Sunetra Gupta's positions on "the pandemic" - a Curate's Egg

"Good in parts"

British English is full of idiosyncratic idioms unknown (and / or misunderstood) in other Anglosphere countries.

“A curate’s egg”¹ is generally taken to mean something which is partly bad and partly good (though usually mostly bad with some good parts).

And so it is with the views of Sunetra Gupta², one of the 3 authors of The Great Barrington Declaration.

Regular readers may have seen this article from a few months back in which I explained why - despite having signed the GBD (over 3 years ago) - I no longer wish to be associated with it. I ended that article on this:

So, why do I say that I regard Sunetra Gupta’s positions as “good in parts”?

Well the “good” parts are described within this article, in which

Jessica Hockett

,

Martin Neil

and I highlighted some of Professor Gupta’s comments made at a “round table” at Stanford a few months ago :

Claim of Function - it wasn't a lab-leak and neither was it from the wet-market

The things she said which we would strongly agree with are basically:

• Neither narrative about the “origin of SARS-CoV-2” makes sense and it was more likely that it³ had been circulating over a period of months⁴. She was sceptical about it having originated in Wuhan just because it was found there.

• She believes the hysteria over “gain of function” is misplaced, “it being extremely difficult to….make anything that even vaguely infects a cell. It's really, really tricky.”⁵

The “bad” - which unfortunately in my view predominates - has been forensically teased out by

Jessica Hockett

in this piece:

Problems with Sunetra Gupta's Assessment of the COVID Response and Next-Pandemic Solutions

Please do read this. It’s important that people understand what most of the “medical freedom” advocates are really saying they believe in, especially in relation to ongoing pandemic threats and the various responses including lockdowns, isolation, testing, public health powers, international coordination, and vaccines.

In the case of Sunetra Gupta, her position is hardly distinguishable from the establishment narrative - ie “we overreacted and need to do better next time” - with very little interest in asking “what actually happened in spring 2020?”.

I will keep saying what I said in 2022 about the emergence⁶ of the “lab-leak” theory in my first article about Lombardy, in which I noted that the claimed mortality curves did not seem compatible with the spread of a pathogen⁷.

The Lombardy Analysis

I said this:

Imagine that I was heavily involved in the "pandemic preparedness industry" - an industry siphoning billions out of the pockets of taxpayers into my chosen commercial interests. I wouldn’t be bothered about the origin story. Lab or natural - I can make a fortune either way.

What I would be bothered about though would be the idea that this was in fact nowhere near as harmful as the "authorities" told people it was. Because then people might question the need for my new highly profitable industry at all.

I could even tolerate people thinking it was a lab leak. If it was, people will be afraid that it could surely happen again. Because regardless of whatever controls are put in place, some rogue operators could always carelessly carry on doing GoF research.

So natural or lab-leak, as long as we keep the fear going, we surely need to be better "prepared". That's great for business. And great for justifying centralised control.

I did not at that time suspect that the mortality curves from Bergamo might actually be fraudulent, as we wrote here:

1. See this. (Despite being used by the “powers that be” as a propaganda tool, Wikipedia still has its uses.)

2. This is a commentary specifically on Professor Gupta’s public positions on “the pandemic”, not her as a person. When I met and talked to her I found her both charming and good company.

3. Whatever “it” was and or viruses actually are.

4. Though she seems to be unable or unwilling to address head-on the paradox of something which can circulate widely for months unnoticed, only to become suddently lethal once people start to look for it on the orders of the WHO.

5.

Martin Neil

and I wrote this extensive critique of “gain of function”.

6. Or, in my view, deliberate propagation.

7. I went into more detail in a subsequent piece.