A weekend topic starting with the Los Angeles Times. "When Steve Qunell won a seat on the City Council last year in this town of 8,000, he figured he’d be dealing with potholes and affordable housing. Instead, he finds himself at the center of a raging debate over how to fight the coronavirus. The state’s governor, Steve Bullock, a Democrat who is in the final stretch of a tight U.S. Senate race and has been reluctant to impose restrictions that could hurt his campaign, called on the hardest-hit counties to consider shutting bars and enforcing a statewide mask mandate."

"There was little appetite for that in conservative Flathead County, where the health board has been dominated by an outspoken doctor who argues that the pandemic is a hoax. That put the onus on the Whitefish City Council. 'We are the last line of defense,' Qunell, a 49-year-old high school social studies teacher, told his fellow council members during an online public meeting this week. 'Are we going to lead? Or are we just going to follow the nonbelievers in the county?'"

"Places like Whitefish once could afford to view the pandemic as a distant big-city problem. Through mid-September, sparsely populated Montana had a death toll of 140. But that figure has doubled over the last five weeks as a new wave of infections sweeps the country. Whitefish was also one of the first cities in Montana to make people wear masks — though the governor soon issued a mandate statewide."

"Leading the resistance was Dr. Annie Bukacek, a 62-year-old internist known for her far-right views and opposition to vaccination. Flathead County commissioners appointed her to the county health board last December after dismissing two other doctors with more public health experience — changes the commissioners said were meant to increase the diversity of views."

"Bukacek became a hero of anti-lockdown activists across the country last spring after she delivered a speech to a local church congregation alleging that the federal government was exaggerating the coronavirus death toll. Still, from the beginning, there was strong local opposition to such restrictions. 'People are being terrorized by fearmongers into relinquishing cherished freedoms,' she told members of the Liberty Fellowship."

"The congregation is led by Chuck Baldwin, who is described by the Montana Human Rights Network as 'the unofficial reverend of the militia movement.' He has defied state orders by continuing to hold in-person services. Erica Lengacher, a 46-year-old critical-care nurse who works nights in the ward, could cope with the stress of watching patients dying. That was part of the job."

"Harder to deal with was the indifference that opponents of basic safety measures seemed to have for victims of the pandemic. 'I realize that there’s a historic tension between public health and individual liberties,' she said. 'But a good portion of our community is flouting the state mask mandate, and I still can’t get my head around how this has become so politicized and divisive.'"

"This week the county health department advised residents to stay at home as much as possible and limit contacts outside their families to no more than six people a week, each for 15 minutes or less. The recommendations have been widely disregarded. Tamalee St. James Robinson, the interim county health officer, said in an interview that she has the authority to make such measures mandatory but that more rules would be useless because officials were refusing to enforce those already in place."

"The county prosecutor, Travis Ahner, said he was focused on crime and didn’t see a point in cracking down on businesses for mask violations. For their part, the county commissioners released a statement this month supporting 'the Constitutional rights of Montanans to make choices about personal protections for themselves.' 'Where does that leave me, just me out there?' Robinson asked."

"The city manager suggested writing a letter to the health board encouraging it to act. A councilman said another letter to businesses might persuade them to cooperate. Qunell didn’t see the point. 'The county’s not going to do anything no matter what letters we write,' he said."

"He wanted the council to vote to close bars by 10 p.m. — before they usually get crowded and rowdy — and limit restaurants to 25% of capacity. But the only thing the council decided was to meet again Monday to consider imposing limits during Halloween weekend, when Whitefish traditionally puts on a popular downtown bar crawl."

"In an interview, Qunell said Whitefish must find a balance between protecting citizens and the economy that has eluded national, state and county leaders. 'There’s been a failure of leadership from the very highest levels,' he said. 'The responsibility keeps getting pushed downhill, and it’s ended up in our laps.'"

The Wall Street Journal. "The Covid rebels make an unlikely pair. Jay Bhattacharya was born in Kolkata, an Indian city that pulsates with people. Martin Kulldorff is from Umeå, Sweden, population 90,000. Dr. Bhattacharya, a physician and economist, and Mr. Kulldorf, a biostatistician—who study epidemiology at the medical schools at Stanford and Harvard, respectively—are, in the eyes of their critics, dangerous contrarians for opposing Covid-19 lockdowns."

"Some of the criticism borders on hysteria: A colleague accused Mr. Kulldorff of practicing 'Trumpian epidemiology' after he gave an interview to the far-left Jacobin magazine in which he called for a 'radically different' approach to pandemic management."

"Most pertinently, the two men are the authors—with Sunetra Gupta, a professor of epidemiology at Oxford—of the Great Barrington Declaration. Published on Oct. 4, the declaration is a cri de coeur against lockdowns and other economic restrictions that have hobbled swaths of the world. It asked instead for 'focused protection'—a policy of allowing 'those at minimal risk of death' to resume their lives while societies concentrate on 'better protecting those who are at highest risk.'"

"I interview the two men jointly by Zoom—Dr. Bhattacharya in California, Mr. Kulldorff in Massachusetts. The former speaks of a 'systematic media campaign' against the declaration. He says Google 'shadow banned' the text in the days after it was published. 'If you typed in ‘Great Barrington Declaration,’ what would happen is that the actual website would appear on the second or third page, buried under a whole long list of negative stories.' (The matter has since been resolved, he says.)"

"I discover a similar problem with 'herd immunity,' which the declaration sets out as the end point to be reached after societies have minimized 'mortality and social harm.' On the morning of our interview, I search Google for 'herd immunity' and find that the three links highlighted by the search engine as 'Top Stories' are uniformly negative."

