Numerous medical scientists protest against the reactionary lockdown policy

 

By Michael Pröbsting, International Secretary of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 11 October 2020, www.thecommunists.net

 

 

 

Three prestigious epidemiologists and university professors have initiated the so-called “Great Barrington Declaration” on 4 October. [1] This statement – a powerful refutation of the arguments which have been used by the ruling class to justify the reactionary Lockdown policy – received massive support by scientists and professionals around the world. Within days, it has been signed by nearly 6,000 medical experts according to the BBC. [2]

 

As Marxists we strongly welcome this initiative! It lends support to the democratic and progressive opposition against the extraordinary expansion of the bonapartist power of the capitalist state. Furthermore, it destroys the myth spread by the ruling class and its media about the alleged “broad consensus” among scientists that there would be no alternative to the never-ending lockdown policy.

 

 

 

What does the Great Barrington Declaration” say?

 

 

 

The “Great Barrington Declaration” states that the “current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) 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. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice. Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.”

 

It also explains the massive difference in how the virus affects young and old. “We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza.”

 

They summarize their strategy as follows: “As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity. The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.“

 

Hence they make several proposals in order to improve the protection of the vulnerable. “Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent PCR testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home. When possible, they should meet family members outside rather than inside.”

 

At the same time, the initiators demand that draconic restrictions for the rest of the population should be abolished. “Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.”

 

 

 

Who are the initiators?

 

 

 

The three initiators of the declaration, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Dr. Sunetra Gupta and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, are all highly respectable medical scientists. Kulldorff is a professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring of infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations. Gupta is a professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases. And Bhattacharya is a professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.

 

Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a Swede by origin, has explained this approach in various interviews in recent past. In one of them he emphasized the necessity to approach the COVID-19 pandemic from a public health point of view. “What’s really missing here is proper public health thinking. A doctor has one patient in front of him or her. His or her responsibility is to this one patient. That is the doctor’s primary concern at that moment. For example, an oncologist will be concerned about a cancer that the cancer patient has. Even if you can prolong the life of a cancer patient by three to six months that is a very good outcome. But public health is different. In public health you cannot only think of one disease like Covid-19. You have to look at public health overall. If we do a lockdown, that has consequences on other diseases and creates other public health issues. It creates collateral damage.” [3]

 

In another interview which Kulldorff gave – together with Dr. Katherine Yih, a biologist and epidemiologist at Harvard – to the left-wing magazine Jacobin he drew attention to the hypocrisy of the liberal elites. “Question: “Experts say black and Hispanic Americans have been hit harder by the coronavirus in terms of illness and death, but they’ve also suffered more as a result of the lockdown in terms of job loss and food and housing insecurity. This creates a policy dilemma for progressives. What are your thoughts on how to deal with this dilemma?

 

Answer: First, the main reason for this is that black and Hispanic Americans are overrepresented among the urban working class. Second, it is not a policy dilemma, since the solution is the same for the two problems. With an age-targeted approach that protects older people while younger adults live more normal lives, older working-class people will be better protected, and the devastating effect of the lockdowns on working-class families will be much less severe. For the working class, the age-targeted approach is a win-win strategy. The dilemma is for the managerial class. Many of us pay lip service to equality and anti-racism, but we have chosen lockdowns to protect ourselves while throwing the working class under the bus.” [4]

 

Katherine Yih, a long-time activist in farm labor and anti-imperialist struggles and a founding member of the New World Agriculture and Ecology Group as well as of Science for the People, said in the same interview with Jacobin: “Progressives need to reject the unquestioning lockdown approach, which is simply inappropriate unless and until hospitals and other health care facilities are in danger of being overwhelmed. We need to be scrupulous about protecting the elderly and other high-risk groups. Others should be permitted to go about their business and keep society functioning. Workers must have access to personal protective equipment, COVID-19 testing, and sick pay. (…) Progressives should be advocating for a sustainable, communitarian approach that is informed by the knowledge that the virus will spread until herd immunity is achieved, acknowledges the need for stringent protections of the vulnerable in order to minimize deaths, and recognizes the harm caused by crude across-the-board lockdowns and their disproportionate impact on workers and people of color. The pandemic has laid bare the glaring and growing inequalities in our society, if they weren’t evident before. We must continue to fight for a radically fairer society, including, of course, Medicare for All. The need is greater than ever.”

 

We have provided such extensive excerpts from the declaration and interviews in order to make readers familiar with their approach. In addition, these long quotes demonstrate that the protagonists are not academic tin foil hat idiots who deny the existence of the Corona Virus. Neither are they right-wing neo-liberals who put business interests before public health. This does not mean that they share our world view. In fact, it seems that the signatories of the “Great Barrington Declaration” are ideologically heterogeneous. But there can be no doubt that this large group of experts approach the COVID-19 crisis from a scientific point of view.

