Dr. Jay Bhattacharya Confirmed As NIH Director

The article below shows how much the “scientific consensus” has changed since the COVID years of 2020-2023.

Jay Bhattacharya’s Confirmation Hearing Proves the Lockdown Skeptics Won 3/6/25

Trump’s nominee for NIH director once stirred major controversy for criticizing lockdowns, mask mandates, and school closures. Yesterday, Senate Democrats didn’t even raise the issue.

Tomorrow will be the fifth anniversary of then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s first statewide emergency declaration issued in response to COVID-19, setting up a long series of orders shuttering down businesses, closing schools, and ordering people to stay in their homes. When enacted in early March 2020, Cuomo’s order was the consensus policy response to the pandemic, endorsed by the first Trump administration and quickly replicated by most red state governors.

Meanwhile, critics of lockdowns were dismissed as dangerous, fringe characters who were peddling “nonsense” solutions or even experimenting with “human sacrifice.” As it happens, yesterday was the Senate confirmation hearing of one such lockdown critic—Stanford professor and medical researcher Jay Bhattacharya, whom President Donald Trump has tapped to head the National Institutes of Health (NIH).Bhattacharya was an early critic of lockdowns and masking. He is perhaps best known for his co-authorship of the October 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, which criticized school closures and society-wide restrictions and instead argued for a strategy of “focused protection” that would “allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally.” This was a hugely controversial position to take at the time.

Former NIH Director Francis Collins demanded a “quick and devastating published take down” in an email to his underling Anthony Fauci. Fauci would later describe the Great Barrington Declaration as “nonsense.” Public health officials and Democratic politicians either condemned the declaration or ignored it as they tightened pandemic restrictions in the fall and winter of 2020.

Yet five years on, at Bhattacharya’s confirmation hearing, Democrats were completely mum about his COVID-era research and advocacy. Not a single Democrat mentioned The Great Barrington Declaration. None bothered to press Bhattacharya on his opposition to once-consensus opinions on lockdowns, masking, and school closures.

Despite having every opportunity and incentive to attack Bhattacharya as a dangerous crank nominee, the minority on the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee chose not to even mention what were once his most controversial views.

Instead, Democrats almost exclusively focused their questions on the Trump administration’s recent pauses of NIH grant and advisory committees and caps on grantees’ indirect research spending. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) asked Bhattacharya if he’d lead a campaign against food companies’ advertisement of unhealthy snacks to children.

When Bhattacharya’s COVID views were mentioned, the comments came from Republican senators heaping praise on him. Sen. Pete Ricketts (R–Neb.), Nebraska’s governor during the pandemic, thanked Bhattacharya for helping him to keep schools open. Sen. Jim Banks (R–Ind.) called the Great Barrington Declaration “undeniably right.” Bhattacharya himself was unapologetic about his criticism of lockdowns—saying that Florida ended the pandemic with lower all-cause mortality than California, as did Sweden vis-à-vis its neighbors.

Democrats’ silence and Republicans’ praise is a remarkable touchstone. It’s yet more proof that five years on from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdown skeptics have won the argument. Critics of lockdowns can publicly express the idea that lockdowns don’t work as an uncontroversial matter of fact. Past defenders of lockdowns are now unwilling to back the policies in public, not even in a lockdown skeptic’s confirmation hearing for a high-ranking public health position.

This shift of the Overton window is remarkable by itself. It’s also suggestive of where the NIH is headed in a second Trump administration. At his confirmation hearing, Bhattacharya criticized past NIH leaders for stepping outside their role as scientists to tell people what to do during the pandemic and attempting to silence debate instead of encouraging it. “The role of scientists is to say these are the risks by giving more data,” said Bhattacharya. “Science should be an engine for freedom, knowledge and freedom.”

It’s a refreshing sentiment and one that would seem to take the most authoritarian COVID-era policies off the table in any future crisis.

Breaking The “Consensus” Dr. Jay Bhattacharya National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Dr Jay Bhattacharya, who faced censoring and blacklisting for criticizing Biden-Fauci lockdown policy, appointed as new NIH director by Trump shows that Kennedy said: “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.”

In the video below, Dr. Bhattacharya discusses the extreme dangers of a government-mandated scientific “consensus” that censors top scientists and doctors who have different views. He discusses how to restore free speech in academia now.

Restoring Free Speech in Academia: Jay Bhattacharya 11/14/24

How To Restore Free Speech In Academia explains that Dr. Bhattacharya was one of three authors of The Great Barrington Declaration released to the public on 10/4/20. The Declaration called for ending the lockdown and protecting the elderly who were the most vulnerable to COVID. CDC stats showed in early 2020 that COVID was little threat to anyone.  The Declaration argued for focused protection for vulnerable elderly and ending the lockdown for everyone else – allowing children to return to school normally. It was signed by many doctors and scientists and now has 939,000 signatures.

However, it was ridiculed by Dr. Francis Collins, then Director of the NH and Dr. Anthony Fauci, then Director of National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases. (NIAID). Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said in 2021 that Dr. Bhattacharya’s lawsuit against Dr. Fauci for censorship is the most important First Amendment legal case in modern times and would certainly end up at the Supreme Court. He said the case “determines the scope of the First Amendment in a virtual world”. Jay Bhattacharya: The legal case against Anthony Fauci.

