NIH Director: Image Bearers Are Not Biohazards

Public Square
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And do not overlook the full interview here:

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Quote from Jay Bhattacharya from the interview:

The ideology of the lockdowns was that we are all merely biohazards, and we should treat each other as such.

Iā€™m sorry, the ideology of lockdowns? And none of the people I work with in public health view their fellow human beings as ā€œmerely biohazards.ā€ That is pretty much antithetical to why they work in public health in the first place.

(Edited to better indicate the source of the quote)

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Point taken. His words not mine. I donā€™t think itā€™s meant to be taken quite the literally.

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Understood that those are his words. At the same time, you pushed back or pushed for nuance on other topics.

So how literally should we take it? He could have simply said that he thought a different set of mitigations would have been more effective, or that the second-order consequences of the mitigations were not themselves properly mitigated, or anything else that focused on policies and tradeoffs. But instead he chose a framing which made claims about the people who proposed and implemented those policies. If his goal is to rebuild trust, I donā€™t see how that helps. When a similar approach is employed regarding evolutionary biologyā€“claiming that it is an ideological commitment because evolutionists donā€™t have a Christian world viewā€“certainly hasnā€™t helped built trust in biologists among conservative Christians.

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I think you should take it as an accurate representation of his words, and recognize its words that are resonating with many. You should not read it as a position I am promoting or agreeing with.

Acting as journalist here, my goal was to give him a fair interview with minimal editorializing by me. This isnā€™t my oped, and shouldnā€™t be read as a statement of my opinion. If you read the whole interview, youā€™ll find a disagreed with him on quite a lot, but I also was bending over backwards to hear him out, as I would with anyone on all sides of these debates.

That said, I wasnā€™t triggered by what he said on these points. Because Iā€™ve certainly seen many other claims that are similar. (E.g. we arenā€™t loving our neighbors if we donā€™t take the vaccineā€¦a point Iā€™m inclined to agree with but skeptics howled about).

I think we can certainly disagree with Jays point, but there is some legitimacy to this one. Iā€™d be curious what you think would be better phrasing. And Iā€™d also welcome a response to this aspect of the interview too, which Iā€™d love to publish it!

As for rebuilding trust, he isnā€™t talking about rebuilding trust of the public health establishment with him. Rather he is emphasizing the need for us (in mainstream science) to rebuild trust with the public, and I very much agree this is a critical need.