Free Republic

Five years ago, in March 2020, Yale sociologist and physician Nicholas Christakis MD, PhD, MPH took to Twitter to marvel at China’s response to SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind Covid-19. In a detailed thread, he described China’s “social nuclear weapon” (of the people-clearing ‘neutron bomb’ -variety?): unprecedented lockdowns, movement restrictions on 930 million people, and a collectivist culture harnessed by an authoritarian regime. He framed it as a Newtonian feat: the sheer force required to stop the virus revealed its power. Contrast this with Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, MA (economics): equally credentialed, but clear-eyed (the French term is “clairvoyant”),...

For those who opposed the censorship and cancel campaigns during the pandemic, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya became an iconic figure of resistance. Unfortunately, the same can be said of the anti-free speech movement and pandemic hawks. Bhattacharya, who co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration and was a vocal critic of COVID-19 policies, has been nominated as the next head of the National Institutes of Health. As I wrote this weekend in my column, the nomination was heralded by many as a turning point for the NIH. It is also a rallying cry for those who supported the earlier measures, as shown by...

Brownstone Institute has been tracking a little-known federal agency for years. It is part of the Department of Homeland Security created after 9-11. It is called the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency or CISA. It was created in 2018 out of a 2017 executive order that seemed to make sense. It was a mandate to secure American digital infrastructure against foreign attack and infiltration. And yet during the Covid year, it assumed three huge jobs. It was the agency responsible for dividing the workforce between essential and nonessential. It led the way on censorship efforts. And it handled election security...

Early in the Covid period, the skeptics of government closures and universal quarantines were denounced as favoring a policy of “let it rip.” The phrase has been in use since the 19th century. It is apparently drawn from experience with steamships. When you released power to its maximum extent, it made a ripping sound. The implication is that when you let it rip, you let go of all controls and just wait to see what happens. Think about the application to infectious disease, at least in the context of the debate over lockdowns. The theory is that if you don’t...

Raja Cholan, Chief of the Health Data Standards Branch at the U.S. National Library of Medicine for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has raised eyebrows with his candid remarks on COVID vaccines, global health strategies, and their broader implications. Cholan admitted he has chosen not to receive the latest COVID vaccine boosters, citing mixed evidence of their efficacy: “I haven’t gotten the latest COVID shots, and I’m not going to… there’s mixed evidence about if it really does anything.” He also expressed concerns over the risks the vaccine poses to younger individuals, saying, “For people that are 30 or...

Few in the media seemed eager to attend a ceremony last week in Washington, D.C., where the prestigious American Academy of Sciences and Letters was awarding its top intellectual freedom award. The problem may have been the recipient: Stanford Professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Bhattacharya has spent years being vilified by the media over his dissenting views on the pandemic. As one of the signatories of the 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, he was canceled, censored, and even received death threats. That open letter called on government officials and public health authorities to rethink the mandatory lockdowns and other extreme measures in...

President Joe Biden's comments that all Americans will "likely" be advised to get a new COVID vaccine as new variants spread through the country are "irresponsible," according to Stanford University Professor of Medicine Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.“I signed off this morning on a proposal we have to present to the Congress, a request for additional funding for a new vaccine—that is necessary, that works," Mr. Biden told reporters in South Lake Tahoe, California, on Aug. 25."And tentatively, not decided finally yet, tentatively it is recommended—it is likely to be recommended—that everybody get it, no matter whether they got it before," he...

The United States made multiple mistakes in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including widespread lockdowns and the aggressive promotion of faulty vaccines, experts testified to a new congressional panel on Feb. 28. “During the last three years, we have seen the worst public health mistakes in history,” Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine on leave from Harvard University, told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in Washington. The mistakes included not crafting policies focused on protecting those highest at risk—the elderly and otherwise infirm—and the denial and downplaying of post-infection immunity, Kulldorff said. He and Dr. Jay...

A respected medical scientist whose accurate analysis on COVID-19 was improperly censored during the early days of the pandemic says the federal government and Big Tech played a "malign role" and placed public health at risk by colluding to create a false picture that all Americans faced the same risk from the virus and needed to follow identical mitigation strategies. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford University medical professor, says he is now working with other scientists who were silenced during the early COVID-19 debate to build momentum for a "truth commission" on the failures of public health officials and identify...

