Stanford epidemiologist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya expressed concern Wednesday night that the global and national medical establishment might have learned nothing from China's horrific experience with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Appearing on Wednesday night's "Tucker Carlson Tonight" with guest host Sean Duffy, Bhattacharya worried that the same mistakes China and much of the rest of the world made at various points along the way could "come back" if there is another pandemic.
The segment began with Duffy chronicling China's shift from so-called "zero-Covid" policies, a draconian approach to lockdowns that was never sustainable, to essentially giving up and allowing the virus to run unabated through a population that has little natural immunity.
Stanford epidemiologist @DrJBhattacharya on how little the medical establishment has learned from China's massive failure:
— Scott Morefield (@SKMorefield) December 29, 2022
"It was inevitable that this virus was going to infect basically everybody. It's a highly infectious respiratory disease." pic.twitter.com/4i8mEVi0tx
"The World Health Organization has put containment at the center of its approach to future pandemics," Bhattacharya said. "The Biden Administration has basically, I think, rubber-stamped the same kind of containment idea when there's another pandemic. Unless there's a concerted effort by political leaders to examine the failure of our Covid policies and then put in place plans so that we don’t lock down again, I’m afraid it will come back."
The Stanford professor - who helped craft the Great Barrington Declaration in 2020 that called for focused protection of the vulnerable as an alternative to society-destroying lockdowns - noted that many "public health authorities" wanted something like China's Covid policies in the United States even though indefinitely containing a "highly infectious respiratory disease" like Covid-19 is impossible.
It was inevitable that this virus was going to infect basically everybody. It’s a highly infectious respiratory disease. Our efforts to try the control the spread of it, we don’t have a technology that does that ... Chinese authorities capitulated. The problem is they didn’t protect the elderly population. They’re at high risk. There’s a lot of people that have never been infected before that are really at high risk and their healthcare system is much more easily overwhelmed than ours is. That’s what we’re seeing now. It’s tragic. At this point, there’s not much I can do other than to pray for the people of China because it is absolutely a disaster what they’ve had to go through from their move to zero Covid to essentially letting it rip.