How to End Lockdowns Next Month

How to End Lockdowns Next Month: The approval of several Covid-19 vaccines is an impressive technological development that should rapidly end the lockdowns and allow normal life to resume. But authorities like Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates argue that lockdown restrictions may have to continue through the fall and even into 2022, notwithstanding the catastrophic harms the lockdowns have caused, especially to young people, the poor and the working classes. The imminent dissemination of vaccines can help end lockdowns by the end of January. The Great Barrington Declaration, which we wrote with Martin Kulldorff of Harvard Medical School, provides the key idea: focused protection of people who face a high risk of mortality should they become infected. The risk of mortality from Covid-19 infection is now well established by seroprevalence studies conducted world-wide. Seroprevalence studies measure a lower bound on the number of people who have been infected. There is a sharp age gradient in the survival rate after infection. At least 99.95% of people under 70 survive infection; that figure is only 95% for 70 and older. Covid-19 is thus especially deadly for the old and others with chronic conditions. But the lockdowns are deadly as well.