(The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.)Stanford professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration and self-described COVID lockdown skeptic, blasts the university in a powerful piece in Tablet that describes the administration’s attempts to censor and intimidate him for scientifically (and correctly) pointing out that mandatory lockdowns didn’t work. He was an early and influential voice in objecting to the harmful, draconian policies enforced on populations here and abroad, and he’s paid a heavy price for it.In his piece, titled “How Stanford Failed the Academic Freedom Test,”...

The emails show Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins attempting to coordinate a 'devastating takedown' of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD)AIER, a libertarian think tank, sponsored the GBD, which largely abandons lockdowns in favor of herd immunity strategy that allows life to return to normal In an October 8 email from Collins to Fauci, the head of the NIH calls the GBD the work of 'three fringe epidemiologists' that 'seems to be getting a lot of attention' Collins adds that 'there needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises. I don't see anything like that online...

The arrival of the omicron variant has led some politicians and public health grandees to call for a return to business closures and 'circuit-breaker' lockdowns. ... My message is this: we can’t stop the spread of COVID, but we can end the pandemic. In October 2020, I wrote the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) along with Prof. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University and Prof. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University. The centerpiece of the declaration is a call for increased focused protection of the vulnerable older population, who are more than a thousand times more likely to die from COVID infection than...

With more than 700,000 reported Covid-19 deaths in the United States, it is now evident that lockdown strategies failed to protect older high-risk Americans.With more than 700,000 reported Covid-19 deaths in the United States, it is now evident that lockdown strategies failed to protect older high-risk Americans. Naively believing that shutting down society would protect everyone, government officials failed to implement focused protection measures for those at the highest risk. While anyone can get infected, there is more than a thousand-fold difference in the risk of death between the old and the young. The failure to exploit this fact about...

When the pandemic hit, America needed someone to turn to for advice. The media and public naturally looked to Dr. Anthony Fauci—the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, an esteemed laboratory immunologist and one of President Donald Trump's chosen COVID advisers. Unfortunately, Dr. Fauci got major epidemiology and public health questions wrong. Reality and scientific studies have now caught up with him. Here are the key issues: Natural immunity. By pushing vaccine mandates, Dr. Fauci ignores naturally acquired immunity among the COVID-recovered, of which there are more than 45 million in the United States. Mounting evidence...

"Unfortunately, Dr. Fauci got major epidemiology and public health questions wrong. Reality and scientific studies have now caught up with him."

Herd immunity refers to when a population has immunity from a disease either through vaccination or recovery. Some health experts hope to reach herd immunity against COVID-19 in the United States. But people should keep in mind that reaching herd immunity does not mean that a disease has gone away, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told The Epoch Times.The concept is built on how many people each person who contracts a disease transmits that disease to, with people with some immunity infecting fewer people, on average.“So if I get COVID, I only infect one person or fewer than one person on average...

An epidemiologist and professor at the University of Stanford said Friday that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s credibility "is entirely shot" after revelations from his emails show a reversal on the subject of mask wearing to prevent COVID-19. "I think he's been all over the place on masks," Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford said on "The Ingraham Angle." "There are emails you can find in the treasure trove of emails that have been released where he acknowledged the virus has been aerosolized -- well the cloth masks people have been recommending, they're not particular[ly] effective against aerosolized viruses. "I...

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio., joins ‘The Ingraham Angle’ to discuss his contentious exchange with Dr. Fauci. #FoxNews

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor at Stanford University Medical School, recently said that COVID-19 lockdowns are the "biggest public health mistake we've ever made...The harm to people is catastrophic." Several U.S. states have started to ease their COVID-19 restrictions over the past few weeks.. Bhattacharya, who made the comments during an interview with the Daily Clout, co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, a petition that calls for the end of COVID-19 lockdowns, claiming that they are "producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health." As of Monday, the Great Barrington Declaration has received signatures from over 13,000 medical and public...