‘… like putting arsonists in charge of fire prevention’: Trump’s Director of NIH pick slammed for involvement in Great Barrington Declaration

Donald Trump has nominated Jay Bhattacharya as Director of the National Institute of Health (NIH) despite his involvement in the highly controversial Great Barrington Declaration.

The future of the nation’s health was already looking grim before Bhattacharya’s selection, as Trump nominated conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. In this role, Kennedy will serve as Trump’s prime advisor on all matters related to the health and well-being of Americans. However, many fear Kennedy doesn’t have Americans’ best interests in mind, considering he has gone down the rabbit hole of vaccine conspiracies. He spread misinformation on the CVODI-19 pandemic and vaccines, including pushing the misconception that vaccines cause a variety of conditions, such as autism and cancer. As if that weren’t concerning enough, Trump has now selected Bhattacharya to lead biomedical and public health research in the United States, even though he co-authored a proposal that would’ve led to hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 deaths.

Who is Trump’s nominee for Director of NIH?

On November 26, Trump announced that Bhattacharya would be his pick for Director of the NIH, noting that he would cooperate with Kennedy to “direct the Nation’s Medical Research and make important discoveries that will improve Health and save lives.” Trump also lists Bhattacharya’s qualifications, including his status as a Professor of Health Policy at Stanford University and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. However, he also lists Bhattacharya’s co-authorship of the Great Barrington Declaration as an accomplishment, claiming it provided “an alternative to lockdowns.”

The Great Barrington Declaration did provide an alternative to lockdowns, but Trump fails to mention that it was a deadly alternative that the medical industry has widely criticized. The Declaration was an open letter that called for letting COVID-19 spread instead of instigating lockdowns. It was trying to achieve “herd immunity,” which describes when the majority of the population becomes immune to a contagious disease due to prior infection or vaccinations. However, at the time, the COVID-19 vaccine wasn’t available yet. Hence, the declaration wanted to achieve herd immunity solely through mass infections without mentioning the debilitating impact of long COVID, the fact that not all of the population can survive the infection, or effective measures to protect the most vulnerable from infection.

The Great Barrington Declaration was widely criticized by the medical community. Over 20 public health organizations, including WHO, denounced it and warned citizens that it was “not grounded in science” and extremely dangerous. It put personal beliefs and preferences above facts and science, displayed an egregious lack of understanding of herd immunity, and would’ve led to mass deaths and hospitalizations if it had been integrated. Bhattacharya and his co-authors essentially suggested just letting people get sick and die even though simple measures like mask-wearing and social distancing could save lives.

Now, Bhattacharya is teaming up with Kennedy, the COVID-19 and vaccine conspiracy theorist, to lead the nation’s health. Needless to say, it sounds like a recipe for disaster. As one X user said, “It’s like putting arsonists in charge of fire prevention.”

Bhattacharya and Kennedy are being put in charge of “saving lives,” as Trump puts it, even though they’ve both issued proposals that would do the exact opposite.