Great Barrington Declaration
The Great Barrington Declaration was an open letter published in October 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns. It claimed harmful COVID-19 lockdowns could be avoided via the fringe notion of "focused protection", by which those most at risk of dying from an infection could purportedly be kept safe while society otherwise took no steps to prevent infection. The envisaged result was herd immunity within three months, as SARS-CoV-2 swept through the population.
Great Barrington Declaration
The authors of the Great Barrington Declaration at the American Institute for Economic Research. (L–R) Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta, Jay Bhattacharya
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has characterized the herd immunity concept proposed in the Great Barrington Declaration as "scientifically and ethically problematic"
United States infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci called the proposals in the Great Barrington Declaration "nonsense and very dangerous".
During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of non-pharmaceutical interventions, particularly lockdowns, were implemented in numerous countries and territories around the world. These restrictions were established with the intention to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. By April 2020, about half of the world's population was under some form of lockdown, with more than 3.9 billion people in more than 90 countries or territories having been asked or ordered to stay at home by their governments. Although similar disease control measures have been used for hundreds of years, the scale of those implemented in the 2020s is thought to be unprecedented.
A usually congested highway in Penang, Malaysia, deserted during the Movement Control Order
Healthcare workers in Hong Kong prepare to conduct mass COVID-19 testing of Jordan residents during a localised lockdown.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon delivers a press conference instructing the public to stay at home during the COVID-19 pandemic in Scotland.
At a community quarantine checkpoint in Bohol, Philippines, police officers check a passing jeepney.