From Spears' Magazine:
Oxford epidemiologist and lockdown sceptic Sunetra Gupta tells Spear’s about how it feels to be at the centre of a global controversy
Lunch with eminent Oxford theoretical epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta begins with a discreet serving of hate. It’s not on the menu at Da Henrietta in Covent Garden, but it’s an unfortunate topic du jour for an academic who came to global prominence in October as one of the three co-authors of the now infamous Great Barrington Declaration.
Professor (of zoology) Gupta is checking her phone when I arrive, and discloses that she has decided to cancel her next interview, blaming the ‘relentless smearing’ that followed the publication of the declaration.
Named after the town in Massachusetts where it was written, the declaration contests the value of lockdown as a way of controlling Covid-19 and warns that its repercussions include ‘lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden’.
Instead, with co-authors Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard, and Professor Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University Medical School, Gupta calls for ‘focused protection’ of vulnerable groups, leaving the rest of us – and the bug – to get on with it.
‘Why would you arrest transmission?’ she asks. ‘To wait for a vaccine? You cannot get rid of it.’ Gupta was invited to Great Barrington by Kulldorff at around the same time as she was becoming increasingly worried by the prospect of the imposition of another lockdown.
‘We felt we needed to bring the costs of lockdown into sharp focus,’ she explains. ‘The fundamental issue [is] that we cannot afford to be in lockdown. By “afford” I don’t just mean there isn’t enough money in the coffers. The damage done is too profound – it’s just a simple cost-benefits analysis. Once you recognise that, you then have to think, “Well what can we do?”’
To listen to Gupta (who also writes literary fiction) or to read the declaration is to be drawn into a fascinating thought experiment. Yet it hasn’t been received that way: instead it prompted accusations that the authors were calling for ‘age-based apartheid’ and met a wall of anger....
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If interested see also CNBC, February 12:Doctors warn Covid will become endemic and people need to learn to live with it
