In October, 2020, three prominent epidemiologists drew up a document called the “Great Barrington Declaration.” In it, Drs. Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford), Martin Kulldorff (Harvard), and Sunetra Gupta (Oxford) argued that lockdowns to manage Covid-19 were extremely harmful. So they called for what they termed “Focused Protection.”

Great Barrington Declaration Pointed Out Harms

The declaration begins with these words:

“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.”

The three scientists pointed out that “vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza.” Therefore, they proposed:

“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. We call this Focused Protection.”

That’s because lockdowns were devastating lives, they maintained. For example, while the laptop class could maintain their highly paid jobs at home, the poor could not earn their livings. Others could not access cancer and other medical screenings, while cancer patients themselves often went without treatment. Organ transplants declined. Mental health patients also suffered. And then there’s the way the lockdowns devastated school children, the most vulnerable being kids in poor neighborhoods.

Fauci and Collins Undermined the GBD

So how did the head of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, regard the Great Barrington Declaration? And Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases? Did these two high-ranking men of science welcome debate? Or consider the proposals of their esteemed colleagues?

Hardly. Instead, within days both men worked to undermine the GBD. We know this because a FOIA request shined light on their emails, which show that they desired “a quick and devastating published takedown.” The Great Barrington Declaration, they said, came from the minds of “three fringe epidemiologists.”

On Tuesday, during Senate hearings, Sen. Rand Paul grilled Dr. Fauci over the emails sabotaging Drs. Bhattacharya, Kulldorff, and Gupta. Fauci sputtered that Paul was lying, then distorting his words, and finally accused him of “doing this all the time.”

Sen. @RandPaul vs. Fauci, Round 8. Sen. Paul drills into Fauci over his emails showing a coordinated campaign to "takedown" the Great Barrington Declaration.

Paul: "Do you really think it’s appropriate to use your $420,000 salary to attack science that doesn’t agree with you? pic.twitter.com/LNuql7nSb7

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 11, 2022

Right, “fringe.” From Stanford, Harvard, Oxford in the UK — three of the most respected universities in the West. If they are “fringe” medical professionals, so are the 16,000 medical and public health scientists who at this time have signed the GBD. Plus, the over 46,000 medical professionals who have signed it as well.

Dr. Scott Atlas, also of Stanford, who served on President Trump’s Covid task force in 2020, challenged the lockdowns as well, using data to prove his arguments. Because of that, Fauci referred to him as “the outlier” of the group, as Atlas recalled in his book A Plague Upon Our House (which I highly recommend). Meanwhile, as Atlas wrote, “Drs. Birx, Fauci, and Redfield virtually always agreed, literally never challenging one another.”

Our Bureaucrats Have Failed in Epic Fashion

But as we’ve seen over the past two years, the lockdowns, the masking, the vaccines and boosters, have all failed to control the pandemic. Fauci, Collins, and their merry band of blundering bureaucrats have done nothing to eliminate Covid, but have instead made our lives miserable.

Personal collection.

Megyn Kelly laid bare the failure of their Covid policy in spectacular fashion on her podcast. And she brought receipts, too:

Meanwhile, Dr. Vinay Prasad of the University of California San Francisco wrote that CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Welensky “almost” admitted failure.

“Yesterday the CDC director Rochelle Welensky tweeted that we must protect people at highest risk of bad outcomes from Covid19.”

Here’s her tweet:

We must protect people with comorbidities from severe #COVID19. I went into medicine – HIV specifically – and public health to protect our most at-risk. CDC is taking steps to protect those at highest risk, incl. those w/ chronic health conditions, disabilities & older adults.

— Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH (@CDCDirector) January 9, 2022

Protect those at highest risk — what does that sound like? Oh, yeah — the Great Barrington Declaration.

Prasad continued:

“The tweet is a subtle shift from prior messaging, and likely reflects her realization that the pipe-dream of ZeroCovid—eradication of the virus—is dead.  Omicron makes it clear, COVID19 will not go away.  Even more, holding society hostage to slow spread is no longer a tenable policy choice.  We will have to return to living life, and balancing important societal priorities while minimizing the harms of COVID19.”

President Eisenhower Warned Us

Sixty-one years ago this month, President Dwight Eisenhower gave his Farewell Speech to the nation as he left office. The speech is famous for Eisenhower’s warning about the “military industrial complex,” but Ike also predicted the rise of scientific elites. Like Drs. Fauci and Collins, for instance.

Eisenhower said:

“Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

Does that not sound familiar?

He also cautioned:

“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.”

And who are the biggest funders of medical and infectious diseases, not only in the US but throughout the world? That’s right — the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. With none other than Dr. Francis Collins and Dr. Anthony Fauci at the helm. No wonder they opposed the Great Barrington Declaration. It’s all about the money and the power; public health of the peons be damned.

The Great Barrington Declaration Was the Answer All Along

If the United States, or any other Western nation, had adopted the Great Barrington Declaration, lives could’ve been saved. Applying the GBD’s principles in other poorer nations may have looked different; for example, places like Latin America, South Africa, or India could’ve attained help from international relief.

Of course, despite all best efforts, people around the world would’ve still died from Covid. But the destruction of economies, the lives lost to suicide, or preventable diseases, or to drug abuse, could’ve been avoided. School children would also have been spared the loss of education and academic skills which some may never regain.

If only the NIH, the CDC, and other bureaucracies had cared more about the lives of others than their own egos — or their funding — just imagine how much happier our lives would’ve been.

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Featured image: Tyler Merbler/flickr/cropped/CC BY 2.0.