Monroe Review

An international declaration against COVID-19 lockdowns currently includes tens of thousands of public health experts and medical practitioners, but thus far none of the signatories appears to be from Michigan.

A search of current public health experts and medical practitioners co-signers to the Great Barrington Declaration turns up no one in the group signing from Michigan.

U.S.-based signatories include Stanford University biophysicist and structural biology professor and 2013 Nobel Prize chemistry recipient Dr. Michael Levitt, Veterans Administration physician, epidemiologist and public policy expert Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, and Baylor University infectious disease scientist and associate professor of biostatistics Dr. Rodney Sturdivant.

Though it is not clear whether he has signed or will sign the declaration, McLaren Macomb Hospital Infectious Disease Specialist Anthony Ognjan has been widely reported, according to Bridge Michigan, as favoring herd immunity over lockdowns.

"Maybe what we should do is just unleash the Kraken -- you know, let the kids go to school, to college," Ognjan told Bridge Michigan. "Open up everything. Stop this crazy testing -- unless somebody gets sick, then test them and treat them. But just let the pandemic do what it does."

At present count, over 37,000 medical and public health scientists and medical practitioners have signed onto the declaration, as have more than 675,000 "concerned citizens."

The Great Barrington Declaration was written by three public health experts from Oxford, Harvard and Stanford universities to urge governments around the world to lift lockdown restrictions and to, instead, focus on protective measures for the elderly and other populations most vulnerable to COVID-19. The declaration theorizes that allowing COVID-19 to spread among young people and others who are less vulnerable to dying of the illness would provide widespread immunity in that population and reduce dependence on a vaccine.

The declaration is sponsored by the free-market think tank American Institute for Economic Research, itself funded by conservative billionaire Charles Koch.

Authors of the declaration --  Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert; Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician and epidemiologist; and Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in  immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases -- spoke with White House officials in September.

At the subsequent press briefing, attended by the declaration authors, President Donald Trump said his administration already is working to protect the elderly from COVID-19.

"As far as protecting the vulnerable is concerned, we provided over $21 billion to our nursing homes, and we are really focused on the nursing homes," Trump said during the Sept. 23 press briefing. "Everybody, including our governors — we have governors who are working very closely with the task force and with the vice president and everybody involved.  We’ve sent rapid-testing devices to nearly 14,000 certified nursing homes in the country."

The following month, The New York Times reported that the White House had embraced the COVID-19 herd-immunity declaration.

Also in October, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer disputed the benefits of herd immunity, saying in a news release that attempting what the declaration describes could kill 30,000 more in the state.