Please consider signing the Great Barrington Declaration.
This proposal has been put forward by three eminent scientists, Dr Sunetra Gupta, Dr Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, who met in Massachusetts at the beginning of October to sign a declaration calling for an alternative global response to lockdowns.
Rather than continuing with the devastating impacts of the lockdowns across the world, including the suspension of democracy and the removal of the most basic human rights even in developed western countries, this proposal advocates a strategy of “focused protection”, allowing the largely immune young people to live their lives as normal, while allocating whatever resources are necessary to protect the vulnerable.
The Great Barrington Declaration (GBR) – As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.
Coming from both the left and right, and around the world, we have devoted our careers to protecting people. Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.
More than a quarter-of-a-million members of the public have signed the declaration to date, along with over 7,500 medical and public health scientists and nearly 18,000 medical practitioners.
As a measure of what is at stake, and how political the global response to COVID-19 has become, Google has “shadow-banned” the GBR, meaning it will no longer show up on internet searches, while the main Reddit thread has also been closed down.
If you search for the GBR on Google you will instead be treated to a series of smear pieces, claiming the Gupta et al are not real scientists. Pro-lockdown trolls have signed the declaration with fake names like “Dr. Bananas” in a puerile attempt to discredit it.
The “focussed protection” approach is close to the path followed by Sweden. Vilified from the beginning for its high death rate (still below that of the UK and Belgium which both had hard lockdowns), Sweden has avoided lockdowns or mask-wearing while now having one of the lowest rates of infections in Europe.
As lockdowns continue and more businesses go under, more schools close, thousands more cancer screenings are missed, and most of all, as it becomes increasingly apparent that lockdowns don’t work anyway, the Great Barrington Declaration will increasingly be seen as the only rational approach available.
Skepteco 