Jay Bhattacharya Will Bring Transparency to NIH
Dr. Andrew Noymer is an epidemiologist and population health scientist who recognized COVID’s threat much earlier than most people and favored strong measures to contain it. However, Dr. Noymer believes that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a lab and is a member of Biosafety Now. I previously discussed how members of this organization care deeply about infection #1, but are utterly indifferent to how the virus was handled after that.
Indeed, Biosafety Now has partnered with celebrity doctors such as Marty Makary and Jay Bhattacharya who have zero expertise in biosaftey, but instead spread copious COVID misinformation and advocated for herd immunity via mass infection. In the viewpoint of Biosafety Now, releasing the virus was a punishable crime, but misleading people about it and purposefully trying to infect people with it, even after vaccines were available, was a forgivable oopsie.
To justify this absurdity, Biosafety Now members demand amnesia and apathy about everything except that first infection, and they are full of insults and vitriol towards anyone who remembers and still cares. Dr. Noymer recently penned an article that reveals how this deliberate forgetfulness ensures we are less prepared to handle a future pandemic as well as existing viruses.
Dr. Noymer’s article was titled Jay Bhattacharya Will Bring Much-Needed Transparency to NIH, and this alone was problematic. Dr. Bhattacharya wasn’t transparent that the Great Barrington Declaration (GDB) was sponsored by a proud child labor advocate, for example. Furthermore, rather than admit his early pandemic pronouncements were erroneous, he’s tried to obscure them by claiming words have no meaning and that all he ever cared about was poor children. Dr. Bhattacharya was opaque and untrustworthy throughout the pandemic, and there’s no reason to think that will change once he gets to the NIH.
To his credit, Dr. Noymer recognized COVID’s toll. He correctly said:
The stakes could not be higher: COVID killed 15 million people worldwide in 2020 and hasn’t stopped killing, although thankfully at a lower rate more recently.
It’s true that hundreds of Americans are still dying of COVID every week. It’s also true that, except for those over 70, Dr. Bhattacharya relentlessly sought to numb people to this outcome, as well as to COVID’s non-fatal harms. Dr. Bhattacharya underestimated and minimized COVID starting in March 2020 and he never stopped. Dr. Noymer did not tell this to his readers.
Dr. Noymer also noted that he opposed Dr. Bhattacharya’s approach to COVID. He wrote:
Jay supported the Great Barrington Declaration, while I favored a more active and engaged public health response, broadly although not completely along the lines of what was actually done in the United States. At times our differences were fundamental, other times pragmatic. Nonetheless, the differences of opinion between Jay and me on this subject were deep.
That sugarcoats things. Dr. Bhattacharya didn’t just “support” the GBD. He wrote it. In it, he claimed that the mass infection of unvaccinated people under 60 would end in the pandemic in 3-6 months, and he pushed policies that furthered this goal leading to needless suffering. That’s not a hard sentiment to communicate, but beyond linking to the GBD, Dr. Noymer chose not to inform his readers of this either.
It’s notable that while I deluge with readers with videos and quotes of Dr. Bhattacharya, his defenders universally suppress what he said. Unlike them, I believe his words and policies, as well as their real-world consequences, should be amplified and remembered, not silenced and forgotten. This is especially the case considering he will likely soon yield great power. The images below are 6-weeks apart, and though there are countless more examples, this alone should make reasonable people wonder if Dr. Bhattacharya is really the person we want in charge should a new pandemic occur.
Read this article
Jay invited me to this conference
Dr. Noymer didn’t care about any of this. He was willing to overlook Dr. Bhattacharya’s misinformation and pro-infection agenda for two reasons. First, Dr. Bhattacharya endorsed the lab leak hypothesis. Dr. Noymer wrote:
The most important outstanding item on the COVID agenda is: Where did SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID – come from?
In reality, the most important outstanding item on the COVID agenda is how we could have better protected people from it. Nothing about its origin impacts this. Whether it came from a lab or an animal wouldn’t affect a single word I’ve written about it or a single patient I saw with it, and normal people don’t want a new virus to emerge from either source.
However, nothing else mattered to Dr. Noymer. Because he agrees with Dr. Bhattacharya about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 and wants to block vaccine-researchers like Dr. Peter Hotez from receiving NIH funding, he was willing to discard Dr. Bhattachayra’s entire pandemic record. Dr. Noymer thinks everyone else should join him in this intentional amnesia, and he was full of vulgar contempt for those of us who refused or can’t forget our COVID experience.
