Will Jones and I went along to the Frontline Club on Wednesday to see Freddie Sayers interview Martin Kulldorff, one of the original three signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration, for UnHerd TV. It was a fascinating discussion, ostensibly about what Sweden has to teach the rest of the world about how to manage a pandemic, but it ranged far and wide. One of the most striking passages is when he talks about the heavy price he has had to pay for challenging the prevailing scientific orthodoxy on lockdowns in October 2020. You can watch the YouTube video of the interview here. Both Will and I asked questions – you can see mine at the 58m 20s mark. We had a drink with Martin afterwards – and, not surprisingly, he’s a charming, modest, intelligent man.
Here are some of the highlights, as transcribed on UnHerd.
On the scientific community’s denial of natural immunity…
We’ve known about natural immunity since 430 BC during the Athenian plague. So this is not a new concept. It would have been shocking if the immunity from the vaccine was better than the immunity from having recovered from Covid. So by pushing these vaccines on those who already had Covid, was both unnecessary and unethical, but it also diminishes the trust in public health authorities and diminishes the trust in vaccines. […] These vaccine fanatics who insisted that everybody should be vaccinated, including those who already have immunity from having recovered from Covid, I think they have destroyed the confidence in vaccines in general, to an extent that a small group of pre-Covid, so-called anti-vaxxers had never succeeded.
On the reaction to the Great Barrington Declaration…
The difference was that it came from three people other than one person. All of the three of us have worked on infectious disease technology. […] All of us came from reasonably respectable universities: Oxford, Harvard and Stanford. So it was impossible to ignore. We were attacked, including by the NIH Director Collins and Anthony Fauci and Jeremy Farrar at the Wellcome Trust here and Christian Drosten in Germany who called us pseudo-scientists. But I think the key thing was to show the public that there was not scientific consensus for lockdowns.
On whether he was supported by Harvard after speaking out…
No, I didn’t get much defence from the university, no. […] I got private emails from many of the faculty members, many of whom I’d never heard of before. So there was support, yes, from individuals. […] I think that’s a huge problem for science as we move forward, because science can only thrive with discussions. It’s a process. And if we don’t have open discourse about science, science is going to die.
On the problems with epidemiological modelling…
I think these models where you predict a certain number of people are going to die, are pretty useless. And the key thing is what is the optimal strategy to use? So in the case of Covid, in the beginning, we didn’t know exactly what was the infection-fatality rate, which is what’s the risk of dying if you get infected, because we didn’t know how many people had got infected. The optimal strategy doesn’t depend on if it’s 0.1%, or 1% because the optimal strategy depends on the difference, the relative risk in the difference by age or some other factor. So in terms of deciding what is the optimal thing to do, these models that Imperial College developed, I think were very useless.
On the effects of mishandling the pandemic…
I think there will be an enormous distrust in public health agencies. I think there will be an enormous distrust in science, in the scientific community. I think that will take decades to repair, if it can be repaired, I don’t know. I’m sure there will be consequences, political consequences as well. They’re obviously enormous public health consequences from the collateral damage, which I mentioned. I think there’s also economic consequences of these lockdowns that we’re starting to see now. So I think the consequences are profound. And maybe we are in a tipping balance in terms of whether we accept this as the standard way of doing things, which I think would be terrible, or maybe we go in a different direction, where we say, this was a fiasco, let’s make sure it doesn’t happen again.
The whole interview is worth watching in full.
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Most people still haven’t heard of the Great Barrington Declaration.
Journalists (present company excepted) are dead. Science isn’t getting the oxygen it needs.
Dark times indeed.
Yes, real science is probably dead and so is real journalism. So both professions that are supposed to seek-out the truth are now fighting those who do this.
This is not what one would describe as a positive development for civilization.
I look forward to watching the whole video. Thanks for covering this event!
Doctors are BEGGING parents not to give their children deadly COVID-19 vaccines
https://www.newstarget.com/2022-06-23-doctors-begging-parents-spare-children-covid-vaccines.html
By Arsenio Toledo
Stand in the Park Sundays from 10.30am to 11.30am
make friends & keep sane
Wokingham
Howard Palmer Gardens Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
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Henley
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Telegram http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
I like the gentle dig he took at the Gates Foundation.
His characterisation of them calling around to discourage scientists from speaking up against lockdowns as “strange” felt like there was more he could have said but preferred not to.
What a menace to society that organisation is.
If Bill Gates were to get offed, Epstein stylee, what would happen with his foundation? Would it continue its sinister work?
I despair that so few of my friends have heard of the Gt Barrington Declaration. Where have they been? It was Lockdown Sceptics that highlighted it for me and I signed. It was so obvious from say 3-4 months into 2020 that we were being taken for a ride. I know many saw it earlier. Sad to reflect that there are still many living under the illusion that the “Great Lockdown” was a “Good Thing” (anybody remember 1066 and all that?).
Even when, in March 2020, COVID-19 was no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious disease (HCID) in the UK.
I have refused the vaccination and I’m damn glad I did now, even though it cost me in terms of being unable to visit an elderly relative in Norway until September 2021 – and even then I had to go into quarantine.
We have been totally taken for a ride by our Government, WHO, pharmaceutical companies and The Gates Foundation, inter alia. I’m bemused that the Valneva vaccination (a “dead” vaccine) contract was cancelled by Javid (resulting in a huge compensation to Valneva). WHY? I can only assume that it was because of pressure from the likes of Pfizer…Can’t have competition, can we? To say I’m spitting feathers would be an understatement.
For Pfizer, it’s not enough to be given immunity. They have acted like this since the late 1960s
The Great Barrington Declaration, signed by a million lay people, thousands of doctors, researchers and scientists. The authors, three of the smartest minds, who risked their livelihoods, prestigious professorships to help all of us. Countless state governors in the USA have asked for their advice and incorporated the advice into legislation. One has to wonder why people like Justin Trudeau, Boris Johnson, Sage, NIH, FDA, MHRA, Macron,Draghi, Ursula Leyden did not follow their advice.
Did anyone hear Kuldorff give a valid reply to Toby’s question ? Full credit to him for posing so much resistance to pandemic politics, and yet … he seems far to respectful of the ‘vaccine endpoint’ and seems to accept vaccine efficacy without references to live trial evidence :/