We Don’t Know Who Will Hold Key HHS Positions, but If It Is These Three Guys, Buckle Your Seatbelts

The appointment of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was a shot across the bow to the public health aristocracy that the days of avoiding public scrutiny were over. Kennedy is a skeptic about vaccines, food additives, and a lot of other things that had operated out of sight and with little to no transparency on how public health decisions were made, research grants awarded, or the massive conflicts of interest endemic throughout that space. Leviathan does not give up power, perquisites, and money easily. The $48 billion in biomedical research funding NIH doles out to over 2,500 research institutions in all 50 states buys a powerful lobbying arm to keep the status quo.

BACKGROUND: BREAKING: Trump Announces Pick for Secretary of Health and Human Services

While Kennedy has the star power and toughness to do the job, to really make things happen, he will need the assistance of subordinates and kindred spirits, particularly at NIH, CDC, and FDA.

NIH

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford University physician and economist who co-wrote the “Great Barrington Declaration,” is the odds-on favorite to head the National Institutes of Health. The Declaration, published in October 2020, proposed that life should return to normal as soon as possible and that the idiocy of social distancing, masking, and lockdowns end. The most vulnerable should be isolated from the virus, but the primary defense should rely upon more people developing natural immunity. This is basically what happened. 

Unfortunately, the one thing you could not say at the time was the truth. For committing this most heinous of scientific sins, Bhattacharya was labeled as a fringe kook, his career suffered, he was ostracized by the more fascist wing of the public health community, and his ability to use social media was severely limited via Big Tech censorship. He was one of the guys that NIH Director Francis Collins directed be “taken down .”

In an October 8 email from Collins to Fauci, the head of the NIH calls the GBD the work of ‘three fringe epidemiologists’ that ‘seems to be getting a lot of attention.’ 

Collins adds that ‘there needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises. I don’t see anything like that online yet – is it underway?’ 

Later in the day, Fauci sends Collins a Wired op-ed that refutes the notion of herd immunity stopping the pandemic. 

Collins then sends Fauci an op-ed in The Nation also trashing the GBD.  

Bhattacharya is an accomplished physician. He understands how the NIH works and knows who the players are. He has expressed views that, if enacted, could jumpstart innovative biomedical research. He probably holds a grudge or two. All of those are very good things.

FDA

Dr. Marty Makary, a professor of surgery and public health at Johns Hopkins University, is favored to lead the Food and Drug Administration. During the COVID freakout, Makary supported lockdowns and masking in the early stages. He was against vaccine mandates and, by May 2020, was opposing lockdowns. He opposed COVID booster shots because he thought the risk of myocarditis was much higher than did the CDC.

Makary raised concerns about a number of public health issues during the COVID-19 pandemic, touting the protection from natural immunity and opposing COVID vaccine mandates.

Makary has the academic credentials, professional experience, and reputation to carry out much-needed reforms inside the FDA.

CDC

There is no clear contender for the CDC, but the name that keeps popping up is Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo. Ladapo has an awesome personal story: He arrived as a legal immigrant from Nigeria at age five. He took his BS in chemistry from Wake Forest, where he ran track. He graduated from Harvard Medical School with a residency in internal medicine. He got a Ph.D. in health policy from Harvard and was a tenured professor at UCLA’s medical school.

According to Wikipedia, Ladapo “promoted unproven treatments, including hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, questioned the safety of vaccines, and opposed lockdown and mask mandates.” His COVID papers caught the eye of Ron DeSantis, who recruited him to be Florida’s surgeon general. His freedom-first policies gave Floridians a normal life during COVID while simultaneously having one of the lowest death rates. Along the way, the CDC and FDA accused him of spreading “misinformation” about vaccine dangers.

And if CDC and FDA loathe Ladapo, he’s not terribly fond of them.

Ladapo would be a transformative figure at CDC and just the man who could put whatever we decide not to run through the woodchipper back on course to being a credible public health agency and not a nest of noxious, fascistic Karens.