Trump nominates COVID-19 lockdown critic Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to lead NIH

President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday night nominated Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a major opponent of COVID-19 mask mandates and lockdowns during the pandemic, to lead the National Institute of Health (NIH).

Bhattacharya was one of the three authors of the October 2020 open letter "The Great Barrington Declaration," which criticized the strict mandates. He has also claimed that lockdowns during the pandemic had done more damage than good.

Trump said in his announcement that Bhattacharya will work alongside his Health and Human Services Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to restore the NIH to a "gold standard of medical research."

"Jay is a Professor of Health Policy at Stanford University, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, and a Senior Fellow by courtesy at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute, and the Hoover Institution," Trump touted in a post to Truth Social. 

"Jay is a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, an alternative to lockdowns proposed in October 2020," he continued. "His peer-reviewed research has been published in Economics, Statistics, Legal, Medical, Public Health, and Health Policy Journals."

Bhattacharya warned in 2021 that lockdowns "create[d] all kinds of physical problems, psychological problems, harms that I've never seen [Anthony Fauci] talk about." Some of the issues that the doctor alluded to included increases in child abuse, depression, and divorce rates. 

The U.S. economy was also impacted by the pandemic and many small businesses were wiped out.

Bhattacharya also previously argued that many of the restrictions did not have any impact on stopping the spread of the virus, or protecting recipients. 

"They were just indiscriminate closures that essentially protected the 'Zoom class' — the people who could afford to stay at home — while exposing the working class, other poor people and the vulnerable," he said.

Bhattacharya claimed that the country should have focused on protecting the elderly and people with other underlying medical conditions who were more prone to serious disease from the virus.

The Stanford professor responded to Trump's announcement in a post on the social media company X,  stating that he was "honored and humbled" by the nomination.

"We will reform American scientific institutions so that they are worthy of trust again and will deploy the fruits of excellent science to make America healthy again!" Bhattacharya said.

Although the position is not on the president's Cabinet, Bhattacharya's official nomination will still need to be confirmed by the United States Senate early next year.

Misty Severi is an evening news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.