The incoming NIH Director should publicly acknowledge that pandemics are up for debate
I am still at-odds with — and still blocked by — soon-to-be NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya. (I support an individual’s decision to block anyone for any reason and am not “complaining” as much as I am making a statement of fact.)
My larger account (@Wood_House76) has been blocked for some time, while the smaller, current account was blocked last September. You can read more about the circumstances here:
I first connected with Jay on a group Zoom call in autumn 2020, around the time the Great Barrington Declaration was published. He later played a role in helping restore my and other COVID ‘dissident’ accounts that had been suspended.
Delving deeper into the New York City mass casualty event during my five-month suspension shifted some of my views from ‘permitted dissent’ to perspectives deemed ‘out-of-bounds’. A January 2023 exchange between us highlights our growing differences in perspective. (See here.)
In April 2023, I respectfully questioned Jay about a statement he and his colleagues made in a September 2020 modeling study on asymptomatic transmission, which endorsed mask mandates.
I had opposed mask mandates from the moment they were announced in my suburb. Jay had a general awareness of my well-documented virtual and real-life battles against those mandates.
None of this changes the fact that Jay Bhattacharya is a kind-hearted man and a significant improvement over his predecessors. While I opposed his nomination as NIH Director, I have not actively crusaded against it.
What I have crusaded against — and will continue to do so without apology, whether alone or with likeminded colleagues — is the ‘Next Pandemic’ view held by Jay, The Norfolk Group, and panelists at a Stanford conference he hosted last fall, including Sunetra Gupta, John Ioannidis, Scott Atlas.
It’s hard to deny that focusing solely or primarily on the COVID shot won’t slay the well-funded pandemic preparedness beast that needs to be slain. Triggering the appearance of a sudden-spreading pathogen requires only a story and a test — or, apparently, a social media rumor to serve as an excuse for a test.
The strongest, simplest message that can be delivered to Jay Bhattacharya by those who are not blocked or have his attention — and who are equally-convinced in their own hearts and minds — is THERE WAS NO PANDEMIC.
Everything was criminal.
Every. Single. Thing.
You don’t have to be a scientist to say it.
You don’t have to be an American to say it.
You don’t have to be an adult to say it.
You don’t have to speak English to express it.
If, at this point, you believe there was a pandemic, I hope to change your mind. Or perhaps you’ll change mine.
But at the very least, let’s all acknowledge that neither the events of 2020, nor pandemics as phenomena more generally, are anywhere near being “settled science.”
15 June 2026 Post-Script
I recognize that, in this and other articles about dialoguing with “Jay Bhattacharya” on X, I am speaking as though I was engaging with the “actual” Jay Bhattacharya. In reality, there’s no reason to believe that was the case and that I wasn’t simply engaging with his brand-management team. Nevertheless, the members of such teams do represent “him” and therefore my critiques remain.
Also, both my inquiry of Jay’s account regarding the mask mandate commendation in the “Visualizing the invisible” study, and my awareness of the study itself, was prompted by another COVID dissident (a PhD who operated under a pseudonym for several years), who had been trying to ask him (Jay) about it on X, and was being ignored. I took up the cause, in part, because that user was unsuccessful in his efforts and, I inferred, was feeling frustrated.
Footnotes in original version deemed superfluous removed.
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