By Kay Leaman, HealthyDay HealthyLife
This new year is bringing different things to each of us. I want to share this with you, because it’s important for us to be informed and aware. There are professionals fighting for what’s right and for us.
One such professional is Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, where he received both an M.D. and Ph.D. in economics. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, at the Freeman Spogli Institute for Int’l Studies and director of the Stanford Center on the Demography and Economics of health and Aging. A co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, his research has been published in economics, statistics, legal, medical, public health and health policy journals.
Below are excerpts from “A Sensible and Compassionate Anti-Covid Strategy,” (a publication of Hillsdale College)
He states his goal is to first, present the facts about how deadly COVID-19 actually is; second, to present the facts about who is at risk from COVID; third, to present some facts about how deadly the widespread lockdowns have been; and fourth, to recommend a shift in public policy. This article can be found in its entirety at HILLSDALE.EDU. I have taken a few core thoughts from this article. My hope is that it sparks within us the courage to take control of our lives and a curiosity to search for the truth.
We need to distinguish COVID cases from COVID infections. Today the fatality rate of COVID is known to be less than one half of one percent.
But the effects on health, beginning with the U.N., estimate that 130 million additional people will starve this year as a result of the economic damage from the lockdowns. Case fatality rate is computed by dividing the number of deaths by the total number of confirmed cases. However, to obtain an accurate COVID fatality rate, the number in the denominator should be the number of people who have been infected-rather than the number of confirmed cases.
Seroprevalence studies (82 studies worldwide) show the fatality rate is closer to 0.2 percent. In New York it was more like .5 percent and in Idaho it was 0.13 percent.
In the early days, the health care system managed COVID poorly. At risk: people who are 70 and older. Their mortality rate is about four percent. The fact is that for young children, this disease is less dangerous than the seasonal flu.
This year in the U.S., more children have died from the seasonal flu than from COVID by a factor of two or three. Herd immunity is not a strategy, it is a biological fact.
Coming from both the left and right, and around the world, we have devoted our careers to protecting people. Current lockdown policies are producing a devastating effect on short and long-term public health.
We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm that the young.
When scientists have spoken up against the lockdown policy, there has been enormous pushback: “You’re endangering lives.” Science cannot operate in an environment like that. I don’t know all the answers to COVID; no one does. Science ought to be able to clarify the answers. But science can’t do its job in an environment where anyone who challenges the status quo gets shut down or cancelled.
To date, the GREAT BARRINGTON DECLARATION has been signed by over 43,000 medical and public health scientists and medical practitioners. Members of the general public can also sign the Declaration. Together, I think we can get on the other side of this pandemic. But we have to fight back. We should respond to the COVID virus rationally: protect the vulnerable, treat the people who get infected compassionately, and develop a vaccine.
You can read the GREAT BARRINGTON DECLARATION at www.gbdeclaration.org. (just moved this line to below the above paragraphs. Also, made the above info into one paragraph.)
Blessings and health to each of you. Contact me at succeed@healthydayhealthylife.com.
Views: 0
