Jay Bhattacharya's story about "prevention" is blatantly false
Let's work to recognize the doublespeak that antivax grifters use
On his first day at NIH, Jay Bhattacharya was on Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch’s Fox by 6pm. Bhattacharya is best understood as a tool of rightwing billionaires like the Fox owner — and those billionaires’ agenda to privatize NIH, corrupt universities, take away academic freedom, and destroy real science by turning NIH into a rightwing thinktank.
The HHS post — on Elon Musk’s Twitter — said Bhattacharya “explains why we must build a healthcare system that prevents people from getting sick, not one that helps people after they get sick.”
We can tell Bhattacharya, and Trump’s HHS, are lying. If they cared about preventing people from getting sick, they’d care about vaccines. But they do not care about either of those things. "Preventing people from getting sick, not helping after ..." is just a raw anti-science message, but one that sounds good to the public. It's an excuse to push raw milk and shady supplements while cutting real science — science that develops both prevention and treatment. By saying this, Bhattacharya can justify cutting cancer research into new therapeutics, while saying "we don't want to help people after they get sick."
NIH, don't let him get away with this. Anytime he tries to drop this obviously incorrect line, we just have to say he's an anti-vaxxer — that he didn't want to prevent COVID, and instead he pushed a plan that would have led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. And then say he's lying about prevention, the best prevention of disease there is — miraculous vaccines developed with NIH support that have saved uncountable lives.
One of the bad things about Bhattacharya going on Fox to spread this misinformation is that he has very wealthy allies. Bhattacharya is nothing himself. He's an instrument of rightwing billionaires -- the Bradley foundation, the Scaife foundation, Charles Koch, David Neeleman, Dick Uihlein of Real Clear, Rupert Murdoch of Fox; the billionaires behind Hoover, the billionaires behind AIER. These are the people who have paid Bhattacharya, given him awards, created a fake journal for him, created a fake academic society for him, and given him media platforms.
Bhattacharya knows very well his current position in life is due to his willingness to parrot the billionaires' agenda. Maybe he'll surprise us and care about real science, but it's most likely that he'll help his billionaire patrons destroy NIH, while they continue to praise him and pay him.
Don’t bend the knee, NIH’ers. Find ways to slow Bhattacharya's efforts, and slow the billionaires’ agenda.
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