By Neenah Payne
Questioning The Destructive COVID Policies discusses the multi-faceted role of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya in defending sound medical policies during the COVID era.
Jay Bhattacharya, an NIH critic, emerges as a top candidate to lead the agency showed that Trump was considering selecting Dr. Bhattacharya to head the National Institutes of Health – which would signal a major turning point!
Dr Jay Bhattacharya, who faced censoring and blacklisting for criticising Biden-Fauci lockdown policy, appointed as new NIH director by Trump shows that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who is working with the Trump administration to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) said:
“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.”
When Dr. Francis Collins was the head of the NIH in 2021, he dismissed Dr. Battacharya and the two other authors of The Great Barrington Declaration as “fringe scientists” – although they were from Standford, Harvard, and Oxford. The Declaration has since been signed by more than 940,000 people including doctors and scientists! Collins refused to meet with these esteemed doctors to discuss their recommendations on how to end the lockdown. Had Collins done so, the nation could have been spared the many devastating consequences of the lockdown and vaccine mandates.
Instead, Dr. Collins and Dr. Anthony Fauci who was then head of the NIAID, imposed a false “consensus” which mirrored the position of Microsoft founder Bill Gates who is not a doctor (he didn’t even graduate from college) and was not elected or appointed by anyone. In 2010, Gates announced that he wanted to launch a Decade of Vaccines. The World Health Organization joined that initiative.
Since Gates provides the largest funding for the World Health Organization, the WHO adopted Gates’ views. Social media imposed those and banned anyone (even top doctors and scientists) who disagreed. The corporate media likewise imposed the false “consensus”. Anyone who disagreed was accused of causing “vaccine hesitancy” and “killing people”. They were dismissed as selfish “conspiracy theorists”.
Better late than never: former NIH director Francis Collins admits COVID mistakes
Why Harvard Fired Dr. Martin Kulldorff
Harvard Tramples the Truth 3/11/24
By Dr. Martin Kulldorff
When it came to debating Covid lockdowns, Veritas wasn’t the university’s guiding principle.
I am no longer a professor of medicine at Harvard. The Harvard motto is Veritas, Latin for truth. But, as I discovered, truth can get you fired. This is my story—a story of a Harvard biostatistician and infectious-disease epidemiologist, clinging to the truth as the world lost its way during the Covid pandemic.
On March 10, 2020, before any government prompting, Harvard declared that it would “suspend in-person classes and shift to online learning.” Across the country, universities, schools, and state governments followed Harvard’s lead.
Yet it was clear, from early 2020, that the virus would eventually spread across the globe, and that it would be futile to try to suppress it with lockdowns.
Former Harvard Medical Professor Claims He Was Fired for Opposing Covid Lockdowns, Vaccine Mandates 3/18/24
In the video below, Dr. Kulldorff explains that the government and Harvard resorted to censoring and ridiculing people who disagreed with the COVID “consensus” because there was nothing to support their position. So, they were not willing to debate their policies which they could not defend since they were not based on science or logic.
Dr. Kulldorff points out that censoring our God-given Free Speech rights protected by the First Amendment should never be an option. Censorship deprives people of the opportunity of hearing information needed to make information decisions. Dr. Kulldorff says that he used to take freedom of speech for granted, but no longer does. Dr. Kulldorff says there should be a Commission to examine the response to COVID-19. While there is no national investigation, both New Hampshire and Florida have launched inquiries.
Dr. Martin Kulldorff, who worked for Harvard University as a professor of medicine since 2003, recently announced he was fired for "clinging to the truth" in his public opposition to Covid lockdowns and vaccine mandates. Kulldorff, an epidemiologist and biostatistician, told National Review he was fired by the Harvard-affiliated Mass General Brigham hospital system and put on a leave of absence by Harvard Medical School in November 2021 over his stance on Covid. Nearly two years later, in October 2023, his leave of absence was terminated as a matter of policy, marking the end of his time at the university.
