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A huge percentage of the people I follow on X (yes, I have given in on the Twitter thing) are COVID contrarians. I had departed X for years because it became a liberal playground, but when I started fighting the COVID-19 pandemic insanity, Twitter was a major battleground. 

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So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to see that the most joy I have seen online since the first few days after Trump’s victory has been expressed about Trump’s choice of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya for Director of the National Institutes of Health. That is not an exaggeration, either. I’ve seen lots of people pleased with various picks, but the reaction to Jay’s appointment is akin to ecstasy. 

Last night, when the appointment was announced, my X feed lit up like a metaphorical Christmas tree. I kid you not, about 2/3rds to 3/4 of the posts in my feed were to express elation about Jay’s appointment. 

This is a testament to both the admiration that people feel for Jay–he is not just brilliant and fearless, but a genuinely kind and gentle man–and for the residual anger and frustration those of us have felt over the pandemic response and the creeping totalitarianism that characterized the COVID years. 

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It is not an exaggeration to say that Jay was professionally slandered for saying what to him were the most obvious scientific facts. As one of the authors of The Great Barrington Declaration, which proposed more rational pandemic response policies, Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins commissioned a “devastating takedown” of him and his colleagues. 

Collins, then head of the NIH, called Bhattacharya and his colleague “Fringe epidemiologists,” despite Jay being from Stanford and his colleagues being from Harvard and Oxford. Nearly a million other scientists joined their efforts to reform COVID policies despite censorship, professional slander, often lost careers, and other devastating consequences. 

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The vile attacks on Jay were about seizing authority, declaring government propaganda The Science™, and were in the end about nothing other than making a power grab. 

Jay has often said that The Great Barrington Declaration was the least original thing he ever wrote because it was all standard public health practices, but that was the point. The Regime wanted to throw away the book to create The Great Reset, and Jay and his colleagues stood in the way. 

Many people don’t know this, but Jay was one of the masterminds behind Ron DeSantis’ COVID strategy. Jay didn’t know DeSantis before he got a call out of the blue from the governor because Bhattacharya was one of the few scientists who was discussing actual COVID science, and not simply repeating Fauci’s BS. His description of the encounter is worth listening to. It speaks well of both Jay and Governor DeSantis. 

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One of the striking things about Jay is how humble he is. He will talk with (and listen to) people from all walks of life. He is no “expert” in the 21st-century sense; he doesn’t speak ex-cathedra but engages, explains, listens to others, and is generally humble. Jay and I have never met, but have become friendly online, and I am just some blogger. 

Jay was, for a while, one of the most maligned and censored public health officials in the world, attacked from above, behind, and below, and was stabbed in the back by colleagues who secretly said they agreed with him but who ran away when it counted. Jay never complained publicly; he just stood his ground, started a podcast, helped round up a similarly courageous group of scientists, and plowed on. 

Jay’s appointment is a triumph, not just for him but for the country and everybody who believes science should be about truth and doing good for humanity. 

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I do admit to a bit of schadenfreude–his puerile enemies must be exploding with hate–but I am overwhelmed with gratitude that America will benefit from his humility and wisdom.