Dr. Bhattacharya’s second qualification to run the NIH was that he was nice to Dr. Noymer during a couple of debates. Dr. Noymer wrote:
I debated Jay over Zoom on the topic of pandemic response, so I am well aware of his views on COVID response, as he is of mine. Our debate was not archived but was roughly similar to the Munk Debate I did with Jay’s Stanford colleague, John Ioannidis, and the SoHo Forum debate I did with Jay’s Great Barrington collaborator, Martin Kulldorff. These discussions are dated now, but they still reflect deep intellectual rifts that were brought into sharp relief by COVID and the collective response to it.
What makes my endorsement of Jay all the more peculiar is that he and I still disagree on COVID response. I know because I had the chance to talk with Jay and others in October at a conference that he organized at Stanford, at which I served as a panelist. What’s more, Jay invited me to this conference knowing that his and my opinions on this subject continue to diverge. Here and in other examples, I have seen Jay’s commitment to hearing diverse and disagreeing viewpoints. Jay is not one to try to muzzle a dissenting opinion.
It’s dandy that these doctors, none of whom treated COVID patients, had friendly debates as the virus overwhelmed our morgues and hospitals. But why does that mean everyone else is obligated to memory hole the many times Dr. Bhattacharya declared the pandemic over? Why should we ignore his minimization of variants, fake statistics, or anti-vaccine misinformation? Is Dr. Bhattacharya’s pairing with Del Bigtree and ringing endorsement of RFK Jr. suddenly no big deal? Should the victims of misinformation be casually brushed aside because Dr. Bhattacharya was friendly to Dr. Andrew Noymer? Were these debates the highest value, more important than the causalities of the virus being debated?
I don’t think so. I previously discussed how these “debates” were mostly empty theater that deliberately obscured and legitimized misinformation by portraying it as a proper topic of disagreement. I also discussed that doctors who prioritized these performances above all else treated the pandemic as if it was just a parlor game, oblivious to the fact that their “deep intellectual rifts” were reflected in our sick, suffering patients.
While resisting pandemic amnesia is important it its own right, this isn’t just about the past. A new pandemic is possible. Incredibly, Dr. Noymer, who recognized that Dr. Bhattacharya’s approach to an actual pandemic was flawed and dangerous, nonetheless wants him in charge if there’s a future pandemic simply because he is “not one to try to muzzle a dissenting opinion.” What does Dr. Noymer imagine Dr. Bhattacharya would do during another pandemic? Does he think Dr. Bhattacharya would try to contain it or accurately inform the public about it? The answers are both obvious and deeply concerning to those of us who work in hospitals.
In contrast, Dr. Noymer didn’t even consider these questions. Apparently, the prospect of more self-congratulatory conferences, full of civil debate and polite discussion, is so enticing that he is eager to hand enormous power to someone he already knows will grossly mismanage a pandemic. As the bodies pile up, we can all look forward to more verbal jousting matches.
Covidian doctors
Meanwhile, outside of staged debates, I’ve yet to see Dr. Bhattacharya engage with “dissenting opinion” in a mature, thoughtful way. Instead of responding to substantive critiques, he tries to distract from them by claiming to be a victim and asking people to feel sorry for him. He reflexively calls all criticism “slander“, a “smear campaign” and “hit piece“. He hurls schoolyard taunts at his critics, deliberately misrepresents their points, and rather than stand up for his own words, he actively denies them. Articles such as For Bhattacharya, Free Speech Means Freedom To Defund Dissenters and President Levin’s First Order of Business: Abandoning Academic Freedom make interesting points about Dr. Bhattacharya’s commitment to free and open debate.
This juvenile, spiteful tweet is just one example amongst many- read this from PAI– of how Dr. Bhattacharya behaves towards doctors who treat patients. Image the outrage it would generate if I tweeted something like that about Dr. Bhattacharya. By using such immature slurs and childish images, he is trying to drive a wedge between us and our patients, telling them that we are untrustworthy and that we, not the virus, are to blame for everything they didn’t like about the pandemic. Dr. Noymer doesn’t care about this either and instead depicted Dr. Bhattacharya as a scholarly gentleman who can “restore public trust.”
“I have seen Jay’s commitment to hearing diverse and disagreeing viewpoints.”
Dr. Bhattacharya believes SARS-CoV-2 came from a lab, and he was pleasant to Dr. Noymer during a debate. This does not obviate his atrocious pandemic record or mean he is qualified to lead the NIH. Pretending otherwise is just another form of pandemic revisionism, erasing doctors’ misinformation and erasing the consequences that misinformation- real people.
As serious threats loom and anti-vaccine cranks prepare to take over, amnesia and apathy about these tragedies are not virtues, and I am fully prepared to politely debate that with anyone.
