Trump picks Covid lockdown skeptic as head of key national health agency

The next director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will be a doctor who argued for allowing young and healthy people to become infected with Covid-19 long before a vaccine was available and later fought against mandating vaccination against the novel coronavirus.

President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday said he will nominate Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, currently a professor of health policy at Standard University and director of Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging, to lead the National Institutes of Health, one of the world’s foremost medical research entities and oversee its $47 billion in funding.

In a statement, Trump said Bhattacharya would work with his Health and Human Services Secretary-designate, anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr, to “examine the underlying causes of, and solutions to, America’s biggest Health challenges, including our Crisis of Chronic Illness and Disease.”

He added: “Together, they will work hard to Make America Healthy Again!”

Bhattacharya thanked Trump for the nomination on X.

“I am honored and humbled by President Trump’s nomination of me to be the next National Institutes of Health director,” he wrote. “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 earned a doctorate in medicine from Stanford in 1997 and earned a Ph.D. in economics from the same university three years later. He’s been a professor at the university and a senior research associate for Acumen LLC for 23 years.

Born in Kolkata, India, he is a naturalized US citizen. His research focuses on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations, emphasizing the role of government programs, biomedical innovation, and economics, Trump said.

In October 2020, Bhattacharya co-authored an open letter alongside other public health experts calling for an alternative to lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic. The experts suggested the government focus on measures that would prevent the elderly from contracting the virus but meanwhile allow it to spread among less vulnerable populations.

The idea was to create widespread immunity without a vaccine. The letter — dubbed the Great Barrington Declaration — was immediately called into question by the scientific community. Bhattacharya has continued to be a vocal critic of former White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci’s handling of the pandemic.

Fauci led the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a division of the NIH. The NIH is the nation’s medical research agency. It works to reduce illness and disability and enhance health through scientific innovation.

“The public did not know that there were prominent scientists that disagreed with the lockdown policies,” Bhattacharya said in an interview for Children’s Health Defense, an organization founded by Kennedy Jr. “They wanted to create an illusion of consensus.”

In a statement on the announcement, Kennedy Jr said on X: “I’m so grateful to President Trump for this spectacular appointment. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is the ideal leader to restore NIH as the international template for gold-standard science and evidence-based medicine.”

Also on Tuesday, Trump announced other appointments: Jim O’Neill as deputy secretary of Health and Human Services, John Phelan as secretary of the Navy, Kevin Hassett as director of the White House National Economic Council, Jamieson Greer as the United States trade representative and Vince Haley as director of the Domestic Policy Council.

Trump’s cabinet picks will need to go through a congressional confirmation process. It remains to be seen if all his nominees will assume their roles. Earlier this month, Trump appointed former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz as US attorney general and Pete Hegseth, Fox News host and Army veteran, as secretary of defense.

Both of the men have faced sexual misconduct allegations. Gaetz has been accused of having sex with a minor in 2017 and Hegseth has been accused of assaulting a woman that same year. Both men deny the allegations and any accusations of wrongdoing. Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration last week.