I am delighted to see Jay Bhattacharya installed as the next NIH Director. He is a principled man and a devout Christian. He proved to be right in his assessment of lockdowns and the risk of the virus in our healthy populations. Well done sir and we look forward to your leadership.
What can we learn from those who tried to silence him and paint him as ignorant and obstructive?
Whether he was right or not depends on your perspective as to what weight to value saved lives vs. disrupted lives. Not a clear distinction. It remains to be seen if he is a fair and effective administrator and follows the science or is beholden to his earthly lords. While he has an MD degree, it is noteworthy that his Ph.D is in economics, not science, which seems appropriate in an administration that tends to see everything as economic in nature. To his credit, he was not anti-vax, although he did spread some disinformation (i.e. falsehoods) about the testing of some of the vaccines.
In answer to your question, I think few would call him ignorant, as his actions were informed and willful, though obstructive is a term that those of both sides could probably agree upon, and only disagree as to whether positive or negative.
Since this is a super-political post, but one that is certainly relevant to the Faith-Science conversation, will let it stand awhile to allow comment, but will move to a private message in pretty short order as it is technically in violation of our policy to avoid politically posts on the open forum, assuming my fellow moderators agree.
Agreed, and the sooner the better.
Bhattachary suggested that the infection fatality rate for SARS-CoV-2 was 0.01% (and used that estimate as the basis for his policy recommendations). The actual IFR was roughly 50 times higher than that.
He suggested that the epidemic would ultimately lead to 20,000 – 40,000 deaths in the US. The number of US deaths to date is ~1.2 million. That number would have been substantially higher had his recommendations been followed, since they would have led to much higher infection rates prior to the availability of vaccines.
The basis of his recommendations was the idea that we could achieve herd immunity against covid by letting those not at high risk get infected. We now know that this was impossible, since herd immunity is not possible against this virus. More importantly, the idea didn’t make sense at the time: given the substantial fraction of our population that was at high risk and the high transmissibility of the virus, herd immunity was simply not possible on those terms.
I’m not seeing a lot of vindication for his positions in subsequent events.
I recently heard he was blacklisted here
I’m replying to keep watch on this thread once it is privatized.
Unless he was here under a pseudonym, he was never suspended or banned as I just checked the do not fly list. and I don’t remember him ever being here. and you have to be pretty offensive to get banned, so think I would remember, so someone is blowing smoke. There may have been discussions about his work that were closed due to the chaos of Covid, as there were a few of those .
Swamidass wrote on X he was blacklisted here. He must have meant that in another sense then.
And sadly, having Bhattacharya and Kennedy at the helm of our bulwark against infectious disease, with novel infections like avian flu and who knows what else could be coming, is frightening.
I would have thought it would be fine to have these discussions if they are focused on honest communication of accurate factual information. Problems arise when people start shouting at each other over subjective value judgments.
That’s right, and as long as it is staying civil, will keep public.
I find this claim incredibly disturbing
In light of the information that @jpm, @glipsnort and @Randy have pointed out about Bhattacharya. He doesn’t get a pass for being a “devout” or “principled” Christian.
I dug up an old thread where someone claimed Francis Collins had silenced Bhattacharya. The author of the OP couldn’t tell the difference between this science and faith discussion board and the NIH’s federally funded and regulated professional health information portal. Perhaps that’s where the claim of black listing came from.
I couldn’t find any other posts that mentioned him, or were by him. If he had written any using his own name, rather than a handle, they should show up. I can still find my friend, Klax’s posts by searching, although his handle no longer appears on the user list.
Yeah. The only things I like about RK is that he wants to reduce the food additives being used in America and make it more similar to the stuff in us. Like when you read the back of a package and it lists like 20 things with long odd names. I have seen a lot of videos where the same brand of something like chips in America, Japan and UK will all have very different additives with the American brand often twice as long.
I don’t know how exact all of these are but it still shows what I am constantly seeing.
The other thing I like is that he is pushing for people to be more accountable for their health. To eat better and the exercise more. We all know America has a serious health problem with like 1/3 overweight and 3/5 obese. Being overweight does not make someone less valuable of a person, but it does seem to usually increase chronic issues. Now I don’t really know of what all else he stands for. I know he is wacky in other ways. I don’t follow him. I don’t follow any republicans really. I already know that in general the Conservative Party is not going to align with 90% of my beliefs on social issues, science and definitely not with environmentalism. But it’s the first time in a while that a conservative candidate won not only the electoral college but also the popular vote. I think a key reason for that is because democrats have consistently wanted to highlight issues that affect .5%-3% of the population directly instead of coming up with solutions that are affecting the bulk of human population.
Ehh. I already know to do what I want I am just going to mostly step out of politics and not vote or anything by anymore. I think the world is going to continue to grow more toxic and that eventually, in a few centuries what will happen is that as globalization normalizes the bulk of those being oppressed will have to take up guns against oppressors. Global revolution of those willing to kill and to die for the greater good. Can’t do it now. You’ll just go to prison and it’s not bad enough for enough to stand by it. Like with that CEO got shot. It did not change anything. I think a little bit of fear seeing how many supported it across both parties shook up the people a little bit in those positions of power, but not as much as when it’s a few million willing to.
