"Bad news for public health": Jay Bhattacharaya, Trump's pick to lead NIH, got COVID-19 all wrong

[marmar]

(Salon) By most accounts, President-elect Donald Trump bungled the federal response to COVID-19, publicly downplaying concern about a virus that he privately admitted was “deadly stuff.”

“It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear,” Trump said in Feb. 2020, at the same time he was admitting to journalist Bob Woodward that the virus was spreading fast and was more lethal than “even your strenuous flus.”

Dr. Jay Bhattacharaya, Trump’s pick to lead the National Institutes of Health and oversee some $47 billion in research funding, agreed with Trump at the time; the public version, at least.

In a March 2020 essay he co-authored with a fellow Stanford University scientist, Bhattacharaya, an epidemiologist at Stanford University, argued that COVID-19 was far less deadly than people feared. Although today The New York Times describes him as a doctor who “opposed lockdowns,” he inadvertently made the case for them in The Wall Street Journal — only to then try and knock that case down. ..................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2024/11/27/bad-news-for-public-health-jay-bhattacharaya-pick-to-lead-nih-got-19-all/

[CrispyQ]

1. I'll bet a lot of people think that because we just had a pandemic we can't have another one. Not for awhile, anyway.

I'll never forget the image a health professional posted in the very early days of Covid. It was of a blood clot they'd pulled out of the lungs of a deceased patient. The clot was like a tree, formed by the clot filling the bronchial tubes in the lungs. The patient had literally drown in their own blood.

The other image I remember was a video posted on FB. This was in the very early days, before Covid had been reported in the US. An Italian man sat at a table with a newspaper & explained that the obituaries usually filled one page. He started flipping through the pages, counting. Ten pages of obits!!! Full sized newspaper pages.

I knew something bad was coming, but never in my life did I think a plague would be politicized. Seen on Facebook:

We're going to have to retire that old phrase "avoid it like the plague," because we don't.

[vapor2]

2. And RFK and Dr Oz are crackpots too (literally)

There will be consequences to their actions and sadly it is us who will suffer . I will soon leave Directv and find other sources. Trump HAS to have the narrative and it sickens me.

[cadoman]

3. another conspiracy crackpot to join the MAGA clown show

Not comforting knowing that mpox and bird flu are ready to pounce.

[NickB79]

4. He helped write the Great Barrington Declaration

That basically said lock away the most vulnerable, remove ve all restrictions, and let everyone else get COVID and hopefully establish herd immunity.

Now that we know better, we can see this would have taken YEARS (given the rapid mutation rate), killed tens of millions, and crippled even more with long COVID.

[nini]

5. I'm gonna stockpile masks again

I still wear a mask when in crowded places but will go to wearing them any time I’m out if necessary. I’d guess they’ll be hard to find again under the new regime.