President-elect Donald Trump has named staunch COVID lockdown opponent Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to serve as Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), drawing praise from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Bhattacharya, who emerged as one of the most prominent critics of the U.S. government’s response to the COVID-19 scare as part of the Great Barrington Declaration, will now assume leadership of the very federal agency that vilified him and cast him as a fringe conspiracy theorist.
Longtime admirers of Bhattacharya — and critics of the Anthony Fauci policy regime — celebrated Bhattacharya’s appoint to head up the NIH.
“Together, Jay and RFK Jr. will restore the NIH to a gold standard of medical research, as they examine the underlying causes of, and solutions to, America’s biggest health challenges, including our crisis of chronic illness and disease,” said President Trump.
Kennedy, Trump’s pick for Department of Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS), quickly responded with praise for the president’s choice.
“I’m so grateful to President Trump for this spectacular appointment. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is the ideal leader to restore NIH as the international template for gold-standard science and evidence-based medicine,” said Kennedy.
Bhattacharya is currently a professor at Stanford University, where he earned his medical degree along with a PhD in economics.
He also serves as a research associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Bhattacharya promised to work on making American health agencies trustworthy again, after they destroyed public trust by forcing draconian and unscientific lockdowns and mandates on the people.
In particular, Fauci and other public health authorities misled the American people about whether the mRNA injections marketed as COVID-19 vaccines would prevent the transmission of the virus.
At the time, health officials knew the vaccines would not prevent transmission, but that did not prevent them from making the claim over and over again at official press conferences and in mainstream media appearances. The same health officials downplayed the potential adverse consequences from the experimental therapeutic treatments.
Bhattacharya has promised to take American public health in a new, more transparent direction.
“We will reform American scientific institutions so that they are worthy of trust again and will deploy the fruits of excellent science to make America healthy again,” said Bhattacharya.
Bhattacharya is most famous for his work on the October 2020 “Great Barrington Declaration,” alongside two other medical experts: epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta and biostatistician Martin Kulldorff.
The Declaration challenged the prevailing narrative on COVID and lockdown measures, highlighting the harms caused by shutting down the country.
“Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice,” said the declaration.
The authors argued that COVID posed very little risk to young and healthy people and advocated for the government to allow the majority of Americans to return to normal life.
Under their plans, the elderly and infirm actually at risk of the virus would still be given protections from infection.
They believed that this approach would accelerate the achievement of “herd immunity,” where the rate of new infections becomes stable and manageable, while continuing to protect the vulnerable.
The authors argued that their proposal could achieve herd immunity even without the help of a vaccine.
Health officials, including Fauci and others, quickly worked to suppress discussion of the Great Barrington Declaration and the authors’ alternative idea for an approach to COVID.
Internal emails between Fauci and then-NIH Director Francis Collins revealed that they directly conspired to censor Bhattacharya.
In September of last year, Bhattacharya penned an article for The Free Press detailing the censorship campaign against him.
He recounted discussions of his Declaration being censored on Google, YouTube, Reddit, and Facebook, along with Twitter before Elon Musk purchased it.
“During the pandemic, the American government violated my free speech rights and those of my scientist colleagues for questioning the federal government’s pandemic policies,” said Bhattacharya.
In the upcoming Trump administration, Bhattacharya will lead one of the agencies responsible for censoring him.
Bhattacharya contrasts sharply with Trump’s pick for Surgeon General, Dr. Jeanette Nesheiwat.
She is a Fox News contributor who regularly appeared on TV, parroting the prevailing views on COVID, advocating for child masking, social distancing, and the COVID vaccines.
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