ZH

Bhattacharya said that COVID-19 policy was “the biggest public health mistake in history,” citing both the direct harms it caused to the economy and the indirect harms it caused to children.

Bhattacharya told The Epoch Times that these and other costs were ignored. He blamed senior health officials for this, who he said imposed a narrative of medical unanimity on how to respond to COVID-19 that didn’t truly exist.

If Bhattacharya is chosen and confirmed, he would be subordinate to Kennedy if the latter is also confirmed. Trump’s HHS secretary pick has said he would fire about 600 NIH employees on his first day.

“We need to act fast, and we want to have those people in place on Jan. 20, so that on Jan. 21, 600 people are going to walk into offices at NIH and 600 people are going to leave,” Kennedy said on Nov. 9 at the Genius Network Annual Event in Scottsdale, Arizona.