Consider the so-called Great Barrington Declaration, an online document that argues we should aim for herd immunity, while protecting vulnerable people from infection. The authors of the original are three scientists, but the declaration was accompanied by a petition that did not verify the credentials of the signers, many of whom used false names or are real people with no expertise in this area. In reality, the document represents a fringe view, which is unsupported by most epidemiological research, and thousands of other researchers have rejected the basic premise of their argument that herd immunity is achievable without a vaccine. The declaration certainly doesn’t reveal widespread dissent among real experts, yet it is often cited by professional conspiracy theorists such as David Icke and “lockdown sceptics” such as Toby Young and Allison Pearson.

I want to be clear that I don't agree w/ Barrington Declaration, and given the hopefully now under 2 weeks away arrival of initial vaccinations in the USA herd immunity looks like an especially poor idea.

But I completely detest this style of argument, where a bunch of extraneous guilt-by-association is tossed on top of "most experts disagree" written by someone who doesn't seem to understand what the hell they're talking about but writes in the most condescending, let me explain it to these dumb plebs manner possible.

To be clear, "epidemiological research" cannot really answer the public policy question of how to respond to a pandemic - this is ultimately a political choice and in a democracy must be subject to some degree of public input. For example I think evidence strongly suggests China's draconian responses have been incredibly effective tools and yet would be completely intolerable in our political culture.

Beyond that, all evidence I have seen suggests the author's own authoritative claim rejecting the idea "that herd immunity is achievable without a vaccine" is itself not correct. The reality is we are dealing with a novel virus so it's difficult to make any claim about long-term immunity, but all the data we have on mutation rate, lasting immune response from those infected, low rates of reinfection, some pre-existing immunity in select populations, and, importantly, really the entire idea that these vaccines will work ... is predicated on the idea that herd immunity would be achievable without a vaccine.

Perhaps the above paragraph is arguable, but it is certainly not some Qanon 5G pizzagate conspiracy theory. You can be entirely opposed to let-it-rip herd immunity on public policy grounds while believing it is scientifically possible.

What disturbs me more than crank randos online believing nonsense is western mainstream media's increasingly neurotic and self-discrediting attempt to label anything that disagrees with perceived expert consensus as some completely insane disproven earth-is-flat falsehood, belief in which is akin to a mental illness, and that the ideas must be suppressed and/or re-educated out of those afflicted. Especially given that SARS-Cov-2 was treated by many of these same people as akin to a conspiracy back in January and February.

One of my favorite examples is from Cass Sunstein[1], Obama oracle of nudging the hoi polloi away from their dumb irrational choices. But there were many others[2]:

As psychologist David DeSteno wrote on 11 February in the New York Times, “our fear distorts our thinking about the coronavirus”. Two days later, the same newspaper picked the brains of several eminent psychologists in a piece titled, “Coronavirus 'hits all the hot buttons' for how we misjudge risk”. And finally, in a Bloomberg article on 28 February, Cass Sunstein (co-author of the bestseller Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness, published in 2008) summed up the advice of many cognitive experts by saying that “a lot of people are more scared than they have any reason to be.”

Journalists and opinion-makers would do well to eat some humble pie and treat the public more like peers than children to be educated.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-02-28/corona...

[2] https://www.philonomist.com/en/article/why-were-we-so-blind