In 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci - then Director of the NIAID under the NIH - dismissed The Great Barrington Declaration (coauthored by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya) as "nonsense" and "very dangerous." In leaked emails, 2020 NIH Director Francis Collins referred to Dr. Bhattacharya as a "fringe epidemiologist." In 2025, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was named Director of the NIH.
[ORIGINAL AIRDATE: 11/24/2021]
Stanford professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya unexpectedly became a public figure in 2021 after coauthoring the Great Barrington Declaration: an open letter that called for calm amidst a media-induced panic surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. Though it put his career and professional reputation at risk, Dr. Bhattacharya insisted -- based on his experience as a Stanford professor and decades as a health economist -- that lockdowns and school closures would cause significantly more harm than good. Following years of intense government pressure to censor his social media (confirmed by evidence in Elon Musk's Twitter Files, which named him specifically as a target for suppression) Dr. Bhattacharya became a star in the aftermath of the pandemic and was celebrated for his dedication to truth and science when it mattered most. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was later confirmed as the 18th Director of the National Institutes Of Health.

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