@bobbiester

Great Barrington declaration and Gupta's unnecessary flight to US to sign it was funded by a pro-Trump right wing US think tank that would line to see the NHS privatised.

The woman is a menace

Her views have been sidelined by the media

They really haven't. Her views represent a minority / fringe viewpoint amongst epidemiologists, yet she has been all over television.

@CoffeeandCroissant

The infection fatality rate is certainly less than 0.3% and could well be as low as 0.1%.

Clearly not what the scaremongerers went to beer. But true.

@gypsywater

She was awful when interviewed. All she could say was that this should have previously been done and this is the result of these past actions. Nothing useful to say about where to go from here.

This is what I picked up yesterday too. I don’t know much about her but I wasn’t a fan from the short clip I caught on the news. The professor basically said we need to live with it it’s funny because if any of her family members took ill and their were to be no hospital bed available their would be outrage.

No it isn't and certainly not for a country with the population age distribution of the UK.
mobile.twitter.com/MRC_Outbreak/status/1322598049789677570

Social Media Conversations in Support of Herd Immunity are Driven by Bots.

Approximately half of the profiles pushing the case for herd immunity are artificial accounts. These bot or bot-like accounts are generally characterized as engaging in abnormally high levels of retweets and low content diversity.

The high level of bot-like behavior attributed to support for the Great Barrington Declaration on social media indicates the conversation is manipulated and inorganic in comparison to the scientific consensus-based conversation opposing herd immunity theories.

Federation of American Scientists:
fas.org/blogs/fas/2020/10/social-media-conversations-in-support-of-herd-immunity-are-driven-by-bots/

Her views have been sidelined by the media in favour of sensationalist headlines demanding another lockdown. Please look up online and read her views. I find her arguments sensible and humane.

She is on every news programme as "the balance".

The Great Barrington Declaration was authored by Sunetra Gupta of the University of Oxford, Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University, and Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University.[1] It was sponsored by the American Institute for Economic Research, a libertarian think tank that is part of a Koch-funded network of organizations associated with climate change denial.[14][15]

Approximately half of the profiles pushing the case for herd immunity are artificial accounts. These bot or bot-like accounts are generally characterized as engaging in abnormally high levels of retweets and low content diversity.

I mostly avoid any Covid threads but from the titles, I assume many many of the threads on here are bot-like or astroturfing accounts.

Ive read there is a broader issue of women's advice being sidelined in general, despite making up more of the senior epidemiologists, the government ask the men instead blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/06/25/where-are-the-women-experts-on-covid-19-mostly-missing/

Interesting that many of the people criticising Professor Gupta as biased are instead supporting the lines of ‘independent’ SAGE that contains at least one communist party member.

It seems that a point of view is only biased if it disagrees with yours.

@Ecosse

Interesting that many of the people criticising Professor Gupta as biased are instead supporting the lines of ‘independent’ SAGE that contains at least one communist party member.

It seems that a point of view is only biased if it disagrees with yours.

And it is a complete non sequitur that this person is a communist party member.

It does not change the fact that Prof Gupta's views (on matters outside her subject) and dangerous and rejected as such by the medical and scientific community.

Chris Whitty (the CMO) for example, completely rejects the idea that herd immunity might be a viable strategy.

It is hard to get your views taken seriously when your predictions earlier in the year are being proven very wrong by current events.