When looking up the Great Barrington Declaration on the two websites, the first thing that I noticed was Google had an ad at the top of the webpage instead of immediately displaying the website for the declaration. On DuckDuckGo (DDG), this ad was not present. Furthermore, all the results are different. Most notably, google provides sources that call the declaration arrogant (U.S. News) while DDG has sources talking about the silencing of the declaration (sciencebasedmedicine.org). The google results seem to be more biased generally than those of Duck Duck Go. Concerning the discrepancies in information presented two years ago, google articles attacking the proposal and DDG not so much, I believe that google is more likely to put articles written by sites that pay them higher up on the webpage (hence the ad at the top of the results). They are also more likely to share the results that are promoted by the public/ google. Less popular viewpoints/ unbiased sources likely received less traffic initially so are placed towards the bottom of results. It is likely that many politicians attacked the declaration and thus, due to popular and promoted viewpoints, google search provided results countering the validity of the declaration.
The Authors of the Great Barrington Declaration come from respected institutions and have expertise in areas related to public health, disease, and safety. If a different approach to Covid-19, such as the proposed one of these authors, was taken the world would have returned to normality earlier on. The proposals in this declaration suggest that measures are taken to protect the vulnerable while allowing those who are young and healthy to resume normal life. If this approach was taken, I believe that herd immunity would have been developed a lot quicker and to a greater degree. In the long run, this method would have shortened the time span of the disastrous effects of covid-19 and allowed society to return to normal at a much faster pace. Instead of waves of covid-19, there would probably have been a steady initial decline that did not swell back up. I cannot say if this approach would have led to less deaths but in conjunction with early action this method I believe it may have been more successful. After hearing about the silencing of doctors, I do not believe that the government and medical companies took a route that was in the best interest of humanity. Thus, although I am grateful for many of the preventative measures that were employed, I think many other methods would have been more effective. Personally, I have encountered many people that have gotten covid-19 and had very few effects (mostly generally healthy individuals). If building herd immunity could protect those that are immunocompromised/ elderly I think that preventing the spread of covid-19 in younger healthy generations should not have been the main focus. If this group would have experienced very few adverse effects and in the long run their immunity would have protected those that could not develop it, an approach similar to the declarations approach should have been taken (at least to an extent).
In regards to the NIH and NIAID’s actions to suppress the declarations, I believe that they were silencing dialogue. If the institutions generally had different opinions, that is a completely reasonable viewpoint but not a reason to completely dismiss others’ opinions/ solutions. To me, it seems as if these organizations had only their best interest in mind and were ignorant of any other opinions. More conversation would have allowed others to put their heads together and likely find a more middle-ground approach to covid-19 that prevented deaths. Furthermore, conversation could have prevented the politicization and monetization of covid and its vaccines which had many disastrous effects on society and the relationships within.
The motivation for silencing alternative opinions held by eminent doctors likely comes from a place of both political and monetary motivations. Cheap and effective methods for helping relinquish Covid-19 symptoms do not benefit companies as much as more expensive methods do. Unfortunately, humanitarian ideals do not trump the desire for money of many companies. Instead of Covid-19 being a time for communities to come together to help each other, it became a highly politicized fight to see who could get the most support and money. Thus, the silencing of alternative opinions, although horrible for the overall well-being of our country, benefits individual companies.