‘Second lockdown should be stopped with immediate effect’

November 24, 2020

SOCIETAL DAMAGE: “I don’t think we can afford to be in lockdown till Easter at all, we have already caused enormous harm – deaths will mount, poverty will increase and unemployment will go through the roof, we are looking at a very restricted future for the younger generation already. We must bring the vaccine early in order that we can effect focused protection.” – Professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford University and author of the Great Barrington Declaration Professor Sunetra Gupta. Picture by Taleed Brown.

 

 

 


A LEADING voice in the medical community says lockdowns are hurting the vulnerable and the poor and need to be stopped with immediate effect.

Professor Sunetra Gupta is a professional theoretical epidemiologist in the Department of Zoology based in Oxford and is the author of the Great Barrington Declaration that says the Scientific Advisory Group of Emergencies should be looking at focused protection as a means to deal with the epidemic, by isolating and shielding the most vulnerable but not quarantining healthy adults and she went into more details about the consequences for society in conversation with Juliet Hartley-Brewer on Talk Radio.

‘Lockdowns are a luxury for the affluent’

She said: “I believe lockdowns are a luxury of the affluent, and there are certain parts of society who are affluent, but there are only certain countries that can afford to lockdown, and that is evident from what other countries have done.

“Most developing countries cannot afford to go into lockdown as the harms are too extreme and the truth is the UK itself cannot afford to go into lockdown, not even while it is waiting for a vaccine to come on board. This is does not mean to suggest it be let to rip.

“There is this middle ground from letting it rip to letting it drip. Lockdowns do not actually solve the problem where they extend the problem to the point that more vulnerable people eventually die.

‘Models should be used to patent vaccines, not make predictions’

Although epidemiological models are “fantastic conceptual tools used to patent vaccines”, she said that Sir Patrick Vallance, chief scientific officer; Chris Whitty, chief medical officer and Jonathan Van Tam, deputy chief medical officer, Professor Neil Ferguson and the rest of the SAGE team should not have used them to make “specific predictions”.

Professor Gupta said: “These lockdowns have caused enormous harm and should be stopped with immediate effect and having different levels of lockdown is quite problematic and conceal some of the harm being done – for example we keep saying schools are open, but they are not really in a way that would harm particularly deprived children not being able to go to school.

‘Lockdowns have increased poverty, deaths and unemployment’

“If their terms are interrupted regularly by someone in their class becoming positive to taking away a blanket lockdown and having something tiered or whatever it is, runs the danger of actually perpetrating some of these harms.

“I don’t think we can afford to be in lockdown till Easter at all, we have already caused enormous harm – deaths will mount, poverty will increase and unemployment will go through the roof, we are looking at a very restricted future for the younger generation already. We must bring the vaccine early in order that we can effect focused protection.

“Within the year that we’ve become locked down, several of us who weren’t vulnerable have become vulnerable.

‘Folks have lost immunity to other flu viruses’

“We have possibly lost our immunity to some of the other coronaviruses which I am certain produce part of the barrier against it, so I think lockdowns cause enough harm.

“The UK, just like other developing countries, cannot afford to be in lockdown. We are fortunate that can afford focusing protection on the vulnerable. This too would be a luxury for many other countries.

“This still leaves the door open to the enormous harm of lockdowns. We must keep the harm of lockdowns in sharp focus and I thought this needed to happen right at the outset.”

The professor was particularly concerned about the reporting of Sonia Sodha, a columnist on The Guardian, who had written three opinion pieces questioning the scientific observations of Professor Gupta.

Sodha’s Wikipedia page revealed she was previously an adviser to former Labour leader Ed Miliband and obtained a university degree in Politics, philosophy and economics from Oxford University but it does not list any actual expertise in the science of immunology and epidemiology.


‘My only motive to speak out is for the poor and the young’

Speaking of the censorship she, Carl Heneghen, Karol Sikora, Dolores Cahill and other professionals have suffered from Facebook, You Tube, Google and Twitter who have spoken out when talking about focused protection, she said this of them, particulaly Ms Sodha: “I think it is a pecular sociological phenomenon. I’ve been very dismayed by it at a personal level.

“Why should there be this fervent opposition and the ad-hominem criticism, I really cannot fathom where this venom is arising from.

“What is it? Is it their reputation, or vested interests or their desire to gang up on people? My only motive is to bring attention to the harm done to the poor and to the young.”

  • THIS transcription is based on the interview with Professor Gupta with Juliet Hartley-Brewer on Talk Radio and should be read as such.

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

Scott November 25, 2020 at 3:45 am

Possibly, you should have focused on the journalist. Looked into what she had put in the articles. The fact that the Guardian has allowed someone without any medical background to write 3 articles attacking doctors who question the covid narrative speaks volumes.

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