Who Is Jay Bhattacharya? The Lockdown Critic And 'Herd Immunity ...

4 hours ago

Forbes

Topline

President-elect Donald Trump nominated Stanford University physician and economist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health on Tuesday, a move that would hand the reigns of the country’s premier medical research agency to a noted critic of COVID-19 lockdown measures and a proponent of “herd immunity

Jay Bhattacharya speaks during the 2023 Forbes Healthcare Summit at Jazz at Lincoln Center on ... [+] December 2023 in New York City.

Getty Images Key Facts

Bhattacharya, who was born in Kolkata, got his medical degree from Stanford University in 1997 and later earned a PhD. in Economics at the university in 2000.

Just weeks after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, Bhattacharya co-authored an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal questioning the severity of the virus.

At the time, Bhattacharya argued that shelter-in-place measures and universal quarantines were likely not worth the cost they would impose “on the economy, community and individual mental and physical health.”

A month later, Bhattacharya co-published a statistical analysis of antibody data and claimed the population immunity to the virus was significantly higher than originally thought—but the study’s methodology and conclusions quickly came under criticism from infectious disease experts.

Later that year, Trump cited Bhattacharya’s study to claim his administration had pioneered “groundbreaking therapies” that reduced the fatality rate by 85%—a claim Politifact rated only as half true by pointing out that increased testing was catching more cases.

Bhattacharya remained a noted critic of lockdown measures over the following years and called them “the single biggest public health mistake” while at a gathering organized by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2021.

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What Is The Great Barrington Declaration?

The Great Barrington Declaration was an open letter published in October 2020 and co-signed by Bhattacharya and two others—Oxford University Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology Sunetra Gupta and Swedish biostatistician and former Harvard Medical School professor Martin Kulldorff. The controversial letter argued that lockdowns were producing “devastating effects on short and long-term public health,” and said keeping them in place “until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage.” The letter argued that authorities should instead pursue the goal of herd immunity by allowing “natural infection” among healthy individuals. The letter, which was published before COVID-19 vaccines became available, also said the herd immunity goal “can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine.” At the time, top U.S. infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, dismissed the declaration as “ridiculous” and “total nonsense,” and warned it would lead to more “hospitalizations and deaths.”

Chief Critic

“Despite his mild manners, Bhattacharya is a self-interested extremist who gives cover to anti-vaxxers & promotes policies that will kill people. He will set American health, innovation, & science back for a generation. He’s not here to reform NIH. He’s here to destroy it,” virologist Angela Rasmussen wrote on X.

Crucial Quote

Bhattacharya tweeted of his nomination: “I am honored and humbled by President Donald Trump'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!”

Tangent

Bhattacharya serves as a board member for a group called “Biosafety Now,” which calls for a ban on enhanced pathogen with pandemic potential (ePPP) research. An ePPP is a pathogen that has been modified to enhance its transmissibility and virulence. According to the NIH, such research can “help us understand the fundamental nature of human-pathogen interactions, assess the pandemic potential of emerging infectious agents… and inform public health and preparedness efforts” when performed with adequate biosafety measures. The group also calls for the prosecution of “those culpable for causing COVID-19” and “those culpable for covering up [the]

cause of COVID-19.”

Big Number

$48 billion. That is the National Institutes of Health’s annual research budget, making it the “largest single public funder of biomedical and behavioral research in the world,” according to the agency. The NIH oversees 27 separate institutes and centers across the U.S.