From Blacklist to NIH: Bhattacharya’s Ascent and the Reckoning for The Science™

Imagine spending your career studying infectious diseases, only to find that the real virus spreading uncontrollably is censorship. That was the reality for Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford epidemiologist who committed the unpardonable sin of questioning the COVID-19 lockdown orthodoxy. His punishment? Digital exile, courtesy of Silicon Valley’s Ministry of Truth.

In December 2022, the Twitter Files exposed what many had long suspected: Twitter had quietly placed Bhattacharya’s account on a Trends Blacklist. This ensured that his posts, often critical of lockdowns and mask mandates, would never see the light of day on the platform’s trending topics. In other words, Twitter’s algorithm worked like a digital bouncer, making sure his dissenting opinions never made it past the velvet rope.

And Twitter wasn’t alone. Facebook, ever eager to please its government handlers, scrubbed the Great Barrington Declaration from its pages. That document, co-authored by Bhattacharya and other esteemed scientists, dared to suggest that maybe, just maybe, locking down entire populations wasn’t the best strategy. Instead, it proposed focused protection for the most vulnerable while allowing the rest of society to function. For this, it was sent to the digital equivalent of a gulag.

…