Here’s a letter that I sent last week to the Washington Post (but which was not published).
Editor:
Reporting on Jay Bhattacharya’s likely nomination to head the National Institutes of Health, Dan Diamond understandably mentions that Dr. Bhattacharya co-wrote the Great Barrington Declaration, which opposed covid lockdowns and called instead for focusing protection on groups who were known to be vulnerable to the virus (“Jay Bhattacharya now top candidate to be Trump’s pick for NIH director,” Nov. 23). But Diamond misleadingly writes that the Declaration “won support from Republican politicians and some Americans eager to resume daily life but was rebuked by public health experts, including then-NIH Director Francis S. Collins, as premature and dangerous as the covid-19 virus continued to spread and vaccines were not yet available.”
While Dr. Collins and some other public-health experts did oppose the Declaration, many others supported it. As Newsweek noted, within less than two weeks of its release, the Declaration had “signatures from 10,233 medical and public health scientists [and] 27,860 medical practitioners.” By failing to mention this fact – as well as the related fact that the Declaration’s recommendations were consistent with pandemic guidance offered in October 2019 by the World Health Organization – Diamond paints a biased portrait of both the Declaration and of Dr. Bhattacharya.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
