How did the Great Barrington Declaration Come About?
Why was the Declaration written?
The Declaration was written from a global public health and humanitarian perspective, with special concerns about how the current COVID-19 strategies are forcing our children, the working class and the poor to carry the heaviest burden. The response to the pandemic in many countries around the world, focused on lockdowns, contact tracing and isolation, imposes enormous unnecessary health costs on people. In the long run, it will lead to higher COVID and non-COVID mortality than the focused protection plan we call for in the Declaration.
Who is the intended audience?
This is an international declaration, written with concerns for the entire world. It was written for the public, fellow scientists, and government officials.
Who wrote the Declaration?
The Declaration was written by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Sunetra Gupta and Dr. Martin Kulldorff. A family member and a journalist helped with phrasing, grammar, and proof reading. Nobody else saw the declaration before it was completed in its final form.
When was the Declaration written, signed and released?
The Declaration was written from October 2 to October 4, 2020. It was signed on October 4, after which it was sent to scientific colleagues. It was released to the public on October 5.
Who initiated the Declaration?
Dr Kulldorff invited Dr Bhattacharya and Dr Gupta to Massachusetts to record a video outlining an alternative to the current COVID-19 strategy. While meeting, the three spontaneously decided to also write a short Declaration to summarize the thinking.
Why was the Declaration signed in Great Barrington?
The Declaration was written and signed at the American Institute for Economic Research, located in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The Institute kindly offered to help with the video recording, providing a location, equipment and a camera man pro bono.
How were the co-signers selected?
After finishing the Declaration, the three authors emailed a few colleagues asking them if they would co-sign. Most agreed. These original 30+ co-signers are listed on the front page, together with others that were added later.
Can anyone sign the Declaration?
Yes. Through the online form.
Are all the online signatures real?
No. Some pranksters added fake signatures such as Dr. Johnny Bananas, Prof. Spon’Ge’Bob SQ.UarePants, Dr. Neal Ferguson, Prof. Ware Thamask, and Dr. Person Fakename. In a strange twist, one journalist bragged on Twitter about adding fake names, after which other journalists criticized the Declaration for having fake signatures. Anyhow, the fake signatures are less than 1% of the total, and most have been removed from the count tracker.
Was anyone paid to write or sign the Declaration?
None of the authors or co-signers received any money, honoraria, stipend, or salary from anyone for either the Declaration or the video recording.
Do the three authors have any conflicts of interest?
Dr. Kulldorff works on research grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the non-profit Fund for Public Health in New York City, some of which is related to COVID-19. He has never accepted or received any funding from pharmaceutical companies, nor from any other large corporation.
Dr. Bhattacharya research funding over the past 22 years of his career has come almost entirely from grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Agriculture, and participation on contracts with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) via a government contracting research group, Acumen, LLC. He has never accepted or received any funding from pharmaceutical companies, nor from any other large corporation.
Dr. Gupta’s research funding over the last 30 years has principally been through fellowships and investigator awards from the Wellcome Trust and the European Research Council. She has also received funding from the UKRI, the Royal Society, the Leverhulme Trust, the Emily and Georg von Opel Foundation and the Oxford Martin School. She and Dr. Craig Thompson have developed a novel method for producing a universal influenza vaccine (derived from a mathematical model) and this has now been licensed and is going through early testing. She does not hold any consultancy contracts or stock shares in any commercial company.
How Did the Great Barrington Declaration Come About?
(addendum, October 2025)
During the five years since its publication in 2020, there have been several attempts to misattribute the Great Barrington Declaration to some well-organized scheme by powerful interests, but the truth is simple: It was the spontaneous effort by the three infectious disease epidemiologists who were frustrated with a pandemic response that violated the principles of public health. Earlier during the pandemic, we had separately argued for focused protection instead of general lockdowns, in a similar vein as many other scientists, such as Scott Atlas, Johan Giesecke, Carl Heneghan, David Katz, Karol Sikora, Anders Tegnell, Ellen Townsend and Knut Wittkowski. Hence, the public health content of the Declaration was not novel.
The Declaration itself was the initiative of the three of us and no one else. Nobody recruited, encouraged, sponsored, paid or organized us to write the Declaration. It was written and signed at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, but we were there for another purpose. Dr. Kulldorff had suggested a small gathering of public health scientists and journalists, so that the latter could learn more about the pandemic and public health from the scientists he invited. Jeffery Tucker and other AIER staff generously hosted the event, kindly providing technical and logistical support, for which we are forever grateful. None of us are or have ever been affiliated with AIER, just as we are not affiliated with every university that we have visited for a scientific meeting. If we had written the Declaration at Starbucks instead of AIER, nobody would have come up with the idea that it was organized or sponsored by Starbucks and its staff.
The idea of writing the Declaration was raised in a private email exchange between the three of us at the end of September. The Declaration was written in Great Barrington from October 2 to October 4, 2020. A family member and a journalist helped with phrasing, grammar, and proof reading. Nobody else saw it before it was completed in its final form, and it was not edited by anyone at AIER or any other organization. AIER staff was informed about the Declaration on October 3, but its president and board did not know about it until after it was published on October 5. We did get help translating the Declaration, as people around the world spontaneously sent us translations into over 40 languages. The title of the Declaration was suggested by Dr. Bhattacharya, and it is named after Great Barrington, the Massachusetts town in which it was written, which in turn is named after the village of Great Barrington that lies 35 kilometers west of Oxford, England.
After the Declaration was signed on October 4, it was sent to some of our scientific colleagues, most of whom co-signed it. Of critical importance, Lou Eastman did a heroic job working through the night setting up a dedicated web site for the Declaration and hosting it on his personal server. Without that amazing effort in his free time, the Great Barrington Declaration would not have been known to the wider world. We are also indebted to those who helped to quickly disseminate the Declaration wide and far: Scott Atlas, Laura Ingraham, Jeanne Lenzer, Freddie Sayers, and Jeffrey Tucker, among many others. Most importantly, we thank all those who read and shared the Great Barrington Declaration with family, friends and neighbors, generating almost a million co-signers from all walks of life, including tens of thousands of scientists and health care professionals. We greatly appreciate every one of you. It was a truly extraordinary and humbling experience.
