EDITORIAL: Oh my! Trump taps lockdown skeptics

One might think that public health officials who foisted unprecedented lockdowns, mask edicts and school closures on the American public for the better part of a year during the pandemic might be reluctant today to attack their critics. After all, online learning proved to be a disaster that haunts the academic progress of many children to this day; studies show that divisive mask mandates were a poor means of controlling the virus; and the economic and social costs of government-mandated shutdowns far exceeded the minuscule public health benefits.

Yet listen to the squealing about two medical professionals that Donald Trump selected to posts in his administration.

On Monday, the president-elect nominated Marty Makary to lead the Food and Drug Administration. A day later, he tapped Jay Bhattacharya to head the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Makary, a surgeon at Johns Hopkins University, was described in the Baltimore Sun as a “brilliant” doctor. Dr. Bhattacharya is a Stanford University professor and a renowned health and economic researcher.

But these selections are causing some progressives to reach for the pearls. Why? Dr. Makary and Dr. Battacharya had the gall during COVID to question whether the authoritarian response was in the best interest of the country and an effective approach to minimizing pandemic deaths.

Dr. Battacharya, in particular, earned the wrath of the leftist establishment by co-authoring in October 2020 the Great Barrington Declaration, which argued that “current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short- and long-term public health.” The signatories posited that the best way forward to balance the risks of COVID would be to “allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk.”

In response, Francis Collins, head of the NIH at the time, urged a “swift and devastating takedown” of the document’s argument. Dr. Battacharya’s online presence was subsequently limited by social media companies.

Mr. “Collins’ email was representative of the imperious attitude of public health officials at the time,” Christian Britschgi of Reason magazine notes. “Criticism of the government’s restrictive approach to the pandemic was to be crushed, not debated.”

No doubt, politicians and health experts were flying blind when the pandemic hit in March 2020 and Americans were dying. But defenders of “science” should be applauding the independence of Dr. Makary and Dr. Battacharya rather than lamenting their refusal to fall in line and embrace heavy-handed pandemic mandates. Their skepticism has been more than vindicated in the intervening years.

Dr. Makary and Dr. Battacharya are both fine selections and should be confirmed.