Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.
Stanford University professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya recently slammed COVID-19 lockdowns as the “biggest public health mistake we’ve ever made.”
“The harm to people is catastrophic,” he told the Daily Clout in an interview last month.
Bhattacharya, an associate professor of medicine at Stanford University Medical School and an economist with the Freeman Spogli Institute, reiterated his comments to Newsweek, calling lockdowns “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,” Bhattacharya predicted. “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,” he continued.
A peer-reviewed study from January co-authored by Bhattacharya indeed found “no clear, significant beneficial effect of [more restrictive COVID-19 restrictions] on case growth in any country.”
Based on more than a dozen comparisons of coronavirus responses from around the world, harsh restrictions actually are connected to increases in cases, according to the study. “It is possible that stay-at-home orders may facilitate transmission if they increase person-to-person contact where transmission is efficient such as closed spaces,” the authors said.
Dr. Bhattacharya also notably co-wrote the Great Barrington Declaration, a petition to end the COVID-19 lockdowns and “resume life as normal.”
“Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health,” like “lower childhood vaccination rates,” and “worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes — leading to greater excess mortality in years to come,” the petition reads.
“The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk,” it adds. “Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal.” Over 65,000 scientists and medical practitioners, as well as around 754,000 “concerned citizens” reportedly have signed the declaration.
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