Jay Bhattacharya, another Covid-19 critic goes to Washington

Earlier than President-elect Donald Trump selected Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford College professor of drugs, to guide the Nationwide Institutes of Well being, Bhattacharya rose to prominence throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. The physician opposed lockdowns and, later, vaccine and masks mandates.

An elite physician takes on the Covid consensus

Bhattacharya was born in Kolkata, India, and emigrated to the US when he was a baby. He attended Stanford College for each his undergraduate and Ph.D. work in economics in addition to for his M.D. He first labored for the RAND Company as an economist throughout the late Nineteen Nineties earlier than securing a place on the Stanford College of Medication. At Stanford, Bhattacharya has been a prolific researcher who centered on problems with growing older, diet and wellness. He nonetheless serves because the college’s director of the Middle for Demography and Economics of Well being and Growing older.

In 2020, he grew to become one of many leaders of a motion pushing again towards stay-at-home orders and enterprise closures early within the Covid-19 pandemic. A extensively shared March 24, 2020, Wall Road Journal op-ed that he co-authored with Eran Bendavid speculated that not more than 20,000 to 40,000 folks would die of the virus in the US. A coverage of indefinite lockdowns “will not be definitely worth the prices it imposes on the economic system, group and particular person psychological and bodily well being,” they mentioned. By way of the “claim-staking” article’s accuracy, “for each demise his estimate implied, there have been, in the long run, greater than 35,” mentioned David Wallace-Wells at The New York Occasions.

Bhattacharya was additionally one of many three preliminary co-authors of the “Nice Barrington Declaration,” an October 2020 anti-lockdown open letter that was ultimately signed by hundreds of public well being leaders and scientists. Present Covid mitigation insurance policies, together with enterprise restrictions and college closures, had been “producing devastating results on brief and long-term public well being,” the authors mentioned. As an alternative, they beneficial a coverage of “centered safety,” which might enable “those that are at minimal threat of demise to dwell their lives usually” whereas concentrating mitigation measures on the highest-risk people. The letter’s suggestions are “the epitome of vanity,” mentioned Brooks B. Gump at U.S. Information and World Report. Critics charged that the Nice Barrington Declaration’s “strategy would endanger People who’ve underlying circumstances” and will lead to maybe a half-million deaths,” mentioned Apoorva Mandavilli and Sheryl Homosexual Stolberg at The New York Occasions. Greater than 1.2 million People have died of Covid-19 since March 2020.

Bhattacharya additionally printed quite a few scholarly research about Covid-19, together with a 2020 European Journal of Medical Investigation paper. Assessing the success or failure of assorted mitigation methods in containing the unfold of the virus, “we fail to search out a further advantage of stay-at-home orders and enterprise closures,” they mentioned. Bhattacharya additionally opposed masks mandates in colleges. Masking schoolchildren can intrude with communication and “exacerbates the probabilities {that a} baby will expertise nervousness and melancholy,” he wrote in a 2021 paper with Neeraj Sood.

Combined reactions

Reactions to Bhattacharya’s nomination have been combined, breaking down largely alongside acquainted Covid battle strains. Bhattacharya is a “critical scientist with a monitor document of success,” mentioned Justin Perry at The Dispatch, praising his braveness in difficult the general public well being consensus throughout the pandemic. Bhattacharya’s appointment will likely be a “main victory for science and tutorial freedom,” mentioned John Tierney at Metropolis Journal, who expects Bhattacharya to make use of his funding discretion to reward analysis universities that uphold conservative viewpoints about tutorial freedom. Bhattacharya is “truly certified,” mentioned Zeynep Tufekci at The New York Occasions. Whereas lots of his predictions had been fallacious, he ought to be appreciated for forcing officers to contemplate the “societal price of prolonging early pandemic measures,” mentioned Tufekci.

Bhattacharya is an “A-tier Covid minimizer” whose appointment is “very worrying within the context of what the NIH does,” mentioned Beatrice Adler-Bolton on the Demise Panel podcast. His appointment is “a nod not solely towards Covid and lockdown skeptics but in addition to those that may place financial issues over public well being,” mentioned Hafiz Rashid at The New Republic.