Better late than never: former NIH director Francis Collins admits COVID mistakes

Why Lockdowns Were A Devastating Policy

The Man Who Talked Back: Jay Bhattacharya On the Fight against COVID Lockdowns

The Great Barrington Declaration Was Right

NYT: Trump Picks Stanford Doctor Who Opposed Lockdowns to Head N.I.H.

Trump’s NIH Pick Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on COVID Lies, Vaccine Truth, and the Breakdown of Science 9/12/24

Devastating Report on COVID Policies

Even top doctors and scientists who disagreed with any aspect of the destructive COVID policies were ridiculed by the government, corporate media, and Big Tech as “anti-science” and were censored. They were accused of causing “vaccine hesitancy” which was said to threat the lives of millions of people. Many doctors and scientists had their jobs and/or licenses threatened. 

THE INFODEMIC: How Censorship Turned COVID-19 into an Assault on Truth discusses the 2022 book The Infodemic: How Censorship and Lies Made the World Sicker and Less Free.

Four Years Later: The Real Cost of COVID

Four years ago this week, the U.S. shut down in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. While officials were adamant that lockdowns, masks, and later vaccines were essential for all Americans to limit the damage from the spread, it’s become increasingly clear that the science behind so many of the mandates was decidedly shaky.

Yet, those who warned at the time of the risks of draconian actions were widely denounced and even silenced. On this episode of the Free Expression podcast, Professor Martin Kulldorff, one of the most prominent skeptics tells Gerry Baker why he says he was fired as professor of medicine at Harvard University for his views, why the research on vaccines is not so ‘black and white,’ and why the media and society were so hostile to alternative views on masks, school closures, and natural immunity.

The Most Devastating COVID Report So Far 11/20/24

The U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce committee released an assessment of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) COVID-19 public health campaign, revealing it was fraught with miscalculations that set the stage for widespread public distrust.¹

Down the COVID-19 Rabbit Hole: Independent Scientists and Physicians Unmask the Pandemic 

This book is dedicated to all the people who lost their lives or who suffered greatly from the consequences of the actions taken by those in positions of power. There were  millions of victims. We hope that somehow lessons can be learned from the COVID_19 pandemic to avoid similar future situations. All proceeds from the book are donated to the work of the Canadian Citizens Care Alliance (CCCA).

A detailed examination of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Down the COVID-19 Rabbit Hole discusses the widespread misuse of science during the pandemic, the likely origin of COVID-19, the pathophysiology of the disease itself, and the harms associated with the various vaccines that have been produced, particularly those based on the novel mRNA platforms.  This book also looks at the widespread failure of the health professions to adequately understand and treat the disease and the consequences of the vaccines, the apparently agenda-driven responses of various governments, and the inability of the legal system to understand the implications for natural and civil rights.

The Most Important First Amendment Legal Case in Modern Times

The Legal Case Against Anthony Fauci shows that The Great Barrington Declaration was released to the public on October 4, 2020. It argued for focused protection for vulnerable elderly and ending the lockdown for everyone else – allowing children to return to school normally. It was signed by many doctors and scientists and now has 939,000 signatures.

Dr. Francis Collins was then the Director of National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Anthony Fauci was then the Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Dr. Collins didn’t invite these esteemed scientists to discuss their Declaration which was quickly gaining global support. Collins saw these doctors as “fringe” and emailed Fauci on October 8 to tell him to create a quick and devastating takedown of the Declaration!

‘There needs to be a quick and devastating take down’: Emails show how Fauci and head of NIH worked to discredit three experts who penned the Great Barrington Declaration which called for an end to lockdowns.

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said in 2021 that Dr. Bhattacharya’s lawsuit against Dr. Fauci for censorship is the most important First Amendment legal case in modern times and would certainly end up at the Supreme Court. He said the case “determines the scope of the First Amendment in a virtual world”.

Jay Bhattacharya: The legal case against Anthony Fauci.

Jay Bhattacharya: ‘I Sued the Biden Administration for COVID Censorship’
Bhattacharya explains the stakes of Murthy v. Missouri, the politicization of medical research, and his RFK Jr. endorsement.

Dr. Bhattacharya Won Top Award

Scientist who battled for COVID common sense over media and government censors wins top award
10/26/24

Few in the media seemed eager to attend a ceremony last week in Washington, D.C., where the prestigious American Academy of Sciences and Letters was awarding its top intellectual freedom award.

The problem may have been the recipient: Stanford Professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Bhattacharya has spent years being vilified by the media over his dissenting views on the pandemic. As one of the signatories of the 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, he was canceled, censored, and even received death threats. That open letter called on government officials and public health authorities to rethink the mandatory lockdowns and other extreme measures in light of past pandemics.

All the signatories became targets of an orthodoxy enforced by an alliance of political, corporate, media, and academic groups. Most were blocked on social media despite being accomplished scientists with expertise in this area. It did not matter that positions once denounced as “conspiracy theories” have been recognized or embraced by many.