Jay Bhattacharya

Bhattacharya has four degrees from Stanford, including an MD from Stanford Medical School and a PhD in economics.[3][1]

Bhattacharya is a professor of medicine at Stanford University, a professor by courtesy of economics at Stanford, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, a senior fellow by courtesy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, a professor by courtesy in Stanford's Department of Health Research and Policy, a research associate at Acumen LLC, and research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.[2][1]

He researches the health and well-being of populations, with emphasis on the role of government programs, biomedical innovation, and economics.[2][3]

From 2006 to 2008, he was a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 1998 to 2001, he was an economist at the RAND Corporation and a visiting assistant professor at the UCLA Department of Economics.[2][4]

Bhattacharya was an early opponent of lockdowns in the COVID-19 pandemic, and questioned the severity of the virus.[4]

He is a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, a proposal arguing for an alternative public health approach to dealing with COVID-19, through "focused protection" of the people most at risk. In it, Bhattacharya and the two other epidemiologists called on governments to overturn their coronavirus strategies and to allow young and healthy people to return to normal life while protecting the most vulnerable. This would let the virus spread in low-risk groups, with the aim of achieving "herd immunity", which would result in enough of the population becoming resistant to the virus to quell the pandemic.[5] The authors conceded that it was hard to protect older people in the community, but suggested individuals could shield themselves and that efforts to keep infections low "merely dragged matters out". Bhattacharya wrote the declaration with Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford University. It was published on 5 October 2020.[6][7]

In October 2020, the World Health Organization's Director General stated that pursuing herd immunity before vaccination would be "scientifically and ethically problematic", and "allowing a dangerous virus that we don’t fully understand to run free is simply unethical."[8][9]

Writing for Science-Based Medicine, David Gorski, Professor of Surgery at Wayne State University, stated: "One possible interpretation is that Drs. Gupta, Bhattacharya, and Kulldorff are politically very naïve or were simply being useful idiots" for the American Institute for Economic Research, the organization promoting it, or whether they were actively being "motivated more by ideology than science", but said that the practical effect was that the declaration provided a narrative of scientific division useful for political purposes.[10]

In an interview, Bhattacharya said he hoped the declaration would prompt a dialogue about the benefits and harms of public health interventions.[11][12][13] In October 2020, Bhattacharya, Kulldorff and Gupta met with then-U.S. President Donald Trump's health officials about the declaration.[14]

In March 2021, Bhattacharya called the COVID-19 lockdowns the "biggest public health mistake we've ever made" and claimed that "The harm to people is catastrophic".[15] In May 2021, Bhattacharya was called as an expert witness for ten applicants who filed a constitutional challenge against Manitoba's COVID-19 public health orders.[16] The judge determined that the public health restrictions did not violate charter rights, noting that Bhattacharya's views were not supported by most scientific and medical experts.[17]

In April 2021, Bhattacharya participated in Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' roundtable about "Big Tech censorship and the COVID-19 pandemic."[18]

In August 2021, Bhattacharya provided testimony in defense of Florida's ban on mask mandates.[19] He publicly opposed COVID-19 vaccine passports and mandates, although he called the vaccines successful.[20][21] The judge ruled against the Florida ban and said that the state's medical experts "are in a distinct minority among doctors and scientists".[22]

In December 2021, Bhattacharya helped found the Academy for Science and Freedom with Kulldorff and Scott Atlas, a program of the private conservative liberal arts college Hillsdale College.[23]

In a 2021 case in Tennessee, the judge described Bhattacharya's testimony as "troubling and problematic", noting that he had oversimplified conclusions of a study, casting doubt on his interpretation of other studies. The judge concluded, "the Court is simply unwilling to trust Dr. Bhattacharya."[24]

In 2021, he was named a senior scholar at the Brownstone Institute, a new think tank launched by Jeffrey Tucker that published articles opposing various measures against COVID-19; Kulldorff and Gupta, his co-authors on the Great Barrington Declaration, have also had roles there.[25]

Bhattacharya claimed that he "was the target of racist attacks and death threats." and claimed that "Big tech outlets like Facebook and Google" suppressed "our ideas, falsely deeming them 'misinformation'".[26] In April Bhattacharya said that "[...] of all the many terrible consequences of our public health response to Covid, the stifling of dissenting scientific viewpoints by the state might be the most dangerous."[27]

• Bendavid, Eran; Oh, Christopher; Bhattacharya, Jay; Ioannidis, John P.A. (April 2021). "Assessing Mandatory Stay‐at‐Home and Business Closure Effects on the Spread of COVID‐19". European Journal of Clinical Investigation. 51 (4): e13484. doi:10.1111/eci.13484. ISSN 0014-2972. PMC 7883103. PMID 33400268.
• Alsan, Marcella; Atella, Vincenzo; Bhattacharya, Jay; et al. (February 2019). "Technological Progress and Health Convergence: The Case of Penicillin in Post-War Italy". Working Paper. Working Paper Series. National Bureau of Economic Research (25541). doi:10.3386/w25541. S2CID 4903383. Retrieved 13 June 2021.
• Goldhaber-Fiebert, Jeremy D.; Studdert, David M.; Farid, Monica S.; Bhattacharya, Jay (2015). "Will Divestment From Employment-Based Health Insurance Save Employers Money? The Case of State and Local Governments". Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. 12 (3): 343–394. doi:10.1111/jels.12076. S2CID 154837009. Retrieved 13 June 2021.
• Bhattacharya, Jay; Gathmann, Christina; Miller, Grant (2013). "The Gorbachev Anti-Alcohol Campaign and Russia's Mortality Crisis". American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. 5 (2): 232–260. doi:10.1257/app.5.2.232. PMC 3818525. PMID 24224067.
• Yoo, Byung-Kwang; Kasajima, Megumi; Bhattacharya, Jay (February 2010). "Public Avoidance and the Epidemiology of novel H1N1 Influenza A". Working Paper. Working Paper Series. National Bureau of Economic Research (15752). doi:10.3386/w15752. S2CID 128860977. Retrieved 13 June 2021.
• Bhattacharya, Jay; Bundorf, Kate; Pace, Noemi; Sood, Neeraj (April 2009). "Does Health Insurance Make You Fat?" (PDF). Working Paper. Working Paper Series. National Bureau of Economic Research (15163). doi:10.3386/w15163.
• Bhattacharya, Jay; Choudhry, Kavita; Lakdawalla, Darius (January 2008). "Chronic disease and severe disability among working-age populations". Medical Care. 46 (1): 92–100. doi:10.1097/MLR.0b013e3181484335. PMID 18162861. S2CID 45230256. Retrieved 13 June 2021.
• Bhattacharya, Jay; Bundorf, M. Kate (May 2009). "The Incidence of the Healthcare Costs of Obesity". Journal of Health Economics. 28 (3): 649–658. doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2009.02.009. PMC 4224588. PMID 19433210.

• Jay Bhattacharya publications indexed by Google Scholar