Stanford Prof Jay Bhattacharya, staunch opponent of harsh COVID lockdowns, likely to be picked to head National Institutes of Health

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Professor of Health Policy at Stanford University in California, could be appointed by President-elect Donald Trump to head the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

In a Saturday article, The Washington Post stated that Bhattacharya appears likely to be appointed as the leader of the NIH. Bhattacharya’s work “focuses on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations, with a particular emphasis on the role of government programs, biomedical innovation, and economics,” his faculty profile states. More recently, his research “focuse[d] on the epidemiology of COVID-19 as well as an evaluation of policy responses to the epidemic.”

Bhattacharya was a skeptic of the strict lockdowns imposed by the U.S. government during the COVID-19 pandemic. As noted by The Washington Post, he was one of the three writers of the Great Barrington Declaration of Oct. 4, 2020, which raised concerns over the COVID lockdowns and called for a nuanced approach to the pandemic. 

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The Declaration expressed “grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies.” It promoted a policy of “Focused Protection” that would “protect the vulnerable” while allowing others to resume their pre-pandemic pace of life. 

“Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal,” the Declaration concluded. It received close to 1 million signatures from all over the world.

Bhattacharya sent Campus Reform a public statement he made on X, in which he announced: “Since the @washingtonpost story about a possible role for me in the new administration as @nih director, I have been overwhelmed by kind messages and media requests. That decision has not yet been made, as far as I know. No matter what happens, I will do my best in the coming years, in whatever role I have, to help support the reform of the American scientific and public health institutions after the covid era fiasco so that they work for the benefit of the American people.”

Bhattacharya received criticism for his anti-lockdown stance, with then-NIH leader Francis Collins calling him and his partners “fringe,” according to the Post. 

But the damage caused by the COVID-19 lockdowns was widespread, according to many experts. 

One study from the University of Southern California determined that the lockdowns caused widespread economic damage to the U.S., costing $14 trillion. 

At least 150 retail businesses went bankrupt during the years of the pandemic lockdowns. Overall, some estimates claim that hundreds of thousands of businesses were forced to close their doors because of the lockdowns. 

The lockdowns were also widely accused of constituting tyranny, and several politicians who claimed to support lockdowns found themselves at the center of controversies after they violated their own lockdown rules. Some have also claimed that the lockdowns were ineffective in actually stopping COVID-19. 

The NIH received criticism for more than just its COVID-19 response. 

The NIH has also spent tens of millions of dollars in recent months on certain projects that critics have claimed are “woke.” 

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For example, the NIH granted the City University of New York almost $20 million in October for a center promoting “equity” and “social justice,” among other priorities. 

Also in October, the University of Arizona’s initiative to “impact the mental health and overall wellbeing of Latinx queer and transgender youth” received $1.5 million from the NIH. 

In September, the NIH gave almost $4 million to Michigan State University and Rutgers University to study so-called “structural racism” and its supposed impact on aging. 

Campus Reform has reached out to Stanford University and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.