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An emergency medicine physician apologized to colleagues this week for doubting their views that the government’s response to the Covid-19 would have lasting detrimental effects on the population.
During a roundtable meeting held by Gov. Ron DeSantis Monday, Dr. Joseph Fraiman addressed fellow physicians, including the doctors who wrote the Great Barrington Declaration, admitting they were right that Covid policies were causing more harm than good.
Dr. Fraiman discussed initially not questioning the policies as he was on the frontlines dealing with sick patients; however, once he stepped back and took in a full picture, he realized the policies were not providing a benefit.
And then I realized something that I kind of ignored that much of the people here have discussed and brought up which is that these policies were harmful.
Initially I was… I don’t want to say I was ignorant, but it was irrelevant because there were lives on the line – I’m an emergency doctor, there’s lives you know and it’s like, ‘No, we have to do it…’
But if the policies didn’t make a big difference and they only caused harm, then you have to start rethinking what we’re doing, and you take the data that’s clearly in front of us and if it is only causing harm, and at best can only save a few, we need to think about it…
Because if, at best, an aggressive lockdown policy… imagine it reduced hospitalizations/death by 20 percent – 20 percent of deaths/hospitalizations reduced, if that was the case, then maybe we could come here and debate: ‘Is the harms that are caused by those lockdowns worth that benefit? And how do we negotiate that benefit through you know navigating through our freedoms?’
But the reality is hospitalizations and deaths were not reduced by 20 percent by ANY policies, because if they were we would have had studies at this point that would have been able to consistently identify that, and that just has not occurred at all.
So I think as a society we have to decide if we want to continue like a public policy that’s obviously producing large harms and offering only a minimal benefit at best that’s currently unmeasurable.
Fraiman went on to apologize to authors of the Great Barrington Declaration for denying they were right all along.
Also, personally I would like to apologize to the three other scientists sitting with me here on Zoom, the proponents of the Barrington Declaration, because I… initially I did think you all were crazy, or dumb, or maybe you just didn’t understand what I was seeing, but I now realize – actually, I’m sorry because I believe now you guys were correct and you were correct from the beginning. And I wish that more people including myself had realized that sooner, and I hope more people realize that soon enough.
Watch Dr. Fraiman’s full comments during the roundtable discussion earlier this week:
Watch the full roundtable discussion: