Kerby Anderson

Donald Trump has nominated Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institute of Health (NIH). If you are not familiar with him, he is a Stanford University professor of medicine and health research policy.

Allysia Finley calls this the “revenge of the Covid lockdown skeptics.” During the pandemic and lockdowns, Dr. Bhattacharya attempted to inject some common sense into the government’s policies. The head of the NIH during that period was Dr. Francis Collins, who referred to the professor as a “fringe scientist.”

Dr. Bhattacharya, along with scientists from Harvard and Oxford, put together what came to be known as “The Great Barrington Declaration.” The tens of thousands of scientists expressed their “grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies.”

Once it was published, Francis Collins urged a “quick and devastating take down of its premises” in an email to Anthony Fauci. In a Washington Post interview, Dr. Collins denounced the declaration as a “fringe component of epidemiology” and further said it was “not mainstream science.”

Of course, we now know who was wrong. The lockdowns devastated the economy and stunted school children's learning for a generation. And social media was all too willing to censor any medical view that contradicted the government’s mantra. Twitter blacklisted the professor.

Why didn’t others speak up? Unfortunately, there was a financial incentive to agree with rather than contradict Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci. It is all to fitting that Donald Trump wants to put Dr. Bhattacharya in charge of the NIH.