 

 

 

A powerful confirmation of the Marxist approach

 

 

 

The “Great Barrington Declaration” is a powerful and welcomed confirmation of the Marxist approach which the RCIT has advocated from the very beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. Since early February, we have denounced the hysteria which the ruling class has spread (and continues to spread), claiming that this would be “the worst pandemic in modern history of humanity”. [5] We explained that while COVID-19 is a serious pandemic (and not a hoax like the Trumpian muddleheads claim), it is, however, not unique. We pointed out in our documents that humanity, unfortunately, has faced repeatedly various pandemics and diseases in past decades which have claimed hundreds of thousands or millions of lives a year. Examples for this are e.g. the so-called Asia Flu in 1957-58, the so-called Hong Kong flu in 1968, HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, severe Influenza seasons, etc. In addition, one should not forget to view the COVID-19 crisis in proportion to other diseases and preventable health risks (respiratory infections, tobacco, alcohol, etc.) which also cause millions of death every year. Furthermore, we also referred to the fact that Sweden, a country which did not impose any Lockdown, has not experienced excess mortality this year if one compares the figures of the first half of 2020 with those of the past decades. [6]

 

Against the reactionary Lockdown propaganda, the RCIT elaborated a detailed analysis of this development in more than 50 essays, statements and articles as well as a new book “The COVID-19 Global Counterrevolution”. All of them are publicly available on a special subpage on our website and the most important of them have been translated in various languages. [7]

 

As readers can follow our detailed analysis in these documents we will not repeat our arguments at this point. We rather limit ourselves to refer to some of the latest evidence which confirm both that the COVID-19 pandemic is not a unique catastrophe and that the Lockdown policy is not an effective instrument to combat it.

 

A few days ago, Dr. Michael Ryan, the head of emergencies at the World Health Organization, said that the “best estimates” indicate roughly 1 in 10 people worldwide may have been infected by the coronavirus. This estimate would amount to more than 760 million people based on a current world population of about 7.6 billion. [8] Since the global number of death caused by the virus is currently 1.07 million, this would amount to a mortality rate of 0.14%. This is similar to the widely acknowledged mortality rate of influenza (0.1%). In other words, all the so-called “scientific” arguments claiming that the COVID-19 crisis is something completely different from past pandemics and hence would necessitate an approach which has been in complete contradiction to all reactions to other pandemics, lack any serious basis.

 

Other studies have pointed out the dramatic consequences of the Lockdown policy which will result in large numbers of death. Oxfam, a well-known non-profit organization focusing on global poverty, recently published a report showing that 121 million more people could be pushed to the brink of starvation this year as a result of the crisis. “As many as 12,000 people could die per day by the end of the year as a result of hunger linked to COVID-19, potentially more than could die from the disease, warned Oxfam in a new briefing published today. The global observed daily mortality rate for COVID-19 reached its highest recorded point in April 2020 at just over 10,000 deaths per day.” [9]

 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that “there have been 93,814 non-COVID “excess deaths” this year, including 42,427 from cardiovascular conditions, 10,686 from diabetes and 3,646 from cancer. Many are due to government shutdowns of non-essential medical care.” [10]

 

Another recently published study analyzed the effects of “non-pharmaceutical interventions” (lockdowns as well as other restrictions) in 23 countries and 25 U.S. states with more than 1,000 COVID deaths. The authors – Andrew Atkeson, Karen Kopecky, and Tao Zha – arrived at the conclusion that the lockdown policy and other restrictions were not relevant for the evolution of COVID-19 transmission rates. “Our findings in Fact 2 and Fact 3 further raise doubt about the importance in NPI’s (lockdown policies in particular) in accounting for the evolution of COVID-19 transmission rates over time and across locations. Many of the regions in our sample that instated lockdown policies early on in their local epidemic, removed them later on in our estimation period, or have have not relied on mandated NPI’s much at all. Yet, effective reproduction numbers in all regions have continued to remain low relative to initial levels indicating that the removal of lockdown policies has had little effective on transmission rates. The existing literature has concluded that NPI policy and social distancing have been essential to reducing the spread of COVID-19 and the number of deaths due to this deadly pandemic. The stylized facts established in this paper challenge this conclusion.” [11]

 

The “Great Barrington Declaration” focus on protecting the elder and vulnerable people – instead of locking up the whole population – is absolutely correct. We ourselves have already pointed this out in past works and discussed possible measures to limit the effects of the pandemic to these sectors of the population. [12] According to official data, 2,694, or more than 45% of Sweden’s COVID death had been among those living in nursing homes. In the United States, some 40% of total coronavirus deaths have been linked to nursing homes, according to a New York Times database. In Britain, Covid has been directly blamed in more than 15,000 nursing home deaths, according to government data. [13] In short, in order to reduce the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, a special program for those in nursing homes in central – not a shutdown of the whole society!

