Jay Bhattacharya’s Confirmation Hearing Proves the Lockdown Skeptics Won
Tomorrow will be the fifth anniversary of then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s first statewide emergency declaration issued in response to COVID-19, setting up a long series of orders shuttering down businesses, closing schools, and ordering people to stay in their homes.
When enacted in early March 2020, Cuomo’s order was the consensus policy response to the pandemic, endorsed by the first Trump administration and quickly replicated by most red state governors.
Meanwhile, critics of lockdowns were dismissed as dangerous, fringe characters who were peddling “nonsense” solutions or even experimenting with”human sacrifice.“
As it happens, yesterday was the Senate confirmation hearing of one such lockdown critic—Stanford professor and medical researcher Jay Bhattacharya, whom President Donald Trump has tapped to head the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Bhattacharya was an early critic of lockdowns and masking. He is perhaps best known for his co-authorship of the October 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, which criticized school closures and society-wide restrictions and instead argued for a strategy of “focused protection” that would “allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally.”
This was a hugely controversial position to take at the time.
Former NIH Director Fra
Article from Reason.com
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