Dr. Jay Bhattacharya made all the right enemies during the COVID “pandemic,” and now they’re uniting against his nomination to be head of the National Institute of Health. From Jonathan Turley at jonathanturley.org:
For those who opposed the censorship and cancel campaigns during the pandemic, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya became an iconic figure of resistance. Unfortunately, the same can be said of the anti-free speech movement and pandemic hawks. Bhattacharya, who co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration and was a vocal critic of COVID-19 policies, has been nominated as the next head of the National Institutes of Health. As I wrote this weekend in my column, the nomination was heralded by many as a turning point for the NIH. It is also a rallying cry for those who supported the earlier measures, as shown by a hit piece in Scientific American, accusing him of being a danger to the very lives of American citizens.
Bhattacharya was censored, blacklisted, and vilified for the last four years due to his opposing views on health policy, including opposing wholesale shutdowns of schools and businesses. He was recently honored with the prestigious “Intellectual Freedom” award from the American Academy of Sciences and Letters.
Before the pandemic, Bhattacharya was one of the most respected scientists in the world and served as the director of Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging.
That all changed when he dared to question the science behind pandemic policies, including suggesting that natural immunity would be as good if not better protection for young healthy individuals.
It did not matter that positions once denounced as “conspiracy theories” have been recognized or embraced by many.
Some argued that there was no need to shut down schools, which has led to a crisis in mental illness among the young and the loss of critical years of education. Other nations heeded such advice with more limited shutdowns (including keeping schools open) and did not experience our losses.