 

 

 

An instrument to justify the political and economic capitalist counterrevolution

 

 

 

We have explained from the beginning of this crisis that the objective main role of the reactionary Lockdown policy of the ruling class was not to combat the pandemic but rather to promote specific political and economic interests of the monopoly bourgeoisie. They consciously generated fear and panic in order to utilize such a climate for political objectives like justifying the expansion of the police and surveillance state, finding a scapegoat for the Third Depression of the capitalist world economy (which began in late 2019), using it as an instrument against Great Power rivals, etc. Furthermore, the capitalists in important industrial sectors have been keen to exploit such a crisis as an extraordinary business opportunity. No doubt, numerous corporations – in industries like drugs, biotechnology, robotics, Artificially Intelligence and the whole IT industry, the whole online retail sector, etc – expect massive profits.

 

Against such COVID-19 Counterrevolution we have always advocated a bold program which combined demands in defense of public health, living standard and democratic rights. In order to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, the RCIT calls for a serious program of mass testing, free health care, free provision of protective gear and hygiene articles at workplaces and public places, and the expansion of the public health sector under workers and popular control. Such an expansion must include substantial wage increases for health and care workers and a massive campaign to recruit and train additional personal. It should also include the nationalization of all private corporations in the care industry without compensation and the building of additional care homes. We combined such a program with a comprehensive strategy against the capitalist austerity policy as well as for the defense of democratic rights against the bonapartist state apparatus. [14]

 

In this context, we want to draw attention to a remark of Dr. Kulldorff which he made in one of his interviews. He explained that the Lockdown policy in spring could not have been motivated by scientific insight. “As a scientist I have worked with infectious disease outbreaks for a couple of decades. Then suddenly in the spring, I was hearing that we should “follow the science” by doing something that I think is contrary to science. That was absolutely stunning to me. I could not understand it. Maybe what happened was one or two epidemiologists would say something and then the media and politicians would fall on it and claim that that is “the science” and then one or two other scientists outside of the field of infectious disease epidemiology might agree to it.” [15]

 

He also added that the Lockdown policy has been in clear contradiction to the established public health approach. “Lockdown is a new invention of 2020. Every European country had prepared pandemic plans. We knew one was going to come along. Except for Sweden, all the countries threw it out of the window when Covid-19 arrived. Of course, we don’t know the specific nature of the next pandemic so the plans have to be adjusted accordingly. But basic public health practice was ignored.”

 

Naturally, Dr. Kulldorff is no Marxist so he does not draw the necessary conclusions from his statement, i.e. that the bonapartist Lockdown policy of most governments around the world, contrary to their official propaganda, was motivated by political and economic interests of the of the ruling capitalist class. But his statement confirms that the Lockdown policy does not have its origin in the scientific community but rather in the ruling political elite. It was not the scientists which asked the governments to impose the policy of Lockdown. Quite contrary, it was the governments which initiated the policy of Lockdown and which demanded from medical scientists to legitimize it!

 

 

 

The Lockdown Left looks crestfallen

 

 

 

At the beginning of the COVID-19 global crisis in February/March 2020, the RCIT was an isolated voice in the wilderness. Given the tremendous pressure of the ruling class and the bourgeois media only very few medical scientists had the courage to speak out against the Lockdown policy and the COVID-19 hysteria. Among the self-proclaimed “Marxist” international organizations, not a single one passed the tests and stood up against the COVID-19 Counterrevolution. All of them, without exception, capitulated to the reactionary offensive of the ruling class – similar to social democracy in August 1914 when World War I began. They all accepted the official bonapartist hysteria about the “worst pandemic for a century” and they all defended the Lockdown policy with “socialist” phrases. It other words, these pseudo-Marxists succumbed to the shameful ideology of social-bonapartism and became part of the Lockdown Left. Wherever they were in government they imposed the draconic and anti-poor Lockdown policy (e.g. PODEMOS and the Stalinist PCE in Spain, the “Communist” Party in South Africa). [16]

 

One of the key objections of social-bonapartist leftists against our position has been that “you are like the right-wing Trump supporters who also oppose the Lockdown policy.” However, this is silly argument which bears the well-known slanderous logic which social democracy and Stalinism so often employ. There have been numerous occasions in history where not only revolutionaries opposed a government and its policy but also right-wing forces. Take the coalition government of social democrats and bourgeois forces in Germany in 1919-20 which signed the devastating Versailles Treaty with the Entente Powers. Take the workers and popular uprisings against the Stalinist dictatorships (e.g. Eastern Germany 1953, Hungary 1956, Poland 1980). Take the Iraq War in 1991. In all these cases it was not only revolutionary forces which opposed the respective governments but also right-wing and fascist forces. Likewise, the Nazis also hypocritically denounced the oppression of the Indians by the British colonial empire. Should revolutionaries have refrained from opposing all these reactionary governments and their policy just because fascists also opposed them rhetorically?! Of course, not!

