Free Republic

In October, Stanford University professor Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, hosted a conferenceopens in a new tab or window on the lessons of COVID-19 in order "to do better in the next pandemic." He invited scholars, journalists, and policy wonks who, like him, have criticized the U.S. management of the crisis as overly draconian. Bhattacharya also invited public health authorities who had considered his alternative approach reckless. None of them showed up. Now, the "contrarians" are seizing the reins: President Donald Trump has nominated Bhattacharya to lead the NIH and Johns Hopkins University surgeon Marty Makary, MD, MPH, to run the...

AHMED HIKMAT SHAKIR IS A shadowy figure who provided logistical assistance to one, maybe two, of the 9/11 hijackers. Years before, he had received a phone call from the Jersey City, New Jersey, safehouse of the plotters who would soon, in February 1993, park a truck bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center. The safehouse was the apartment of Musab Yasin, brother of Abdul Rahman Yasin, who scorched his own leg while mixing the chemicals for the 1993 bomb.When Shakir was arrested shortly after the 9/11 attacks, his "pocket litter," in the parlance of the investigators, included contact...