Experts Forcefully Push Back on Barrington Declaration

A letter signed by 80 researchers says the concept put forth by the Great Barrington Declaration is “a dangerous fallacy.”

The herd immunity approach championed by the Great Barrington Declaration would, if actually put into practice, prove disastrous for society as a whole and the healthcare system in particular. That’s the message in a memorandum that was written by 80 international researchers and published in The Lancet this week. That open letter, called the John Snow Memorandum, warns that a herd immunity approach to managing COVID-19 by allowing immunity to develop in low-risk populations while protecting the most vulnerable is “a dangerous fallacy unsupported by the scientific evidence.” That’s also a point made by Kevin Kavanagh, MD, a member of Infection Control Today®’s Editorial Advisory Board in his rebuttal to the Declaration.