Facebook removes page of international disease experts critical of COVID lockdowns

Facebook this week removed the page of a prominent international group of disease experts that for months has been critical of COVID-19 lockdowns, with the social media page reportedly being deleted without warning or explanation. 

The Great Barrington Declaration made headlines last year with an international trio of epidemiologists arguing against the ongoing regional and national shutdowns worldwide in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The declaration, which has so far been signed by nearly 800,000 individuals worldwide, including tens of thousands of medical professionals and experts, expressed "grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies," and urged public officials to adopt more targeted approaches to virus mitigation. 

The declaration was first promulgated in October 2020. Yet this week, Facebook apparently removed the declaration's page from its servers. The page as of Thursday was no longer available on Facebook. 

"The link may be broken, or the page may have been removed," the page's error message read as of Friday morning.

Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of epidemiology at Stanford University and one of the original signatories to the document, confirmed to Just the News the page's removal. 

"It has apparently been disappeared without warning," he said.

He noted that there were "other pages up with similar names," yet those pages did not come from the official Great Barrington coalition. 

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the removal on Friday morning.