Jay Bhattacharya, the Stanford professor of medicine and economics who President Donald Trump has tapped to lead the National Institutes of Health, became prominent during the Covid pandemic as a contrarian. He was a fierce foe of the restrictive measures advocated by public health officials for combatting the deadly virus. As one of the three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which was developed at an October 2020 meeting of a libertarian think tank, he recommended the United States strive for Covid herd immunity through mass infection instead of fighting the disease with lockdowns, masking, and other countermeasures—a position widely opposed by medical experts as dangerous. And at the outset of Covid, he lowballed the severity of the pandemic, saying it was “likely” that the outbreak would be of a “limited scale” and cause 20,000 to 40,000 deaths, not the million or more predicted by public health officials. (Covid deaths have so far totaled 1.2 million.)
During the Covid crisis, Bhattacharya’s controversial and much-criticized views became well-known. Not as public was his role advising a group in South Africa that has claimed there was no Covid pandemic and that has pushed the conspiracy theory that Covid and climate change are “fabricated global crises” orchestrated to implement “centralized control.”
Weeks into the Covid pandemic, a South African named Nick Hudson, who describes himself as an actuary, private equity investor, and amateur ornithologist, created an outfit called PANDA (short for Pandemics Data and Analytics) to advance the notion that the global reaction to Covid—lockdowns and mandates—was “overwrought and damaging.”
In June 2020, when South African government advisers estimated that Covid could result in 40,000 fatalities in that country, Hudson, through PANDA, released an open letter calling that figure “outlandish”—that is, far too high. He told a South African publication that this estimate “would put us in line with the very worst experiences in the world. That makes no sense.” He added, “We have a younger population, which is associated with a lighter [disease] experience.” He insisted a reasonable forecast would not top 10,000 deaths.
But Hudson had been wrong before. In May 2020, he contended that because no nation “we have noticed” had seen “peak daily deaths” occur outside the range of 30-to-50 days from first death, “poor and middle-income nations would not have significant epidemics.” By the next month—after that 30-to-50-day window had passed—South Africa was still registering record-setting deaths. And greater peaks of daily deaths would continue to occur.
By early August, Covid deaths in South Africa reached 10,000—the number that Hudson and PANDA had maintained would be the high end—and they kept coming. Still, PANDA stuck with downplaying the seriousness of the disease. “There is no health crisis,” the group’s website said. “Well, actually, there is. But it isn’t caused by COVID-19. It is caused by the lockdown and other miserable” measures. The following month, PANDA suggested there was no reason to fear a “second wave” of Covid deaths. Yet a second wave would come and claim tens of thousands of more South African lives. Eventually, the death toll would be over 102,000.
On October 6, 2020, PANDA announced the formation of its “scientific advisory board.” The four members included Bhattacharya, as well as the two other authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. Also on the new PANDA board was Michael Levitt, a professor of biophysics at Stanford University. In July 2020, he had tweeted, “US COVID19 will be done in 4 weeks with a total reported death below 170,000… Reported COVID19 deaths may continue after 25 Aug. & reported cases will, but it will be over.” By the time he and Bhattacharya joined Hudson’s board, US deaths were nearly 225,000 and rising. Both had wildly underestimated the Covid death count.
While announcing the alliance with Bhattacharya and the other Covid skeptics, PANDA decried “the corrupt and the inept among scientists and politicians alike” who were “embarking upon a great intrusion against civil liberties and pursuing health policies that…would clearly harm more than help.” It called Bhattacharya and this fellow board members “courageous voices” and asserted Covid “presents negligible risk” to “the vast majority.” The group suggested the Covid response advocated by governments and public health officials was designed to establish a “dystopian ‘new normal.’” PANDA was leaning into paranoia.
When Hudson publicly assailed what he called the “false Covid Narrative,” which he claimed was being advanced by elites to create a “dystopian fantasy,” and argued that the “headlong rush for a vaccine is as unnecessary as it is dangerous,” he cited Bhattacharya’s presence on PANDA’s board to boost his credibility.
In early January 2021, Bhattacharya joined Hudson to record a video. He nodded approvingly as Hudson accused the World Health Organization of fear-mongering about Covid and making sure “everyone was terrified.” Bhattacharya charged the scientific community with “ginning up panic.” They each shared their opposition to lockdowns, and both expressed their support for herd immunity.
In the video, Hudson expressed deep skepticism about the recently developed vaccines and opposed universal mandatory vaccination. Bhattacharya took a slightly different stance, asserting that the public health community had lost the credibility it needed to advocate for vaccine mandates. Still, he maintained that infection for non-elderly people was the best protection. The vaccine, he remarked, “certainly is going to be less well-tested [than infection]. The range of uncertainty around that will be much greater than the protectiveness of Covid infection.”
Hudson thanked Bhattacharya for joining PANDA’s board. Neither acknowledged that they had greatly underestimated the Covid death toll. By this point, nearly 400,000 Americans had died (10 to 20 times what Bhattacharya had characterized as “likely”) and more than 31,000 South Africans had perished (three times what Hudson had said was the highest possible death count).
In the years ahead, Hudson and PANDA would campaign against vaccine mandates and become more invested in conspiracy theories. During a 2023 interview, Hudson claimed there was a a “deeply disturbing” pattern of fabricated global crises, like Covid-19 and the climate “emergency,” which were being pushed to allow globalists to implement “centralized control.” On its web site, PANDA currently states, “There was no pandemic.” It adds, vaccines “were simply not required.”
Levitt broke his ties with PANDA due to its anti-vaccine stance. But there’s no public sign of Bhattacharya saying goodbye to Hudson and PANDA. The group noted in April 2021 that “overnight” several of its scientific advisory board members resigned due to its position on vaccines. It did not specify who had resigned. Its website no longer lists such a board.
Bhattacharya did not respond to requests for comment from Mother Jones. Neither did Hudson nor PANDA.
On Wednesday, Bhattacharya appeared before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee for his committee. He paid lip service to the idea of following the science. But he also said he was open to more research to determine if there is a link between autism and vaccines, though plenty of science has already determined no connection exists. He ducked questions about the Trump administration’s efforts to cut NIH funding. No major Republican opposition has emerged to his nomination. Soon the preeminent government agency in charge of medical research could be under the control of a fellow who legitimized a Covid denialist and conspiracy theory-pusher who, like Bhattacharya, got it wrong.
