Stanford University Medical School professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya called the COVID-19 lockdowns “biggest public health mistake we’ve ever made” and says the harm it causes to society is “catastrophic.”

In an interview with the Dialy Clout, as reported by Newsweek, Battacharya said the lockdowns are having a devastating effect on both short and long-term public health.

The Stanford doctor is behind the Great Barrington Declaration, a petition signed by thousands of medical professionals and practitioners, which calls for an end to the lockdowns.

In the interview, Bhattacharya said the declaration stems from “two basic facts.”

“One is that people who are older have a much higher risk from dying from COVID than people who are younger…and that’s a really important fact because we know who his most vulnerable, it’s people that are older. So the first plank of the Great Barrington Declaration: let’s protect the vulnerable. The other idea is that the lockdowns themselves impose great harm on people. Lockdowns are not a natural normal way to live.”

He also pointed to the disparate effect the lockdowns have based on socioeconomic status: “People who are poor face much more hardship from the lockdowns than people who are rich,” he said. 

The impact the lockdowns is having on children appears to be quite devastating. According to a recent report, from January 2020 to November 2020, self-harm claims have risen by 333 percent and overdoses have gone up by 120 percent among 13 to 18 year-olds.

In an email to Newsweek, Bhattacharya said, “I stand behind my comment that the lockdowns are the single worst public health mistake in the last 100 years. We will be counting the catastrophic health and psychological harms, imposed on nearly every poor person on the face of the earth, for a generation.”

“At the same time,” he wrote, “they have not served to control the epidemic in the places where they have been most vigorously imposed. In the US, they have – at best – protected the ‘non-essential’ class from COVID, while exposing the essential working class to the disease. The lockdowns are trickle down epidemiology.”

For the full report, click HERE.