A professor at Stanford University School of Medicine has called the COVID-19 blockades the “biggest public health mistake we’ve ever made.”
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a physician whose recent research “focuses on the epidemiology of COVID-19, as well as an assessment of policy responses to the epidemic,” made his comment in the framework of a February interview with the Daily Clout, an outgoing author Naomi Wolf founded “to help anyone, from any social background, to use and affect democracy with more power.” Bhattacharya’s comments have not been widely reported until this week.
What did the teacher say?
Bhattacharya began the interview by discussing Barrington’s Great Declaration, which he co-authored. The paper argues that COVID-19 blockades produce devastating effects on public health in the short and long term. The results (to name a few) include lower rates of childhood vaccination, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, less screening. of cancer and deteriorating mental health. to an excess of mortality in the coming years, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice. ” . He adds that “keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the disadvantaged disproportionately harmed.”
Thursday’s statement says it was signed by more than 13,000 medical and public health scientists, along with more than 41,000 doctors.
With this, Bhattacharya told Wolf that Barrington’s Great Declaration “comes from two basic facts.”
“One is that older people have a much higher risk of dying from COVID than younger people … So the first table of the Barrington Grand Declaration: We protect the vulnerable,” he said before adding that “the other idea is that closures themselves do great harm to people. Blockages are not a normal way to live normally.”
Bhattacharya also noted that “blockade damage is worse than COVID” and that “damage to people is catastrophic”. His reasoning is that “public health” means much more than protection against a virus and that people need many more things in life to stay healthy, not only physically, but also mentally and emotionally, such as interacting with people. friends and the ability to make a living, which has prevented blockades.
The doctor’s comment about “the biggest public health mistake we’ve ever made” appears at 26:45 in the following video, but the whole interview is worth it:
“Professor Jay Bhattacharya, signatory of Gt Barrington’s statement: why the ‘blockade’ will kill millions”
youtu.be
Something else?
Newsweek learned of Bhattacharya’s comments and the magazine said it supported them in an email:
I give my comment that blockages are the worst public health mistake of the last 100 years. We will count the catastrophic psychological and health damage, imposed on almost all the poor of the earth, for a generation.
At the same time, they have not served to control the epidemic in places where they have prevailed more strongly. In the United States they have protected, at best, the “non-essential” class of COVID, while exposing the essential working class to disease. Blockages are an epidemiology.
This is not a new position for Bhattacharya, who declared last May that people are “wrong” if they believe coronavirus blocking policies will provide security against COVID-19.
As for Wolf, it has also been news on the same topic, telling Fox News’ Tucker Carlson late last month that the United States is becoming a “totalitarian state in the eyes of everyone” amid coronavirus blockades of our government: