Great Barrington Declaration Scientists with Gov. DeSantis in Florida

AIER Staff  – March 18, 2021 @ American Institute for Economic Research 

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, on the one-year anniversary of the lockdowns, invited back the scientists behind the Great Barrington Declaration, signed at the offices of the American Institute for Economic Research, for a roundtable on the Coronavirus and the policy response. It is exceptionally educational, and points to the reality that the lockdowners have lost the debate for lacking any evidence that their soul-crushing policies are good for public health. These heroic scientists departed from the media/government narrative when it mattered most. As a result, some states followed their point of view and their views have shown to be correct during the worst policy year of our lifetimes.

The entire event was recorded. Complete transcript below.

Gov. DeSantis:

Jay Bhattacharya is Professor of Medicine at Stanford University and research associate at the National Bureau Of Economic Research. And then we have Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician, epidemiologist and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. We had both Martin and Jay over the summer, at the end of the summer, talking about kind of the state of play with the COVID-19 pandemic, evaluating some of the policy choices that had been made in different parts of the United States, as well as around the world, and covered a lot of good ground. Now we’re six, seven, eight months down the road from that and I thought it would make sense to bring them back as well as to bring Professor Gupta and Scott Atlas.

Gov. DeSantis:

So first, we asked both Jay and Martin, did our lockdowns effective? Do you recommend that any state or country do lockdowns going forward? And I think both of you advise strongly against it. So here we are, six, seven, eight months down the road. Martin, you stand by what you said and have you been proven to be correct?

 Dr. Martin Kulldorff:

I do stand by it. I think it’s obvious by now that these lockdowns and contact tracing and masks, they were not able to prevent a resurgence of the disease during the winter. And the problem is that the belief that the pandemic will be suppressed through these lockdowns meant that in a lot of places in the world, people did not use focused protections of the old. They thought that the lockdowns would protect the old, but they didn’t. So they didn’t put in the standard public health message to actually properly protect the older high-risk people. And I think that’s very tragic and it has led to many unnecessary death among our older citizens.

Gov. DeSantis:

Jay, do you stand by what you said and how do you think the last six, seven, eight months have had born out?

Dr. Battacharya:

I think the lockdowns are the single biggest public health mistake in history. I think the lockdowns have, as Martin said, have failed to protect the vulnerable. The lockdowns have led to many, many, many unnecessary deaths, both directly as a result of the lockdowns, And also indirectly through this misplaced faith in the ability of the lockdowns to protect the vulnerable. We should instead have adopted a policy, and most places, should have adopted a policy that got rid of lockdowns and instead focused on people we knew to be truly vulnerable to disease, older populations, people with certain chronic diseases, adopted policies, actually much more similar to what Florida has done, rather than the state where I live, California, which has relied on lockdowns to a disastrous effect.

Gov. DeSantis:

Professor Gupta, across the pond, I know that they’ve instituted a lot of lockdowns in Great Britain as well as throughout Europe. You’ve been critical of that. Do you stand by your criticism? How’s it going in Britain now? Are you still on lockdown? And what do you think the ethicacy of those lockdowns have been in Britain?

Dr. Gupta:

We are still under lockdown, even though we’ve vaccinated the bulk of our vulnerable population. So people are at the moment suffering all the costs of lockdown without there being any obvious benefits, should this have been the case in the first place that there were any benefits. Myself and many others, including Carl Hennigan, have been warning consistently that these policies are detrimental, that they have a very high cost and that those costs should be visible and on the table before any decision is taken. Focused protection of course offers a kind of solution to the stark truth that we in the UK cannot afford lockdowns, nor indeed as indeed is the case most of the world. And the other reality is that an imperfect lockdown is actually closer to a let it rip strategy than a focused protection strategy, which I believe is easier to implement................To Read Much More.   

This is a particularly long and insightful piece and worth the time.  RK