Doctor leading charge to reopen says scientific community suppressing alternative COVID views

More than 3,500 medical professionals have signed a new COVID-19 declaration calling for the "devastating" coronavirus lockdown policies to be lifted and replaced with a new, less restrictive strategy.

The Great Barrington Declaration was released Monday and in just three days has caught the attention of thousands of medical practitioners, health scientists and the general public.

"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 states. 

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is one of the three authors of the statement, and talked with "Just the News AM" host Carrie Sheffield on Wednesday about the "Focused Protection" approach.

"The idea is that you protect the vulnerable people that are older that we know that if they get infected have higher risk of death," he said. "But for everyone else, let's let them live their normal lives, reopen schools, resume arts, culture and so on. The idea being that younger people, children, for instance, face much higher costs from the shutdown."

Bhattacharya said the lockdowns that started in March were a panic move that was not part of pandemic planning.

He said that the adopted plan was the aberration and their idea, in the declaration, is a standard health practice plan, which is why so many medical professionals and epidemiologists have already signed it. 

"When people say, 'Follow the science,' what I've seen is they often mean censor scientists who don't agree with some scientists, the people who are sort of controlling policy," he said.

"The plan that we proposed in this Great Barrington declaration, is to protect the vulnerable, with this focused protection, and let the rest of us live our lives," Bhattacharya told Sheffield. "[The media] has not covered itself in glory in this. It stoked panic, when in fact the good public health practice is to provide assurance and good, accurate information."

He said Florida, South Dakota and Sweden's plans are very similarly to their proposed plan, and the science community has censored those with whom it does not agree.