President-elect Donald Trump has selected Jay Bhattacharya, a noted skeptic of stay-at-home orders and other measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19 during the height of the pandemic, to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
In addition to his opposition to the stay-at-home orders (which were an effective initial response to quelling the spread of coronavirus), Bhattacharya also argued in favor of “natural” herd immunity before vaccines were available — a method where healthy people would have gone about their daily routines without care for the virus as a way to supposedly achieve immunity for themselves. Such actions would have inevitably led to more deaths, particularly among vulnerable populations.
When the pandemic was in its early months, Bhattacharya was deeply concerned with the negative mental and physical health impacts that stay-at-home orders would have on the U.S. populace. While those concerns were valid, they paled in comparison to the dangerous and oftentimes deadly results of individuals, communities and states flouting recommendations for social distancing.
Notably, Bhattacharya is an ally of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to oversee the Department of Health and Human Services, who is known for his opposition to vaccines.
“Together, Jay and RFK Jr. will restore the NIH to a Gold Standard of Medical Research as they examine the underlying causes of, and solutions to, America’s biggest Health challenges, including our Crisis of Chronic Illness and Disease,” Trump said in a statement announcing Bhattacharya’s nomination.
Trump’s and Bhattacharya’s views align when it comes to so-called herd immunity, which the president-elect repeatedly advocated for as a way to deal with COVID during the last year of his first term in office. But herd immunity would have been a disastrous way to deal with the virus.
In October 2020, when Trump himself contracted the coronavirus (and had access to best-in-class medical care), he still advocated for the idea. At that time, however, only 16 percent of the population had been exposed to the virus enough to have gained some immunity. At the same time, around 286,443 Americans had already died from COVID-19. To have reached the 90 percent threshold that most health experts agree is necessary to reduce the spread of viruses, many more — perhaps as many as 1.7 million Americans in total — would have had to die from COVID-19.
As it turned out, around 1.1 million people in the U.S. did end up dying from coronavirus during the pandemic — however, the failures of the U.S. health care system and Trump’s baseless recommendations on lessening the spread likely led to the death rate in the U.S. being 40 percent higher than it might have been under different circumstances (per a study published in The Lancet in February 2021). Indeed, the country’s excess mortality rate was much higher than other wealthy nations across the globe, likely for those very reasons.
Many health experts criticized the choice of Bhattacharya to lead NIH.
“I don’t think that Jay Bhattacharya belongs anywhere near the NIH, much less in the director’s office,” virologist Angela Rasmussen told NPR. “That would be absolutely disastrous for the health and well-being of the American public and actually the world.”
“What I worry about is that if somebody like Jay Bhattacharya comes in to ‘shake up’ the NIH, they’re going to dismantle the NIH and prevent it from actually doing its job rather than just carry out constructive reforms,” Rasmussen added.
“Jay Bhattacharya might just be Donald Trump’s most extreme pick,” public health journalist Walker Bragman wrote on Bluesky.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy