A professor at Stanford University Medical School calls COVID-19 lockdowns the “biggest public health mistake we’ve ever made.”
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya – a physician whose recent research “focuses on the epidemiology of COVID-19 and an evaluation of policy responses to the epidemic” – made his comment as part of a February interview with the Daily Clout, outlet author Naomi Wolf aimed “to help everyone, regardless of their life course, use and influence democracy more powerfully.” Bhattacharya’s comments have not been widely reported until this week.
What did the professor say?
Bhattacharya began the interview by discussing the Great Barrington Declaration, of which he co-authored. The document states that COVID-19 lockdowns’ have devastating effects on public health in the short and long term. to greater excess mortality in the coming years, with the working class and younger members of society bearing the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a great injustice. It adds that “maintaining these measures until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable harm, disproportionately harming the disadvantaged.”
Thursday’s statement indicates that more than 13,000 medical and public health scientists have signed it, along with more than 41,000 doctors.
With that, Bhattacharya told Wolf that the Great Barrington Declaration “stems from two basic facts.”
“One is that older people have a much higher risk of dying from COVID than those younger … So the first plank of the Great Barrington Declaration: Let’s protect the vulnerable,” he said before adding. that “the other idea is that the lockdowns themselves cause great harm to people. Lockdowns are not a natural normal way of life.”
Bhattacharya also noted that “the lockdown damage is worse than COVID” and that “the damage to humans is catastrophic.” His reasoning is that ‘public health’ means much more than protection from a virus, and that people need many more things in life to stay healthy – not just physically but also mentally and emotionally – such as interacting with friends and the ability to make a living that prevented lockdowns.
The Doctor’s comment “biggest public health mistake we’ve ever made” comes at 26:45 in the video below, but the whole interview is worth it:
“Prof Jay Bhattacharya, Signer of Gt Barrington Declaration: Why ‘Lockdown’ Will Kill Millions”
youtu.be
Something else?
Newsweek got wind of Bhattacharya’s comments, and the magazine said he assisted them in an email:
I support my statement that the lockdowns are the biggest public health mistake of the last 100 years. We will count for a generation the catastrophic health and psychological damage inflicted on nearly every poor person on Earth.
At the same time, they have not served to control the epidemic where they have been most forcefully imposed. In the US, they have – at best – protected the “non-essential” class from COVID, while exposing the essential working class to the disease. The lockdowns are a drop-shaped epidemiology.
This is not a new position for Bhattacharya, who stated last May that people are “mistaken” when they think the coronavirus lockdown policy will provide security against COVID-19.
As for Wolf, she’s also been in the news on the same topic, telling Fox News’ Tucker Carlson late last month that America is turning into a “ totalitarian state before everyone’s eyes’ ‘amid our government’s coronavirus blockages: