Author note: The text in bold comes the editorial We Didn’t Get Covid Right. But This Is Just Wrong by Dr. Monica Gandhi.
During the pandemic I gained something of a reputation as a so-called Covid contrarian. Sure, I produced an overwhelming amount of content such as The End Of The Pandemic, California ‘Weeks Away’ From Reaching Herd Immunity UCSF Doctors Say, Stop Panicking About the COVID-19 Variants and How To Stop Living In Fear of COVID. But I’ll never mention any of that again, and if you join me in pretending it never happened you’ll see that I only argued against closing outdoor parks and beaches and called for reopening schools. That’s it. That’s all I did.
Too often during the pandemic, my fellow left-leaning public health experts supported decisions that weren’t grounded in science, such as keeping schools closed longer than necessary or enforcing vaccine mandates way past the time recommended by international agencies. Unlike me, these left-leaning public health experts sure made a lot of mistakes, and it’s their fault that during the pandemic, the share of Americans who said they did not trust scientists more than doubled, to 27 percent in 2023 from 13 percent before the pandemic in 2019.
I also amplified, legitimized, praised, glorified, honored, normalized, and teamed up with other “contrarian” doctors. They too “called for” so many wonderful things. The current director of the N.I.H., Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and I were aligned on views regarding the ill effects of prolonged school closings in the United States. That’s it. That’s all he did. Dr. Bhattacharya never proposed mass infecting unvaccinated people under age 70 to usher in herd immunity in 3-6 months.
Dr. Bhattacharya, was so upset about school closures and demolished economies that, prior to becoming NIH director, he proposed mass purges and funding cuts there. He said:
- Once, I would have lamented funding cuts for the @NIH. Now, I view them as an appropriate response to an out of control agency that funded dangerous research, conducted devastated takedowns of scientists, and hid unclassified documents from public scrutiny.
- Effective pandemic preparedness. Step 1: Fire all the people currently responsible for pandemic preparedness. They likely caused the pandemic, locked you down, kept your kids out of school, demolished economies, and want more power to do it again.
Dr. Bhattacharya also repeatedly fluffed RFK Jr. He spoke at his presidential rallies and wrote articles titled RFK Jr Will Disrupt the US Medical Establishment. “The rot, having accumulated over decades, was plain for all to see,” Dr. Bhattacharya said. “The American public voted for disruptors like RFK Jr in 2024, and academic medicine now has an opportunity to atone for its Covid-era blunders.”
I’ll never mention any of that again, and if you join me in pretending it never happened, you’ll understand why I was overjoyed when Dr. Bhattacharya was nominated to run the NIH. Here’s a sample of what I said:
- NIH DIRECTOR: Confirmation hearing of @DrJBhattacharya tomorrow- Dr. Bhattacharya is going to do a great job as @NIHDirector and bring stability back to this great medical research funding organization as demoralized at present; he will stabilize the NIH
- STABLIZIING HEALTH AGENCIES: NIH Director @DrJBhattacharya and FDA Director @MartyMakary both confirmed so congratulations to both. NIH has been unstable with terminated grants, notice of grant awards not going out, meetings/travel canceled; leader needed.
- When @DrJBhattacharya and @MartyMakary are confirmed, think the NIH and FDA will be stabilized and running smoothly again to 1) conduct impactful medical research; 2) help food and drug safety- should happen Thursday; huge relief.
- Congratulations to @DrJBhattacharya in leading the NIH (he took much flak for pushing for school openings) and @MartyMakary in leading the FDA (took similar flak). Infectious diseases research is extremely important; they both will support that.
I’ll never mention any of that again, and if you join me in pretending it never happened, you’ll see that as critical as I was of our health institutions during the pandemic, I am now deeply distressed that the Trump administration is using pandemic failures as justification for a broad assault on health and science institutions. The pandemic laid bare the fact that we needed to reform our health institutions, but what is happening now is not a reckoning but destruction. Mass grant terminations at the N.I.H. since February under this administration have also been unscientific.
I am not done “calling for” things. The Trump administration should preserve the current N.I.H. budget, stop delaying N.I.H. grants on ideological grounds that hurt its stated goal of alleviating chronic disease and involve a wide variety of viewpoints in policy-making. Only then can we start to come back to balance with science and medicine in 2025.
No one could have foreseen these attacks on science and medicine. There were no warnings, and no one sounded the alarm bell. Anyone who enabled it will live with the stain for the rest of their careers. At least when the history of this sad era is written, it will record that I was on the right side, and I am grateful to the New York Times for giving me a platform to not mention any of that and joining me in pretending it never happened.
Just don’t read the comments.
