A Stanford University Medical School epidemiologist and public health expert reiterated in a recent interview his conviction that Covid lockdowns have been horrendous for public health and affirmed that they have killed more people than they have saved.
“I say the lockdowns were the single biggest mistake in public health history. I still believe that. I don’t see how anyone can look at lockdown and say there was successful policy,” Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said.
From the beginning of the pandemic, Bhattacharya has advocated for a public health action plan of “focused protection,” a policy wherein creative measures are enacted by public servants to shield the most vulnerable from infection and the rest of society is allowed to carry on with regular life.
Regarding this approach, Bhattacharya said, “The idea was to give people resources to protect themselves as they saw fit, that they could make trade-offs in their lives based on what they valued.” He added, “You have to think differently about what the goal is. If the goal is focused protection, then adopt a different set of policies than if the goal is testing, tracing, identifying, and quarantine.”
Bhattacharya said that many in the medical and public health community have come to think erroneously about herd immunity, which was once identified as the goal for resolving the Covid pandemic.
“Herd immunity is not a synonym for zero Covid. It does not mean the disease has gone away. What it means is that the disease has become endemic,” he said.
“What I do know is that if a government induces fear in a population, if a government formally locks down, that it will take much longer to get to that point where the disease is at a level where we can manage it without having to turn over all of society,” Bhattacharya asserted. “If people are scared to interact with everybody else, it will take longer, even if you don’t have a policy.”
Bhattacharya called the harms caused by lockdowns “extremely multi-dimensional” and traumatic, especially to the poor, children, and those on the margins of society. “It’s not possible to reduce to a single number,” he said. “A child who skips a year of school, the consequences will last a lifetime.”
According to Bhattacharya, dramatic increases of poverty, food insecurity, outright starvation, depression, anxiety, suicide, and death are some of the black fruits of the mitigation measures implemented in lockdowns. Asked directly if “lockdowns have killed more people than they have saved,” he responded, “Yes, I think that is actually true.”
Bhattacharya noted that we have had “enormous Covid deaths despite the lockdowns.” While lockdown proponents may argue that this is because the lockdowns were not strong enough, Bhattacharya insists that reality is a constraint on their model and that in the real world “society could not meet their high standard of what a lockdown ought to look like.”
Full story at LifeSiteNews.
We could have had herd immunity, far less suicides and death from undiagnosed cancers etc. with variants that while more infectious far less virulent like west Nile, swine flue, etc. this is what fear can do. Be not afraid.
Let me grab my electronic popcorn…
I’m just here for the ratio. CCD admin please let this one stay…
Covid, CRT and TLM stuff have been overdone and are getting really boring.
Edited for le
Well…that’s one Stanford prof that will be looking for a job….
The great reset? Why can’t people wake up and realize this is all about control. The media is a perpetrator of fear and the church has been bought. What a shame for everyone! People who choose the free money to stay silent are just as much to blame.
A note to the vaccinated — you are infecting us unvaccinated!
https://www.worldtribune.com/scientists-fully-vaccinated-carry-251-times-the-covid-viral-load-as-unvaccinated/
I avoid Buddhist websites.
Thank you Peggy for this link. It cites the research recently published in the British medical journal Lancet, a highly regarded medical journal for publishing research. This is important information to cite when defending those who are scapegoated for not going along with vaccine mandates and who wish to protect people’s private medical and ethical decisions.
For example, local news media in the Bay Area have reported information supplied by the chief epidemiologist of Marin County about a “covid outbreak in a parochial school” in Marin County. It is fine for a public health official to publish data about a covid outbreak, but it is unethical to show such detail that the school itself could be identified, especially that children themselves, could be identified. The conclusion of these reports was that an “unmasked, unvaccinated teacher” was the cause of the outbreak, which, when you read what the epidimiologist’s discussion of the data, is not proven. It may be likely, but not proven.
Yet, the data itself, and epidemiologist’s discussion, actually demonstrates why schools and youth activities should have been opened a year ago, as some private schools in California did, and many public schools in other states did. We see in the data about the Marin school that no one had severe symptoms, nobody needed to miss school, especially the children, and those adults who were vaccinated had a better chance of being protected. Yet, instead, the media scapegoated this school and teacher as a “spreader of covid”
In short, beware of scapegoating as a method of health authoritarianism, and ask, who benefits? It simply is used by political leaders to enhance their power, and not for public health. This scapegoating reminds me a few years ago when I had to suspend several 6th grade students, good kids, but who got caught up in cyber bullying a former friend on social media.
Thus, citing the Stanford epidemiologist Dr Bhattachayra that we have reached herd immunity, that vaccines are recommended for those who are most vulnerable throughout the world, but not needed to be mandated, that lockdowns make the problem worse, and Peggy’s reference to the Lancet medical journal’s article summarizing the research that the recent upsurge in the spread is due to those who are vaccinated able to carry a much larger viral load, even while being asymptomatic. Finally, remember how scapegoating has been used by authoritarians in the past to solidify their power. Remember where this leads.
