I am honored and humbled by President @realDonaldTrump‘s nomination of me to be the next @NIH director. 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! https://t.co/FrLmYznhfw
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) November 27, 2024
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. pic.twitter.com/NakHavsblX
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) November 27, 2024
I’ve said from the beginning, from the point at which I predicted Trump would win the election, that this incoming administration would be so much about Zionism that there wouldn’t be energy for anything else. I still tend to believe that is true, but of course, I’m happy to be proved wrong.
Certainly, I did not expect Jay Bhattacharya to be made the head of the NIH, and there is no way I can say that is anything other than very good. This guy was the leading critic of Anthony Fauci and his vax agenda.
AP:
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen health economist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a critic of pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates, to lead the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s leading medical research agency.
Trump, in a statement Tuesday evening, said Bhattacharya, a 56-year-old physician and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, will work in cooperation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, “to direct the Nation’s Medical Research, and to make important discoveries that will improve Health, and save lives.”
“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,” he wrote.
The decision to choose Bhattacharya for the post is yet another reminder of the ongoing impact of the COVID pandemic on the politics on public health.
Bhattacharya was one of three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, an October 2020 open letter maintaining that lockdowns were causing irreparable harm.
The document — which came before the availability of COVID-19 vaccines and during the first Trump administration — promoted “herd immunity,” the idea that people at low risk should live normally while building up immunity to COVID-19 through infection. Protection should focus instead on people at higher risk, the document said.
“I think the lockdowns were the single biggest public health mistake,” Bhattacharya said in March 2021 during a panel discussion convened by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Again, I’m still very incredulous. But RFK and this Indian guy are people you would appoint if you actually wanted to investigate the vaccine scam and do something about it.
It is not a virtue to exaggerate an infectious disease threat at the start of a pandemic to panic the population into compliance.
It’s not a vice to ask for data to understand the true risk.
A noble lie is a lie.
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) November 26, 2024
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya: “The public did not know that there were prominent scientists that disagreed with the lockdown policies. They wanted to create an illusion of consensus!” pic.twitter.com/S8LjeMYu4N
— Jan 𝕏 Jensen (@_Jan_Jensen) November 19, 2024
. @maddow is lying about the @gbdeclaration. It advocated for focused protection of the elderly and vulnerable. It’s the lockdown strategy she espoused that led to the ‘culling’ of children, of the poor, and the vulnerable. Has she ever heard of Sweden? https://t.co/ags6SCnhjY
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) November 26, 2024
Of course, they haven’t actually been appointed yet, and this is all theoretical.
But I will take anything good I can get, and I do hope good things happen.