Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is the director of the National Institutes of Health, the organization formerly run by Dr. Francis Collins and Dr. Anthony Fauci. But Dr. Bhattacharya’s importance extends much further than “just” NIH. And his appointment there under the second Donald Trump administration marked a dramatic about-face for an organization that was instrumental in creating many of the issues and problems we faced as a society during the pandemic.
Dr. Bhattacharya was one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration in 2020. That paper contained a blueprint for focused protection during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of locking down all society, Bhattacharya and his co-authors wrote, we should look to protect the most vulnerable. That’s been proven prophetic, as the harms from lockdowns far exceeded any benefits.
He also conducted a study in Silicon Valley early on in the lockdowns that identified COVID was far more prevalent in the community than people realized. That meant the virus was also far less deadly than organizations like the World Health Organization had suggested. He was skeptical about the efficacy of cloth masks, advocated for opening schools, and participated in a roundtable hosted by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2021 that illustrated how ineffectual the Anthony Fauci-doctrine had been. Around that same time, Bhattacharya also spoke out against vaccine mandates and other abuses, which decreased public confidence and trust in vaccines.
In short, he was a voice of sanity in a sea of absurdity, proven right about nearly every pandemic-related policy. For his efforts, he was demonized, labeled, censored, and targeted by Collins and Fauci in emails. I had the exclusive opportunity to ask him about many of these issues, and what he’s bringing to NIH that his predecessors didn’t.
