By Postmedia News Publishing, Oct 08, 2020

Just a few days ago, three top notch epidemiologists from Harvard, Oxford and Stanford produced a declaration calling for an end to widespread COVID-19 lockdowns.

Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Dr. Sunetra Gupta, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya were the first to put their names to the important document they drafted labelled the Great Barrington Declaration.

They were joined by 35 co-signers, highly credentialed medical experts from around the world – including Canada’s Dr. Matthew Stauss, a critical care physician and assistant professor of medicine at Queen’s University.

Then, after the declaration went public several several days ago, tens of thousands of people, a few thousand apparently doctors, co-signed the document. The tallies continue to grow.

Every day it seems more and more medical experts are stepping forward to say no to strict lockdowns and call for smarter, more data-driven approaches that protect the vulnerable but set low-risk categories of people free.

We fully support this approach. We support the wearing of masks. We support physical distancing. We support building a resilient health-care system. But we can no longer support restrictions that destroy our small businesses, shut down our communities and create untold personal trauma, the effects of which will be seen for years to come.

It’s time to get smarter.

The Great Barrington Declaration argues that: “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.”



Their concern is that “(k)eeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.

“Fortunately, our understanding of the virus is growing. We know 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.”

Similar things have been said by medical experts speaking out in the pages of the Sun and other Postmedia publications.

Let’s hope public health officials and politicians are paying attention.

https://torontosun.com/opinion/editorial...hwhile-document

See here for the story of the Great Barrington Declaration:
https://gbdeclaration.org/