The statement

“I and many others believe there was no pandemic.

Jay Bhattacharya believes there was.

The difference is significant.

With his position secured, will the NIH Director now make room for debate?”

The source

Jessica Hockett, Independent researcher focused on COVID events in early 2020, on her substack, Jessica Hockett | Substack, 26 March 2025 (Web site www.woodhouse76.com )

On Jessica’s Substack there is a trail of X/Twitter exchanges involving Dr Jay Bhattacharya, Jessica, Dr Jonathan Engler and Professor Martin Neil .

My take on it

As relevant context: Stanford Professor Jay Bhattacharya was recently confirmed as the incoming Director of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). Bhattacharya was (inter alia) co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration of October 2020, which expressed grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommended an approach called Focused Protection. The GBD did not challenge the official narrative as to the underlying nature of the threat that precipitated those extreme policy responses.

I signed that Declaration, then. I have now sought to have my signature withdrawn, for the same reasons as Jessica and others have given. The balance of the evidence that I have seen leads me firmly to the view that there was no true pandemic; but rather that one has been portrayed, fraudulently, in order to enforce injection of an unnecessary, ineffective and (not only unsafe, but) deadly manufactured pathogen. For that reason I now see the GBD as misconstrued, albeit with the best of intentions.

Bhattacharya sees things differently:

Professor Neil challenged Bhattacharya’s starting propositions:

And Dr Engler argued for some forensics on the narrative, so that in the future people are suitably informed in order to drive a better outcome:

In Bhattacharya’s post he had used the phrase “until repudiated by the public.” Jessica tried some repudiating:

Jessica was blocked (again) for her troubles.

Which puts her in the same company as RFK Jr, as related in The Great Awakening by Alex Jones:

“Robert Kennedy knew early on that the COVID vaccines were both ineffective and dangerous, and he said so in public to the extent he was allowed. Science has since proven Robert F Kennedy Jr right. Unequivocally right. But Kennedy was nor applauded for this. He was vilified. He was censored. Because he dared to criticise their advertisers, the news media called Bobby Kennedy a Nazi, and then they attacked his family.” (p187)

To me it seems perverse that Bhattacharya, who reports to Kennedy, should be blocking dissident voices that are in genuine pursuit of robust public enquiry. But then it also seemed perverse that earlier David Weldon, who was RFK Jr’s original pick as CDC Director, and unafraid to ask awkward questions, was passed over in favour of someone more aligned with the status quo:

‘Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican and committee member, told reporters she had relayed her concerns about Weldon’s vaccine skepticism both to him directly and to the White House. Two other Republicans who have voiced concerns about the administration’s direction on vaccines, Sens. Bill Cassidy and Susan Collins, said they had not decided whether to support or oppose his confirmation.’

Politics. The art of the possible.

And meanwhile the carnage continues.