“Trump picks NIH critic Jay Bhattacharya to lead the agency”
“President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford University physician and economist known for his controversial views during the Covid-19 pandemic, as director of the National Institutes of Health.”……..
“Bhattacharya was one of the main authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. The open letter, published in October 2020 and signed by thousands of public health scientists, argued against lockdown measures and in favor of a hands-off approach to the pandemic, relying on letting low-risk people build up herd immunity — a suggestion then-NIH Director Francis Collins called dangerous.”
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“Francis Collins :The former NIH chief and promoter of Covid lockdowns now says his view was too ‘narrow.’”
“If you’re a public-health person and you’re trying to make a decision, you have this very narrow view of what the right decision is, and that is something that will save a life,” Dr. Collins explained in a Covid discussion this summer for Braver Angels, an outfit that aims to bridge political divides. A video of the discussion surfaced this week on X.com.
Dr. Collins continued: “So you attach infinite value to stopping the disease and saving a life. You attach a zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never quite recovered.” This, he explained, “is a public-health mindset,” which was “another mistake we made.”
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How Will Trump’s Covid Contrarians Handle the Next Pandemic?
“Dr. Bhattacharya, a Stanford University medical economist and outspoken opponent of lockdowns, masking, school closures and other Covid-19 mitigation measures, and Mr. Trump’s other health picks have one thing in common. They are all considered Covid contrarians whose views raise questions about how they would handle an infectious disease crisis.”
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