Was The Great Barrington Declaration Right? A Soho Forum Debate

Jay Bhattacharya and Sten Vermund debate the resolution, "Focused protection, as set forth in the Great Barrington Declaration, should be the general principle of public health management of highly infectious respiratory virus pandemics." For the affirmative: Jay Bhattacharya, MD and PhD, is a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and at the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute. His research focuses on the economics of health care around the world with a particular emphasis on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations. His peer-reviewed research has been published in economics, statistics, legal, medical, public health, and health policy journals. He holds an MD and PhD in economics from Stanford University. Dr. Bhattacharya was one of three main co-signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration of October 2020. For the negative: Sten Vermund, MD and PhD, is a Professor of Public Health and Pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine. A pediatrician and infectious disease epidemiologist, he has focused on diseases of low and middle income countries. He has become increasingly engaged in health policy, particularly around sustainability of HIV/AIDS programs and their expansion to non-communicable diseases, coronavirus pandemic response and prevention, and public health workforce development. His recent grants include capacity-building for public health in Chad, molecular epidemiology for HIV in Kazakhstan, and COVID-19 vaccine studies in Dominican Republic and Connecticut. He has worked with schools and arts organizations for COVID-19 risk mitigation and institutional safety.