Jay Bhattacharya and the Vindication of the ‘Fringe’ Scientists

His NIH nomination, years after being maligned for questioning lockdowns, is a boon for real science

By Allysia Finley. Excerpts:

"Francis Collins, the NIH chief between 2009-21, derided Dr. Bhattacharya as a “fringe” scientist for urging the government to focus on protecting the vulnerable while letting others go about their lives. Dr. Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, then at Harvard, and Oxford’s Sunetra Gupta formally expounded this idea in the Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020.

It was far from fringe. Tens of thousands of doctors and scientists around the world signed the document. Before the Covid pandemic, the World Health Organization had opposed lockdowns to control disease outbreaks. Yet after the declaration’s publication, Dr. Collins urged a “quick and devastating published take down of its premises” in an email to Anthony Fauci.

In a Washington Post interview, Dr. Collins decried the declaration as a “fringe component of epidemiology.” “This is not mainstream science,” he added. “It’s dangerous” and “fits into the political views of certain parts of our confused political establishment.” Dr. Collins had it backward."

"Mr. Trump proved more open-minded than the mainstream experts, who continue to insist that lockdowns and school closings saved lives despite the evidence to the contrary."

"Twitter blacklisted Dr. Bhattacharya in 2021 after he tweeted an article he had written on age-based risks, noting that “mass testing is lockdown by stealth.” He was right. Many school districts later dropped their mandatory Covid testing policies because so many kids with mild or no symptoms were forced to stay home."

"A young scientist without a secure job might have been reluctant to contradict Drs. Collins and Fauci, lest doing so jeopardize NIH funding for her research. Scientific journals rarely published Covid studies with conclusions that ran against the grain. Research echoing the public-health orthodoxy yielded more citations in the press and journals."