Why Did Harvard Fire Martin Kulldorff? 4/11/24
https://youtu.be/_Pt7v22wQHQ
Martin Kulldorff talks about his dismissal from Harvard Medical School, persisting college vaccine mandates, and surviving COVID-era censorship on the latest episode of Just Asking Questions. At least 40 U.S. colleges still require a COVID vaccine, according to nocollegemandates.com, an initiative that tracks and opposes the mandates.
Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine and biostatistician who lost his job at Harvard for refusing the vaccine even though he'd already survived a COVID infection, says such mandates are "unscientific" and "unethical." Harvard has since dropped the mandate, but Kulldorff likely won't be getting his job there back anytime soon because the Harvard-affiliated hospital that employs medical school faculty still requires a COVID vaccine.
Kulldorff, who created one of the earliest disease outbreak surveillance software systems, was also booted from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) COVID-19 vaccine safety commission and regularly de-boosted on Twitter and YouTube for his views. Former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins labeled him and his co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration "fringe epidemiologists" and demanded a "quick and devastating…takedown" of their call to end lockdowns in favor of a "focused protection" strategy.
Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel .
Harvard’s Double Standard on Free Speech
Harvard’s Double Standard on Free Speech
Harvard’s Unscientific Consensus (with podcast)
Martin Kulldorff joins John Tierney to discuss his firing from Harvard University and the importance of scientific debate.
John Tierney: Welcome back to the 10 Blocks Podcast. This is John Tierney, a contributing editor to City Journal. Joining me on the show today is Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a former professor at Harvard Medical School. He’s also a plaintiff in a case that’s being heard by the Supreme Court this month, involving censorship of his ideas about Covid. Today, we’re going to discuss yet another scandal at Harvard, and this one doesn’t involve plagiarism or anti-Semitism. It involves Harvard’s notorious hostility to free speech and scientific inquiry.
Back in October, I wrote in City Journal about Harvard’s double standard on free speech. That it’s fine on campus to support Hamas, but don’t dare say anything that offends progressives. I didn’t mention Martin’s case because at that time he hadn’t gone public, but now he has in the City Journal article revealing how he lost his job at Harvard after he criticized the disastrous and unscientific policies during the Covid pandemic that were being pushed by government officials with a lot of help from Harvard scientists.
Now, when the pandemic began, Martin was recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on vaccines and their side effects. During his career, which began in his native Sweden, he was instrumental in designing systems used by the CDC and other health agencies for monitoring vaccine safety and adverse effects. He was a professor at the Harvard Medical School, and also a member of the CDC’s Covid Vaccine Safety Working Group, but he soon discovered that his expertise would get him in trouble if it contradicted the version of the “science” being enforced by the CDC and Harvard scientists, one of whom became the CDC’s Director.
Stanford University’s Pandemic Policy Conference
Stanford University’s Amazing Pandemic Policy Conference
October 9, 2024 Margaret Song, MD, MPH
On October 4, 2024, I had the privilege of attending a conference at Stanford University titled “Pandemic Policy: Planning the Future, Assessing the Past.” It was notable in that it was the first academic conference held at a major university that attempted to give an honest critique of the United States’ public health agencies’ response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Organized by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Professor of Health Policy at Stanford University, the panels featured an impressive assembly of notable epidemiologists, health policy experts, public health officers, attorneys, and journalists. The topics covered by the panels included evidence-based decision-making, censorship and academic freedom, and informing future pandemic policy.
While there was diversity of opinions about the justifications for the interventions that were done during the pandemic, the general tone of the panels was decidedly critical of the actions of the United States government and its agencies. It was the first time that academic experts were able to discuss censorship and other vital matters on a university campus, thanks to Stanford’s new president, Jonathan Levin, who allowed the conference to take place against enormous pressure to close it down.
Restoring Free Speech In Academia
In the video below, Dr. Bhattachrya discusses the extreme dangers of a government-mandated scientific “consensus” that censors top scientists and doctors who have different views. He discusses how to restore free speech in academia now.
Restoring Free Speech in Academia: Jay Bhattacharya (video) 11/14/24
Jan Jekielek: I recently had the pleasure of attending a Pandemic Planning conference at Stanford University. It was really the first of its kind, in that it brought together a wide range of voices on the topic in an academic setting, and it was held under the auspices of the new Stanford President Jonathan Levin.