"'The politicization of Covid,' Mr. Kulldorff says, 'is extremely unfortunate. People automatically assume what your political beliefs are based on your views on the pandemic. This is very strange, in my mind.' Dr. Bhattacharya adds that 'the traditional markers for political identity have absolutely no meaning' in the context of Covid."

"Illustrating the point, Mr. Kulldorff says he has defended Sweden’s Social Democratic government, which 'kept schools open against enormous international criticism,' criticized the British Conservative government for its lockdown, praised the Republican governor of South Dakota for her open-for-business policies, and criticized the pro-lockdown Republican governor of Massachusetts, where he lives. 'I must be very split-minded,' he chuckles, 'because in one place I’m a socialist, in another I’m a conservative.'"

"Dr. Bhattacharya cites an example of Covid politics that he found 'shocking.' When Black Lives Matter protests broke out in the spring, '1,300 epidemiologists signed a letter saying that the gatherings were consistent with good public health practice.' The 'same epidemiologists' were arguing that 'we should essentially quarantine in place.' In his view, this opened up the letter’s signers to 'appropriate criticism, that they’d asked people to shut down their businesses, stay out of schools, stop worshiping, and yet they’re saying it’s OK to protest. It just reeked of political bias.'"

"What unites the two men is their revulsion against the 'current Covid policy.' This policy 'violates every single value I hold dear,' Dr. Bhattacharya says. 'Every single one.' Elaborating, he says he accords paramount importance—'derived, in my case, from Rawlsian and Christian commitments'—to the protection of the vulnerable and the poor world-wide from 'avoidable death and suffering.' The lockdowns have 'manifestly failed to do this by inducing economic collapse that has placed the lives of 130 million poor people world-wide at risk of starvation.'"

"He also values 'the norms of medical ethics that militate against doing harm to patients.' The current lockdown policy, in his telling, asks children and young adults—'who face more medical and psychological risk from the lockdowns than they do from Covid infection'—to accept this harm 'in the false hope that this sacrifice will protect the vulnerable people.'"

"Mr. Kulldorff describes lockdowns as 'the worst assault on the working class in half a century—the worst assault since segregation and the Vietnam War.' Present policies are protecting 'very low-risk college students and very low-risk professionals—attorneys, bankers, journalists like you, scientists like me—because basically we can work from home.'"

"In contrast to privileged professionals, Mr. Kulldorff says, the blue-collar class is 'out there working, including high-risk people in their 60s. So the working class is building up the population immunity that will eventually protect all of us.' Dr. Bhattacharya adds that one of the reasons 'minority populations have had higher mortality in the U.S. from the epidemic is because they don’t often have the option—even if they’re older or have co-morbid conditions—to stay at home.'"

"Lockdown policies are not only 'regressive,' with their disparate impact on the poor and minorities; they reflect, Dr. Bhattacharya says, a 'sort of monomania.' The world 'panicked in March, and the focus came to just be on Covid control and nothing else.'"

"People saw pictures from Wuhan, China, and Bergamo, Italy, and concluded that they had to do 'something very, very drastic in order to address this drastic thing that’s happening.' There was 'an action bias that led to the adoption of lockdowns as a form of contagion itself.'"

"Mr. Kulldorff says the Covid-19 restrictions violate two cardinal principles of public health. First, 'you can’t just look at Covid, you have to look holistically at health and consider the collateral damage.' Among the damage: a worsening incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer and an alarming decline in immunization. 'People aren’t going to the doctor,' he says. Dr. Bhattacharya also points to the suspension of tuberculosis programs in India and of malaria-eradication programs elsewhere."

"Mr. Kulldorff’s second principle: 'You can’t just look short-term.' Dr. Bhattacharya says we will 'be counting the health harms from these lockdowns for a very long time.' He says anti-Covid efforts are sowing the seeds of other epidemics: 'Pertussis—whooping cough—will come back. Polio will come back because of the cessation of vaccination campaigns. All these diseases that we’ve made substantial progress in will start to come back.'"

"Both men say that the Great Barrington Declaration is a call for a return to traditional public-health practice. 'We’re not arguing for anything really novel,' Dr. Bhattacharya says. 'It’s a call for thinking holistically about public health again, not just about one disease.' The declaration also reflects 'the norms of open scientific discourse, which have been violated by proponents of the Covid lockdowns in the name of protecting the public from ‘dangerous’ ideas.'"

"We circle back to the idea of herd immunity, which Mr. Kulldorff calls 'the most misunderstood term of 2020.' He jokes that use of the term can invite 'accusations of mass murder,' and Dr. Bhattacharya laments its frequent 'mischaracterization.' The words, he says, are a 'technical term that comes out of standard models of epidemic spread.'"

"It is the 'end state of any epidemic where some immunity actually happens after infection. It’s a biological fact. It’s not something nefarious or strange.' Many media outlets, he complains, have said that 'we’re advocating a herd-immunity strategy. That’s a propaganda term. After all, the lockdown-until-a-vaccine strategy will also end with herd immunity.'"

"'As an epidemiologist,' says Mr. Kulldorff, 'it’s weird and stunning to have this discussion about herd immunity—flockimmunitet in Swedish.' He likens it to gravity: 'You wouldn’t have physicists talking about whether we believe in gravity or not. Or two airline pilots saying, ‘Should we use the gravity strategy to get the airplane down on the ground?’ Whatever way they fly that plane—or not fly it—gravity will ensure eventually that the plane is going to hit the ground.'"

"Dr. Bhattacharya does say that he would call the idea 'population immunity' if he could rephrase it. The word 'herd,' he says, 'has connotations that it doesn’t deserve.' But he stresses that herd immunity is a basic scientific principle, from which flows the one important question epidemiologists and policy makers need to consider: 'How do we get to that end state with the least amount of devastation, the least amount of human misery, the least amount of death?'"