The ‘Great Barrington declaration’ makes claims about herd immunity that its signatories have failed to back up
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A ski resort once crowned “the best small town in America” may seem an unlikely venue for three scientists to issue an edict about the global response to a pandemic. But Great Barrington, Massachusetts, is the home of the libertarian thinktank the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), which this month hosted a meeting to discuss “the global emergency created by the unprecedented use of state compulsion”.
The result was “the Great Barrington declaration”, which prompted headlines about the disintegrating scientific consensus that managing Covid-19 requires society-wide changes to behaviour. It is a sorry parable about what happens when bad science gets co-opted by shady ideological interests.