“I think it’s expanded the range of things that are allowed to be said in polite society, if you will,” says Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of health policy and the lead organizer of the conference. “The purpose of the conference was to essentially open the floodgates of these kinds of events taking place everywhere around the world,” he says.
Transcript
Mr. Jekielek: Congratulations on winning the Zimmer Medal from the Academy of American Science and Letters. It’s the second award, and Salman Rushdie was the first. What are you feeling about this new award?
Dr. Bhattacharya: Obviously, it’s a great honor. The award was given to me for sticking my neck out during the pandemic at a time when many, many other scientists and intellectuals didn’t. But it’s also true that there were many scientists and intellectuals that paid a huge price for it. My friend Martin Kulldorff lost his job at Harvard University as a tenured professor. Basically, almost everybody in academics who had academic positions that did stick their necks out had tremendous difficulty from their institutions. It was a really difficult time.
Mr. Jekielek: What about yourself?
Dr. Bhattacharya: It was difficult. I thought I was going to lose my job in 2020 at Stanford as a tenured professor. There were death threats for two straight years. When you have what feels like the entire establishment is trying to destroy you, it’s not the easiest thing. But at the same time, there were a tremendous number of people that I got to know that I never would have gotten to know, that I'd become friends with, which I admire tremendously. who, for them, and you could see it in the time when it’s difficult to speak up, then they spoke up, it’s the people of tremendous integrity whose values are quite aligned with mine, even if their politics might be quite different.
Mr. Jekielek: This medal is an Intellectual Freedom Award, right? You spent months organizing the Stanford Pandemic Policy Conference, which I was very honored to attend as a moderator. Let’s talk about that and its significance.
Dr. Bhattacharya: Sure. Throughout the pandemic, it’s been very difficult to organize discussions and debates between people who had an alternate view, like people who oppose the lockdowns, for instance, or people who oppose the vaccine mandates, the mask mandates, or all the whole school closures. It’s been very difficult to have those views represented in the public square. And one of the reasons why is that universities have not hosted discussions and debates. There was the idea that opposition from establishment people to these public health policies was somehow dangerous.
If people knew that there were tens of thousands of doctors and epidemiologists that opposed the lockdowns, well, they might not think that lockdown is the right idea. That was the reaction to the Great Barrington Declaration, for instance. Universities play a tremendously important role in paneling these discussions, especially in difficult times. The university mission of academic freedom inquiry aimed at finding the truth, is different from the mission of public health.
And it turns out, for public health, they viewed the university mission as a danger and applied tremendous pressure to universities to make sure that those discussions didn’t happen. In 2020, a former president of the university at Stanford, where I teach, John Hennessey, actually, tried to help me arrange a debate between me and somebody in the medical school who disagreed with me. Couldn’t find somebody in the medical school to discuss. We thought that they’re cowards. The issue was that they thought that empaneling me, putting me, platforming me was itself a danger. That’s what the medical school thought, or some people in the leadership.
Mr. Jekielek: You’re part of the medical school.
Dr. Bhattacharya: Yes, I had been teaching there for almost 25 years. It was an absolutely remarkable, complete violation of the mission of the university, which is to have those discussions. I might have been wrong, but the best way to deal with me is to have a discussion with me and make the points that show me wrong. That’s how we discover true things, is in sort of wrestling with each other on ideas…..
The conference that we just held at Stanford in October 2024 is four years late I think, but nevertheless, still quite an accomplishment. It was the first major university to host a large conference where people who disagreed about the pandemic policy were sitting in the same room talking to each other in a civil way….
Mr. Jekielek: You talk about censorship. Many people may not think about this as censorship. Many people actually think about it as trying to deal with harmful misinformation. Let’s unpack how you view that.
Dr. Bhattacharya: Sure. As you know, I’m involved with this Missouri v. Biden lawsuit. The case had at its core the questions, should the government be able to tell social media companies and other media companies that these views are so dangerous that you shouldn’t allow them to be heard by the American people? Is there really a First Amendment? Do we really even have freedom of speech when it comes to public health?....
The key ar