What We Know About Trump’s COVID-Skeptic Pick to Lead the NIH

President-elect Donald Trump has been rolling out some predictably unorthodox people to lead the nation’s health agencies, nominating Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Health and Human Services Department and celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz to oversee the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

On Tuesday, Trump continued the trend when he tapped Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford University–educated physician and economist, to be the next director of the National Institutes of Health. “Together, Jay and RFK, Jr. will restore 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 wrote on TruthSocial Tuesday.

Bhattacharya is best known for his controversial views on the COVID-19 pandemic: He was a strong advocate against lockdowns who argued for herd immunity as a public-health strategy, to the dismay of many of his peers. Here’s what we know about Trump’s choice to lead the NIH.

Bhattacharya has deep ties to Stanford University

Currently, Bhattacharya works as a professor of health policy at Stanford University. He also leads the school’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. According to his university biography, his recent research has been focused on the “epidemiology of COVID-19 as well as an evaluation of policy responses to the epidemic.” He has co-authored a working paper on whether employers could save money by divesting from employment-based health insurance as well as a journal article looking at the impact of social isolation on spending in aging populations.

Stanford is also Bhattacharya’s alma mater; he earned his B.A. and M.A. degrees there, as well as a medical degree and a Ph.D. in economics.

Bhattacharya’s résumé also includes stints at the RAND Corporation, where he worked as an economist, as well as research positions at the Hoover Institution and the National Bureau of Economic Research.

He advocated against COVID lockdowns and for herd immunity

Bhattacharya was one of three authors of the “Great Barrington Declaration,” an open letter from infectious-disease and public-health physicians published in October 2020 that advocated against lockdowns to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The declaration argued that widespread lockdowns were “producing devastating effects” on both short- and long-term health that they predicted would ultimately lead to “greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden.”

The authors were in favor of prioritizing the protection of specific vulnerable groups while allowing the larger population to develop herd immunity through community spread:

As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all — including the vulnerable — falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity — i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable — and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity. 

The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection. 

The letter sparked widespread condemnation from other medical professionals. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, said that advocating for natural herd immunity was “scientifically and ethically problematic.”

“Allowing a dangerous virus that we don’t fully understand to run free is simply unethical. It’s not an option,” he said, per The Guardian.

Bhattacharya previously downplayed the potential COVID death toll

In March 2020, shortly after COVID arrived in America, Bhattacharya co-wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed with a Stanford colleague, Eran Bendavid, arguing that the projected fatality rates for the virus were overblown. The two professors wrote that the “true” fatality rate was based on the number of infected people who die rather than the confirmed cases that result in death.

In the piece, they floated a smaller potential figure, writing, “A 20,000- or 40,000-death epidemic is a far less severe problem than one that kills two million.” At the time, the nation’s top medical experts were warning that COVID-19 could kill anywhere from 100,000 to 240,000 Americans despite the ongoing mitigation efforts. “As sobering a number as that is, we should be prepared for it,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, then the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said, per the New York Times. The virus would go on to claim more than 1.2 million lives in the United States, a figure that is still growing.

He testified in defense of Florida’s mask-mandate ban

Florida governor Ron DeSantis was staunchly against mask mandates in his state and issued an executive order in 2021 banning the requirements in the state’s schools. The governor’s order was subjected to multiple legal challenges from parents in several school districts, forcing the issue to be litigated in the courts.

The Miami Herald reported that Bhattacharya served as the state’s medical expert in these proceedings, arguing that there was no evidence that districts with mask mandates had better results with reducing the spread of the virus compared to districts without the requirement. “The Delta variant, as I said, from the data on the U.K., is less deadly, but perhaps more transmissible. There’s no evidence, there’s no randomized evidence, no high-quality evidence, that masks stop the disease spread,” he said, per the outlet.