By Modesto P. Sa-onoy
It has been known from the beginning that the WHO advocated lockdowns, but only “as a primary control method” and governments followed the advice and despite the WHO expert’s knowledge of the adverse impact on human lives and economies. So now the “primary response” has become the “only response” and turned lockdowns into a human and spiritual catastrophe.
It does not seem correct that the uniform lockdowns and quarantines adopted by governments were supposed only to be initial. The universality of the lockdowns needed orchestration and only WHO can do that and WHO has not presented an alternative to closing our lives and locking us down.
Of course, lockdown is different from quarantine but they end up with the same debilitating results – massive human misery except for the opportunists and power-hungry – as people are forced to stay inside their residences and businesses had to close while multi-billion pharmaceutical companies allied with WHO develop a vaccine.
The reports also said that Melbourne’s lockdown has been hailed as one of the strictest and longest in the world. In Spain’s lockdown in March, people weren’t allowed to leave the house unless it was to walk their pets. Crazy – pets have better privileges than people. Pets need exercise, people don’t.
Pets need to go out but churches are closed because people, to the mind of secular and even anti-church governments, do not need to pray in churches. They can pray at home, but pets cannot walk at their houses. The world is tumbling down, psychologically.
In China, authorities had gone wild – welding doors shut to stop people from leaving their homes.
In the Philippines, the local governments take away people they suspect (their swab results not yet completed) and place them under quarantine and then charge their expenses to the national government. The more “positive” they report the bigger the budget. Word had gone around that barangays and tracers had a quota in order to get the funding. How true? How true?
The WHO official, Dr. Nabarro thinks these steps were largely unnecessary. Instead, he is advocating for a new approach to containing the virus. “And so, we really do appeal to all world leaders: stop using lockdown as your primary control method. Develop better systems for doing it. Work together and learn from each other.”
His message is timely but WHO denied his views. Last week a number of health experts from all over the world came together calling for an end to coronavirus lockdowns. The experts wrote a petition, called the Great Barrington Declaration, which said that lockdowns were doing “irreparable damage”. It in effect confirms Dr. Nabarro’s conclusions but WHO is adamant because it refused an alternative, like banning HCQ, an alternative and significantly effective drug.
The declaration said, “As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing Covid-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.”
The declaration that has 12,000 signatures so far further said, “Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health.”
The petition was authored by Sunetra Gupta of the University of Oxford, Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University, and Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University.
When asked about the petition, Dr. Nabarro had only good things to say, “Really important point by Professor Gupta.”
However, Michael Head, Senior Research Fellow in Global Health, University of Southampton, said the declaration was “based upon a false premise”, claiming that “governments and the scientific community wish for extensive lockdowns to continue until a vaccine is available.” Indeed, “wait for the vaccine” is the standard reply while people are dying. Why wait for a vaccine when there are other remedies that would make lockdowns unnecessary?
“Lockdowns are only ever used when transmission is high, and now that we have some knowledge about how best to handle ‘lighter’ than the full suppressions we have seen for example in the UK across the spring of 2020,” he said.
Michael Head said those behind the Barrington Declaration are “advocates of herd immunity within a population” who want “those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal”. He considers that a very bad idea.
There’s more to this. *