It’s not that I want it to happen that way. Same as with the civil war. I think it would be so much better for the bulk of humans around the world being oppressed through various things like consumerism and environmental destruction to instead raise up better and better kids, to dismantle the machine through education and peace. I just don’t believe it will happen. I think eventually, a sort of global revolution will have to happen and that it’s many generations away. I see a future much like in dystopian sci fi novels coming true of serious overpopulation with everyone struggling living in towering concrete cities eating mesh paste. But I guess that’s going to be there problem.
In about two years I’m going to try to get back into college and get my masters in landscape design completed and with the rest of my degree already heavily leaning into ecology and biology I’m going to try to do my peaceful part by pushing for native landscapes. I’ll keep trying to push health through whole foods plant based dieting. At my job there are now 4-5 people who instead of cheese tortilla and potato chips they are eating carrots and apples to lose weight and eat healthier. Though they all still eat meat some have now begin to do things like meatless Monday or plant based healthier meals for one meal a week and they are noticing positive changes. A few guys and girls from work now sometimes go
Bike riding with me after work and have joined a gym. Maybe the world will get better through love and education. But I just don’t think so.
I also want to be in on the private chat.
What was the disinformation?–I guess for the private chat. My understanding is that his position was that there was already an established pandemic protocol that was ignored, specifically that the most vulnerable be protected, and that most of society could go on to function more or less normally, not locked down and with schools open. Further, vaccination should be voluntary and optional, and not mandated. Several others joined in by signing the Great Barrington declaration.
It seems that Sweden’s model validated this approach.
There was no established protocol for pandemics as serious as covid – there hadn’t been one for over a century.
Reference?
The main reason for masking and lockdowns was to prevent our health care system from being swamped by sick people. This still happened in some regions in the US where ad hoc hospitals had to be set up in arenas and convention centers. A friend of mine specialized in pulmonary nursing and he spent nearly 2 years bouncing around the country going from one COVID hotspot to another, helping set up these ad hoc hospitals. If this had happened across the country we would have been up a creek without a paddle. In my area we were nearly out of ICU beds when Omicron hit, and it resulted in the cancelations of most elective surgeries. There were countries where the worst did happen, such as in India where people died at home because they couldn’t access health care or oxygen due to how many sick people there were. The same nearly happened in Italy at the very start of the pandemic, and was only staved off by lockdowns.
In fact, I would hazard a guess that the Italians experience with COVID probably informed our health officials in the US as to what they should do. They saw what happened without any lockdowns or masking, and it nearly collapsed the health care system in some cities.
There are many workplaces that require vaccinations. They required them before the pandemic, during, and now afterwards.
How so?
Among the issues you reference, is that of our esteemed Francis Collins disparaging both Jay Bhattacharya, and also everyone else who were signatories of, what is now known as the Great Barrington Declaration. To call any replies to your topic “political” does us all a terrible injustice. There are facts that should and must be discussed. There are monitors on this forum who will not likely allow this missive, as they are not willing to speak “truth to power”. I ask the simple question: why should it threaten anyone here to admit what it took FOIA requests to uncover? The WSJ covered the entire episode here, and the Professor of Health Policy at Stanford University School of Medicine himself gave this statement to Congress.
On Oct 2-2, 2020, the American Institute for Economic research hosted a small conference for scientists to discuss the Covid-19 lockdowns. Just 4 days later, Dr. Francis Collins called three of these scientists “fringe epidemiologists” and sent it to Fauci by email (actual emails can be found here). The three were Bhattacharya of Stanford, Martin Kulldorff of Harvard and Sunetra Gupta of Oxford. The links are above, but the text of one of them is here:
"“This proposal from the three fringe epidemiologists . . . seems to be getting a lot of attention – and even a co-signature from Nobel Prize winner Mike Leavitt at Stanford. There needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises,” Dr. Collins wrote. “Is it underway?”
So what did they say that stirred Dr. Collins ire so much? The actual Great Barrington Declaration is here. They cited the concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of prevailing policies and recommended a “focused protection”. There will be, and are of course, many who cling to the dogma of Drs. Collins and Fauci that they saved millions of lives. The truth is another matter entirely. The young and the healthy adults rarely, very rarely died of Covid. That was all that the GBD said…focus on where the risk truly is, not on the entire public. More importantly, they pointed out that natural immunity was better than (at least as good as) the vaccine…but our own Dr. Collins disputed that as well.
Regarding Bhattacharya’s common sense approach to the need for a focused-protection, and risk-stratification, he pointed out that vulnerability to death was ~1,000 times higher in the elderly and infirm than in the young. So to the extent that politics played a role, it was only by the usual governmental entities who declared war on these fine scientists. Drs Collins and Fauci (and others inside government) clearly saw this as a threat to the illusion that there was a consensus of scientists about the need for a lockdown. There were ~ 12 federal agencies, including he CDC, the Office of the Surgeon General, and the WH that began to apply pressure on every social media company like Google, Facebook and Twitter to censor speech on the issue. They attacked the GBD scientists relentlessly. And it worked.
Missing in all of this is the common courtesy of an apology. At the very least, this should happen. Perhaps if this summary of the history and the facts is allowed to stand, we can see that soon.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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