 

The point is that Marxists, in contrasts to fascists, denounce such reactionary policy from a progressive point of view and advocate methods of class struggle. Revolutionaries oppose the Lockdown policy because they oppose the increasing power of the bonapartist state apparatus. The Trumpians strive to increase the power of the bonapartist state apparatus (e.g. see the policy of the White House to send federal special units to Portland and other cities in order to smash the Black Lives Matter movement). Revolutionaries combine the struggle for democratic rights with a program against neoliberal austerity policy and for the expansion of public health. The Trumpians do the opposite. In short, the “argument” of the social-bonapartists against our position is nothing but idiotic slander.

 

However, with the deepening of the capitalist decay, the crisis and confusion among the bourgeoisie as well as their ideologists are also increasing. In spring we faced a nearly monolithic bloc of the bourgeoisie, the liberal middle class and the reformist left – all advocating the Lockdown policy, all spreading fear and panic. But the change in the world situation with popular uprisings in a number of countries – most importantly the Black Lives Matter movement in the U.S. – has shattered this reactionary phalanx. [17]

 

 

 

Times are changing

 

 

 

Currently, as the RCIT predicted in July, we see a new offensive of the ruling class in imperialist countries to impose local and regional lockdowns. [18] However, it becomes increasingly difficult for governments to justify these measures. It is obvious that the Corona Virus is, firstly, not such a dangerous pandemic that it would justify such massive restrictions and, secondly, that the Lockdown policy is an impotent instrument to combat it. Nevertheless, governments try again to spread fear by referring to the rising number of infections; at the same time they hide the fact that – at least until now – the number of deaths remain low in most European countries and increases not at all or only slightly (this is the case in France, Britain, Italy, Sweden, and Germany, while in Spain there is a certain increase of mortality). [19]

 

As a result, popular trust in the government propaganda has declined massively. We see now an increasing number of democratic protests by workers and the lower strata of the petty bourgeoisie against the Lockdown policy not only in the semi-colonial countries but also in the imperialist metropolises. Due to the nearly total capitulation of the leadership of the workers movement and the left, these forces could not play any role in the protests against the Lockdown policy. As a result, various demonstrations in Britain, Germany, U.S. and other countries had a petty-bourgeois populist character. This offered space for right-wing provocateurs and weirdos in tin foil hats who try to exploit the legitimate popular outrage against anti-democratic attacks for their reactionary policy. However, the rebellion in Madrid in the past weeks are a promising sign that even the worst treachery of the reformists can not break the spirit of resistance of the workers and poor! [20]

 

In addition, an interesting mass protest took place in Berlin on 10 October. Under the slogan “Silent March against Racism and for Human Rights”, 20,000 people demonstrated against the reactionary Lockdown policy. Unsurprisingly, this protest was not called by any “left-wing” forces as they strongly support the Lockdown policy. The organizers rather come from the peace movement and their pacifist-democratic call bears a strong petty-bourgeois character. [21] Nevertheless, such initiatives are a promising sign as they reflect a healthy democratic mass protest against the bonapartist government policy. They also denounced all forms of infiltration by right-wing forces and expelled such people when detected. [22]

 

In other words, there are strong indications that the second wave of the COVID-19 Counterrevolution will meet much stronger resistance in the imperialist countries than the first wave in spring when the ruling class was able to paralyze the popular masses with their shock and awe policy of spreading panic and imposing draconic Lockdowns.

 

This rupture in the capitalist unholy alliance has also opened up the space for critical scientists. The “Great Barrington Declaration” is a clear indication for this development. Of course, we have no illusion. The reckless reactionary offensive of the ruling class under the cover of the pandemic will not end soon. We expect that the pandemic will be exploited by the bourgeoisie for years since it is a useful instrument to terrify people, to justify the expansion of state power and to create new business opportunities for capitalist corporations. Likewise, the Lockdown Left will continue clinging to the capitalists’ coat-tails and advocate their program of social-bonapartism.

 

However, until now the ruling class and the Lockdown Left could hide behind an alleged “consensus” of the scientists. With the “Great Barrington Declaration” this is no longer possible.