On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Alex Wagner Tonight,” New York Times Health Policy Correspondent Sheryl Gay Stolberg stated that “infectious disease experts” worry about NIH Director nominee Dr. Jay Bhattacharya because during the coronavirus pandemic, he opposed things like “school closures and experts who are more in the mainstream say that those measures saved a lot of lives,” and stated that Bhattacharya doesn’t hold the conventional public health thinking of “let’s stop the spread of the disease at all costs. He’s thinking about balancing the economy and other factors against public health imperatives.”
Stolberg said [relevant remarks begin around 17:25] that “infectious disease experts” are “worried about Jay Bhattacharya at NIH. He stood, during the pandemic, in opposition to standard public health measures like masking and social distancing and school closures and experts who are more in the mainstream say that those measures saved a lot of lives, and that, if we have another pandemic, they are very worried about how this Trump team will respond.”
She added, “[W]e have to understand kind of where Bhattacharya is coming from, he is a medical economist. So, he’s not thinking in a public health frame of let’s save as many lives as possible or let’s stop the spread of the disease at all costs. He’s thinking about balancing the economy and other factors against public health imperatives.”
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