President-elect Donald Trump has just nominated Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford professor and an outspoken critic of Covid lockdowns as well as the co-author of The Great Barrington Declaration, to head the National Institutes of Health. I am delighted, especially since I wrote a March 2021 blog titled “Is it possible that there is a light at the end of the Covid tunnel?”

Here are some excerpts from my 2021 blog:

“My husband and I just returned from a trip to Florida where we were happily surprised to find the closest place to normal since the Covid 19 pandemic started. Everyone wore masks (except one young man we saw at a distance) and everyone was careful about social distancing. Hand sanitizers were everywhere.

Best of all, people seemed happy and we saw very few stores closed.

When we returned home, we both finally received the first of our 2 Covid 19 vaccination doses.

IS FLORIDA A HARBINGER OF GOOD NEWS?

Florida was among the last states to go into lockdown and one of the first states to ease restrictions.Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis was vilified by many in the media for adopting something similar to Sweden’s strategy of protecting the vulnerable while keeping businesses and schools open but a year after the pandemic hit the US, that strategy seems to be working.

Despite having the second largest number of elderly people by state, Florida’s Covid death rate numbers are better than New York’s and California’s. And, unlike so many other states, Florida’s economy is thriving.

Now, Governor Abbott of Texas and Governor Reeves of Mississippi have announced that they would be lifting their states’ mask mandates and rolling back many of their Covid-19 health mandates.”

WHAT HAPPENED?

It has been almost a year since the U.S. went on lockdown for Covid 19 when President Trump declared Covid 19 a national emergency on March 13, 2020.

At first, the lockdown was only supposed to be for a few weeks to “flatten the curve” of infections and prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed by Covid patients.

However, as the lockdowns wore on for months, some doctors and other experts started warning about the emotional and health damage occurring.

Although it received little media notice, a May 19, 2020 letter titled “600 Physicians Say Lockdowns Are A ‘Mass Casualty Incident’” was sent to President Trump that detailed the physical and mental impact of the lockdown in the US due to Covid 19, calling it a “mass casualty incident” with “exponentially growing negative health consequences” to millions of non-COVID patients. 

The doctors’ letter also stated that: “Keeping schools and universities closed is incalculably detrimental for children, teenager and young adults for decades to come.”

Then on October 4, 2020, the Great Barrington Declaration was written and released and eventually signed by thousands of doctors and experts from around the world. The Declaration encouraged governments to lift lockdown restrictions on young and healthy people while focusing protection measures on the elderly, stating:

“Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice. “

CONCLUSION

Now it is 4 years since the Covid pandemic started and we can see that Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and the other medical and public health scientists, medical practitioners, etc. who signed the Great Barrington Declaration were right, despite all the criticism from the media and others.

I personally hope that Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is confirmed as head of the National Institutes of Health.