A group of four medical experts wrote a letter to The New York Times Thursday demanding corrections on several claims made about President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Jay Bhattacharya.
Drs. Martin Kulldorff, Bryce E. Nickels, Anish Koka and Kevin Bass pointed out five alleged errors made by opinion columnist Zeynep Tufekci’s op-ed titled, “Trump’s Pick to Lead the N.I.H Gets Some Things Right,” urging the Times to correct their “false and misleading claims.” The piece accused Bhattacharya of wrongly estimating the death toll caused by the coronavirus, of overestimating how many people had recovered from the virus and claiming that vaccinating the entire population can cause harm.
“Dr. Zeynep Tufekci’s November 27, 2024, editorial, ‘Trump’s Pick to Lead the N.I.H Gets Some Things Right’ (Tufekci 2024), includes several false and misleading claims that require correction,” the letter states. “First, the editorial falsely claims that Dr. Bhattacharya ‘repeatedly predicted that the virus would likely kill about 20,000 to 40,000 Americans.’ In fact, Dr. Bhattacharya co-authored a March 2020 article that presented a range of potential death estimates–from 20,000 to 2 million–to highlight the uncertainty of early pandemic projections based on limited seroprevalence data.”
Bhattacharya co-wrote a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article in March 2020 with Stanford University professor Eran Bendavid, which argued that the estimated 2% to 4% fatality rate of COVID is likely flawed. If that estimate were accurate, then 2 to 4 million people would have died from COVID if 100 million were infected. The op-ed further noted that getting clear and accurate data on the virus was critical in order to avoid long-term consequences from quarantining.
“Fear of Covid-19 is based on its high estimated case fatality rate—2% to 4% of people with confirmed Covid-19 have died, according to the World Health Organization and others. So if 100 million Americans ultimately get the disease, two million to four million could die. We believe that estimate is deeply flawed. The true fatality rate is the portion of those infected who die, not the deaths from identified positive cases,” the WSJ piece stated.
The op-ed falsely accused Bhattacharya’s Santa Clara study from 2020 of having “grossly overestimated” how many people had already been infected and recovered from COVID, the letter says. The experts wrote that the 0.17% fatality rate recorded in Bhattacharya’s study is “consistent” with other findings from independent studies that excluded nursing homes.
The experts further accused the op-ed of falsely stating that “implementing focused protection measures” for older individuals was “never feasible,” citing Sweden as a nation that had “successfully adopted” that strategy.
The Times piece accused Bhattacharya of stating in an op-ed he co-wrote in 2021 that a majority of Indians are naturally immune to the virus and that vaccinating the entire population can be dangerous, though the letter alleges that the NIH nominee did not write the headline. The opinion piece said that the Indian population “suffered a deadly wave” of the virus shortly after Bhattacharya’s op-ed had been published.
“Fifth, the editorial contains a passage implying that an article co-authored by Dr. Bhattacharya (Agarwal & Bhattacharya, 2021) was connected to a ‘deadly wave that killed millions of people‘ in India,” the letter said. “This passage should be removed, and a clear statement issued to clarify that there was no intent to defame Dr. Bhattacharya by implying an article he co-authored was connected to millions of deaths.”
The Times’ article concluded that Bhattacharya has made “valid points” about the coronavirus, citing his criticism of those attempting to discredit the theory that the virus originated in a lab and whether infections increased immunity.
The New York Times did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Featured Image Credit: NIH
