Trump NIH Pick a COVID Lockdown Double Dealer?

 

Trump NIH Pick a COVID Lockdown Double Dealer?

By Wayne Lusvardi

December 16, 2024

 

 

 

Salient Chronology of Events and Quotations:

COVID lockdown order issued March 15, 2020 (source: CDC).

Bhattacharya advocates COVID face masks, restricted travel, physical distancing (i.e., lockdowns): “A large asymptomatic population is associated with a high risk of community spread and could require a conscious shift from containment to mitigation induced by behavior changes. Our study suggests that, until vaccination and treatment become available, increasing population awareness, encouraging increased hygiene, mandating the use of face masks, restricting travel, and promoting physical distancing could be the most successful strategies to manage the impact of COVID-19 on both our economy and our health care system”. — Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, et. al., Visualizing the Invisible: The Effect of Asymptomatic Transmission on the Outbreak Dynamics of COVID-19, MedRxIV Journal, August 29, 2020, funded byStanford Bio-X IIP Seed Grant (M.P. and E.K.), by the NIH Grant U01 HL119578 (E.K.), by a DAAD Fellowship (K.L.), and by the Stanford COVID-19 Seroprevalence Study Fund (J.B. and E.B.)  Real Anthony Fauci: Bi... Kennedy Jr., Robert F. Best Price: $4.42 Buy New $13.14 (as of 12:51 UTC - Details)

Bhattacharya Issues Declaration Against Lockdowns. “Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health…Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal”. – Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, co-author of The Great Barrington Declaration, October 4, 2020, funded by Discovery Institute (George Gilder foundation). The Great Barrington Declaration received funding support from the Donald Trump administration, the Georg and Emily von Opel Foundation in Britain, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board (Wikipedia.com) and American billionaire Charles Koch, British Conservative politicians, The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial board and the American Institute for Economic Research located in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, which co-sponsored the declaration project. No conflicts of interest disclosed.

“End the lockdown, because the lockdown is causing devastating harm for them”. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, podcast interview with Peter Robinson of Hoover Institution, Uncommon Knowledge, October 21, 2020.

COVID vaccines become widely available – December 14, 2020.

Headline: Trump Picks Jay Bhattacharya, A Critic of COVID Lockdowns to Lead the National Institute of Health, NBC News, White House Press Release, Nov. 27, 2024.

President elect Donald Trump has nominated Stanford University Medical School epidemiologist Jay Bhattacharya as the Director of the National Institute of Health, which exclusively deals with doling out grants for medical research. The NIH budget for 2024 is $47.3 billion ($47,300,000,000). Bhattacharya has a PhD in economics and a non-practicing MD degree and is well-qualified on paper. However, to my knowledge, it has not been revealed anywhere in mass media up to now, that Bhattacharya may have created the appearance of a conflict of interest by taking funds to conduct research that advocated COVID lockdowns were necessary and then, one month later, he issued a declaration against lockdowns (see above chronology). This creates an image of a person who sells his research and opinion for money and could lead to impeachment by the U.S. Senate. To be fair, Bhattacharya’s research conclusion that lockdowns were necessary was conditional until vaccines were made available (three months later).

Bhattacharya’s August 29, 2020, research on masks, social distancing and travel restrictions (i.e., lockdowns) in Santa Clara County, California were controversial because he concluded that 80,000 people had contracted COVID but were asymptomatic. Wikipedia reports that the study’s research design, conduct and statistical analysis was “widely criticized as flawed”. The study used so many unnecessary algebra equations to obscure the analysis from citizen reviewers. By October 2020, Bhattacharya and his research colleagues met with then President Donald Trump to explain their position against lockdowns. Silicon Valley high tech billionaire’s Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, who donated to Trump’s recent presidential campaign, have expressed support for Bhattacharya’s nomination.

Trump’s reported motivation for nominating him for head of the NIH is his reputation for being Anti-Lockdown. NBC News, the BBC, Forbes, AP News, Yahoo News, The Independent, The New York Times, and Fox News all call Bhattacharya as the “anti-lockdown” candidate to run the NIH. But oddly there has been no media mention of his advocacy of lockdowns one month prior to his anti-lockdown declaration. Only MIT bio-engineer and presidential candidate Shiva Ayyadurai, PhD, pointed out in a blog post at the free speech GAB platform that Bhattacharya was a “scumbag” for promoting lockdowns then becoming a “hero” for opposing them.

Letter to Liberals: Ce... Kennedy Jr., Robert F. Best Price: $6.77 Buy New $13.49 (as of 08:42 UTC - Details) To adequately understand the Great Barrington Declaration against COVID lockdowns we must know the context of the town of Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The town is named after British Lord Barrington, associated with the Massachusetts Bay Colony which shipped conquered native Pequot Indians to West Africa. It is where in 1676, twenty five native American Indians were killed and twenty imprisoned by the Massachusetts militia to chase them off their lands and deny them the water resources of the Housatonic River. The modern city was settled by industrialist, railroad magnate and banker David Leavitt around the mid 1800’s. Great Barrington is also a present-day luxury ski resort in eastern Massachusetts. The American Institute of Economic Research is in Great Barrington, which co-sponsored Bhattacharya’s declaration. It is also the location of Gilder Publishing and Technologies, owned by economist George Gilder, God Son of David Rockefeller, proponent of intelligent design, founder of the Discovery Institute, funded by Rockefeller foundations, and co-sponsor of the anti-COVID lockdown Great Barrington Declaration. Gilder is the co-author of When Politicians Panicked: The New Coronavirus, Expert Opinion and the Tragic Lapse of Reason, March 30, 2021, whose thesis was that lockdowns created poverty which, in turn, created disease. Gilder’s only opposition to the lockdown was economic, not a violation of the Bill of Rights or the Constitution or opposed on religious grounds.

Gilder’s opposition to the lockdown ignored why churches were shut down but massage parlors, strip clubs and casinos remained open or why Walmart was open, but small ethnic food outlets and restaurants were shut down. COVID lockdowns were a repeat of the Great Depression of the 1930’s where small family-owned farms were foreclosed on and taken over by corporate farming. Was the COVID lockdown a pretense to put small businesses out of business and switch consumers to ordering online and buying only from Big Box Retailers? Gilder’s March 30, 2021, book was endorsed on its cover by Jay Bhattacharya. Perhaps the political optics of issuing the anti-lockdown Declaration in the town of Great (Lord) Barrington), a bastion for an elite think tank, oligarchs and a recreation playground for elites, created an image of wealthy Knowledge Class elites quickly switching positions to tame the mass Working Class discontent with the lockdowns.

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