Jay Bhattacharya is the latest in a long line of controversial choices to serve in Donald Trump's forthcoming administration.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya argued against COVID-19 lockdowns and was in favor of using herd immunity to fight the pandemic.

President-elect Donald Trump selected Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford-trained physician and economist who criticized coronavirus lockdowns, on Tuesday to lead the National Institutes of Health, the nearly $50 billion agency that oversees the nation’s biomedical research.

The Stanford physician was excoriated by NIH’s director in 2020 for his “fringe” ideas on covid. Four years later, he’s poised for power in Trump’s Washington.

US President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford professor, to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Bhattacharya, the first Indian-American tapped for a top Trump administration post,

Trump’s and Bhattacharya’s views align when it comes to so-called herd immunity, which the president-elect repeatedly advocated for as a way to deal with COVID during the last year of his first term in office. But herd immunity would have been a disastrous way to deal with the virus.

Bhattacharya claims that the NIH is shutting down alternative perspectives, claiming figures in the agency such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years, were too powerful.

Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford University-trained physician and economist, has reportedly emerged as the presumptive favourite of President-elect Donald Trump's transition team for the post of next director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Donald Trump plans to nominate Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford professor known for his criticism of Covid lockdowns, to lead the National Institutes of Health.