Scientists Craft Herd Immunity Plan to Reopen Society; Others Say It's Too Risky

A proposal from Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard, Dr. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford — titled the Great Barrington Declaration — seeks to end COVID-19 coronavirus lockdowns and reopen society. The plan focuses on "herd immunity," in which people would purportedly build immunity to the coronavirus without a vaccine; the authors argue lockdowns "are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health." Dr. Anthony Fauci and other public health experts have dismissed the idea; when asked about the plan at his NBC town hall Thursday, President Donald Trump said in part, "the cure cannot be worse than the problem itself." Coverage from many left- and center-rated sources framed the plan as a misguided and dangerous proposal to pursue herd immunity, one that could potentially cost thousands of lives. Coverage from right-rated outlets, primarily libertarian ones, painted the plan as a vague but well-intentioned effort to allow healthy people to get back to a sense of normalcy while protecting the most at-risk individuals from the virus.