Biggest Public Health Mistake in 100 Years
Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2021 8:13 am
In a recent email interview with Newsweek, Stanford's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor at the medical school, warned that the lockdowns would be remembered as the "biggest public health mistake we've ever made...the harm to people is catastrophic." Bhattacharya was one of the co-authors, along with Dr. Atlas, of the Great Barrington Declaration.
I stand behind my comment that the lockdowns are the single worst public health mistake in the last 100 years. We will be counting the catastrophic health and psychological harms, imposed on nearly every poor person on the face of the earth, for a generation.
At the same time, they have not served to control the epidemic in the places where they have been most vigorously 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 trickle down epidemiology.
Bhattacharya explained that his support of the declaration stems from "two basic facts".
"One is that people who are older have a much higher risk from dying from COVID than people who are younger...and that's a really important fact because we know who his most vulnerable, it's people that are older. So the first plank of the Great Barrington Declaration: let's protect the vulnerable," Bhattacharya said.
"The other idea is that the lockdowns themselves impose great harm on people. Lockdowns are not a natural normal way to live."
He also cautioned that lockdowns have aggravated economic inequality by creating an undue burden for the poor. "it's also not very equal," Bhattacharya explained. "People who are poor face much more hardship from the lockdowns than people who are rich."
I stand behind my comment that the lockdowns are the single worst public health mistake in the last 100 years. We will be counting the catastrophic health and psychological harms, imposed on nearly every poor person on the face of the earth, for a generation.
At the same time, they have not served to control the epidemic in the places where they have been most vigorously 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 trickle down epidemiology.
Bhattacharya explained that his support of the declaration stems from "two basic facts".
"One is that people who are older have a much higher risk from dying from COVID than people who are younger...and that's a really important fact because we know who his most vulnerable, it's people that are older. So the first plank of the Great Barrington Declaration: let's protect the vulnerable," Bhattacharya said.
"The other idea is that the lockdowns themselves impose great harm on people. Lockdowns are not a natural normal way to live."
He also cautioned that lockdowns have aggravated economic inequality by creating an undue burden for the poor. "it's also not very equal," Bhattacharya explained. "People who are poor face much more hardship from the lockdowns than people who are rich."