Saying the vaccinated are infecting the unvaccinated and causing the surge is like blaming someone driving in their own lane on the highway for hitting the driver going the wrong way.
Father, why are you so anti-life? So little is asked of you, when so much more of you should be demanded of you? Yet you cling to these silly notions that a simple act of kindness threatens your faith? It’s just a mask. A simple medical mask that costs ten cents and nothing more.
Please stop pretending to be an epidemiologist. You aren’t. The Catholic Church acknowledges the rightful place of competent secular authorities to sanctify society. It’s time you start listening to and respecting their proper ecclesiological role, instead of pretending that your ordination somehow makes your speculations superior to their educated professional guidance.
What an outrageous and sanctimonious slander on Father Jimenez. Just makes you realize that the proud and advocates of calling good evil and evil good have no shame. They want to stifle debate so that only their lies are permitted. Why not have all the facts out? Fearful of the truth. Do I pretend to know all the facts or Father for that matter, of course not. But all we want is open discussion which the social media and government is unwilling to give and want to censor.
It’s about time a knowledgeable person is allowed to speak the truth. I hope he doesn’t hear from his medical board demanding he is tested to determine his sanity. Look at what is happening to Dr. Sherri Tenpenny and other medical truth-tellers.
Peggy-Thanks for the link.I never heard that info.before
Recently, an unvaccinated teacher in Marin County went to school, and said she thought she had symptoms of “allergies.” She was unvaccinated, did not wear a mask nor socially distance, and just ignored the COVID-19 protocols. She was actually sick with Coronavirus. A couple of days later, 26 people with whom she came into close contact, came down with Coronavirus– including 22 schoolchildren, too young for the vaccination. With all of these hairsplitting, unsolved, controversial issues going on, between people — better to keep your loved ones safe, avoid potential serious problems– and homeschool your children.
And I’m sure there is just as many incidents where children wearing filthy masks are coming home from school sick like they’ve never been before or cases where vaccinated people were infected. Of course the pro-death media is going to elevate this case because they want to control the people. I do agree that people have to be reasonable and take precautions and let’s not get so overcautious that we give total control over to our government.
President Trump locked down the country because no one knew for sure what we were dealing with. He did the right thing. We almost had the virus beat. If he had left in on 6 more weeks, things might have different.
But there is no sense in “what if’s” when people can’t even handle “what is.”
California stayed “locked down” longer than anyone and time will tell if it made a difference.
The Catholic Church does nothing about the epidemic of suicides. it used to be real firm on the consequences of that.
This member of the Stanford faculty is a certified nut job. He had his 15 minutes of glory a couple of years ago.
Too many Americans think they have the freedom to do anything they want. We can’t, and never have been able to do that. We are members of a society that has a responsibility to look out for our fellow citizens. Because I am an American doesn’t mean that my opinion is as valid as the next person, especially if I am not an expert in the field. One of the ways we do that is by following the advice of experts in the field of public health with tried and true methods of fighting a virus. We don’t have much polio nowadays because the vaccine works. When you hear someone say they did their own research about the current vaccines, and they don’t have an MD or Ph.D. in public health, don’t listen to them or you will end up taking de-worming medicine for horses.
“This member of the Stanford faculty is a certified nut job.”
This is exactly why no one trusts the Left’s opinion.
Remember what former KGB agent yuri besmenov said, a man who went around the world destabilizing countries before he ‘woke up’… people like bob one, smh, YFC could stand outside aushwitgz, be told they where concentration camps, gassing civilians to death, and they would refuse to believe it, so demoralized as they had become by the communist gaslighting. We need to pray for these poor souls. Blessed mother most holy, show these souls the truth that is your son so they may repent with all of us who are in need of repentance, especially me, a sinner.
The point of the lockdown was to flatten the curve, remember? So that the hospitals were not overwhelmed. So there was enough equipment to treat the sick. It was to slow the spread.
Individuals like myself who missed doctor appointments or cancer screenings made that choice for themselves.
Suicides made that choice for themselves.
Some people loved lockdown; some people didn’t.
I see so many benefits from lockdown like children actually being with their parents, slowing down, more time for prayer and reflection.
But for families dealing with mental illness, drug addiction and alcoholism and families with an abusive person, it has been a nightmare.
God bless the health care workers. Please send more.
Eternal rest grant unto everyone who died from any reason.
Whatever the value of lockdowns, the US never did them the way they needed to be done, like they did in South Korea. Our lockdowns had so many loopholes & varying compliances they were like trying to strain a broth with a sieve.
Ironically among the most vociferous opponents lockdowns: those advocating home-schooling but when the pandemic began demand unmasked in-school teaching. Just like the irony of people who claim to “not know what was in” an “experimental” vaccine, when they self-administer horse de-worming medication experimentally on their own bodies, while they down hot dogs at crowded biker bars, yet they don’t even know what’s in either.
Confirmation bias