There’s no reason to waste kind, smart people on agencies and institutions that have been conduits of corrupt activity under the guise of pandemic

It should surprise no one that I oppose the nomination of Jay Bhattacharya as NIH Director.

My opposition has nothing to do with Dr Bhattacharya’s credentials, integrity, intellect, or personality — and everything to do with his ongoing stances & choices about the COVID Event. 

I cannot support the nomination of someone who, despite championing the importance of open scientific debate, has 

• publicly dismissed the importance of discussing whether the WHO pandemic declaration for ‘COVID-19’ was justified, and 
• resisted revisiting and revising the claims and assumptions of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) — a political document spearheaded by the American Institute for Economic Research and co-authored with Sunetra Gupta and Martin Kulldorff in October 2020.

After Bhattacharya reiterated his belief a pathogen called SARS-CoV-2 triggered a pandemic and mis-handled challenges from other credentialed dissidents, I wrote about what happened as a good example of how admiration for prominent voices has suppressed robust dialogue about whether a pandemic occurred.

I signed and appreciated the GBD when it was released but do not endorse the ideas therein today and believe the authors have been remiss in clinging to the document and insisting they were right & their propositions scientifically valid, ethical, or necessary. 

I did not ask for my name be to removed from the document. Jonathan Engler did, however, and received a good amount of support for doing so. (I recommend reading the comments to get a sense of different perspectives on what the GBD said.)

Prominent researchers Denis Rancourt and Norman Fenton never signed the declaration — Rancourt because (in his words) he “saw it as a baseless call to harm and isolate the elderly, for no valid reason.” 

I agree with Rancourt’s characterization, in retrospect, and feel strongly that signatories and non-signatories alike should re-read the document and (more importantly) ask why the authors appear to be satisfied with their ‘rightness’ rather than confronting tough questions about things that either were not or are not correct or defensible. (I expressed the same idea two months ago in an X post re: the GBD authors revisiting their document.)*

Do NOT misunderstand me: I’m not starting a petition against Jay Bhattacharya’s appointment or standing on a hill to die on. He represents a significant improvement over Francis Collins or anyone with a decidedly Covidian mindset. 

At the same time, I don’t think I’m being unreasonable to desire appointees to federal positions who will have the guts to say, “Come hell or high water, I am going to find out what the heck happened with that ‘pandemic emergency’ – including that missing mountain of dead bodies in New York City.”

After what the world experienced over the past five years, it’s neither selfish nor a ‘purity test’ to say I would like at least one higher-ranking official who will confront the Human Rights Heist of 2020 and Pandemic Lore of Yore in all of its ugliness – and fight tooth and nail for the truth. For all of his fine characteristics, I don’t see Jay Bhattacharya being that person. More troubling, I don’t see anyone at the federal level who will play that role during Donald Trump: Season 2.

I can’t be the only American who cringes every time anyone — not just Bhattacharya — who aspires to be in a taxpayer-funded position of power & influence either says or strongly suggests that they want to “restore faith in public health.” In the wake of the Human Rights Heist of 2020+, I’m flabbergasted that anyone could think public health is worth redeeming.

Maybe I’m alone, but I don’t want faith in public health agencies restored. I never gave them a second thought until they muscled their way into my consciousness and exposed themselves as morally bereft and perfectly willing to lie about a new cause of death, restrict freedom of movement, and push for violations of bodily autonomy.

Ultimately, I oppose Jay Bhattacharya’s nomination because I oppose most federal and state health-and-science-related entities (including the NIH) and would like to see them downsized to a bare legal minimum or, better yet, go away entirely and leave us alone. 

There’s no reason to waste kind, smart people on agencies and institutions that have been conduits of corrupt activity under the guise of pandemic. I want better for our best minds and for We the People — and trust Jay Bhattacharya does too. 

Post Script

In a June 2023 interview with Hugh Witt, Bhattacharya said of the NIH director position:

…that person, whoever it is – it doesn’t matter what their age is to me – but that person, whoever it is, should play a very small role in health policy, if at all, because when they put their stamp on some health policy position or public health position, everyone’s going to fall in line, because they’re afraid for their careers. That position is too powerful to allow that, so there should be a conflict, be seen as a conflict of interest, to have someone who’s the head of the NIH or head of the NAIAD weighing in on matters of public health and public policy directly. Their job is to fund excellent science.

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• Note added 14 June 2026: I was very explicit about the need for the GBD authors to revisit their priors when speaking to Wolfgang Wodarg in May 2024: https://woodhouse76.com/2026/03/28/wolfgang-wodarg-jessica-hockett-on-medical-murder-the-new-york-event-the-great-barrington-declaration-the-search-for-truth-3-may-2024/ and had posted similar ideas on X beginning in May 2023.