The following article by Steve MacDonald has been republished with permission from GraniteGrok.
The Great Barrington Declaration has over 850,000 signatories — people who agree that policies implemented to address the so-called pandemic are harmful and more dangerous than the virus. Its authors, Jay Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta and Martin Kulldorff, inspired by that support, have created a website to collect the research that supports this thesis.
The Declaration’s purpose was simple:
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 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.
We’ve shared dozens of bits of research (scores, even) ignored by the so-called media that tell us this approach was the correct path to take. Regardless of their intentions, the public health experts have done more harm than good. So, why not dedicate a web portal to curating the opinions and research that prove it?
It’s a great idea. From the introductory email:
Since authoring the Declaration in October 2020, the three of us have actively advocated for focused protection through social media, op-eds and interviews on, for example, vaccine passports and natural immunity.
We have also launched Collateral Global, a charity staffed with academics from across the world to document and disseminate information about the collateral damage of the restrictive measures so that we don’t repeat the mistakes of this pandemic and are able to inform future policy with evidence and analysis. Collateral Global is crowdfunding so that this work can be done to the highest possible standards.
We want to thank Jay Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta and Martin Kulldorff first for their inspiration and bravery — for not just stepping out of the mainstream but marching with determination against the current. Tens of thousands of professionals in public health have joined hands to march with you.
Second, we appreciate the new resource.
As the policy failures accumulate, fence-sitters newly impacted by the downstream effects will want to know what happened and why. We look forward to sharing some of that so they can see how public health was hijacked. And that this wasn’t the first time, and (baby!) it won’t be the last.
It may even change a few minds.
Visit CollateralGlobal.org online.
The Collateral Global site has been up for months, since May it seems.