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The Great Barrington Declaration, a statement written by three public health experts from Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford, encourages governments to lift lockdown restrictions on young and healthy people while focusing protection measures on the elderly. This would allow COVID-19 to spread in a population where it is less likely to be deadly, the authors state, encouraging widespread immunity that is not dependent on a vaccine.

Restrictions have caused other harms, including lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings, and deteriorating mental health, they argue.

After gaining some publicity, this strategy was strongly denounced by many in the scientific community. While it supposedly received 8,000 signatures from public health experts and doctors, news outlets later revealed that some of those signatures were fake.

The declaration was sponsored by the American Institute for Economic Research, a libertarian, free-market think tank headquartered in western Massachusetts. The Institute is in a network of organizations funded by Charles Koch -- a right-wing billionaire known for promoting climate change denial and opposing regulations on business.

While the scientists who wrote the declaration claim they represent both right- and left-wing politics, all have attempted to influence governments to end lockdowns since the start of the pandemic.

The Institute is in a network of organizations funded by Charles Koch- a right-wing billionaire known for promoting climate change denial and opposing regulations on business.