Jay Bhattacharya

Template:Infobox scientist Jay Bhattacharya (born 1968 in Kolkata, India) is a professor of medicine at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He directs Stanford's Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. Bhattacharya's research focuses on the health and well-being of populations, with a particular emphasis on the role of government programs, biomedical innovation, and economics.

Most recently, Bhattacharya has focused his research on the epidemiology of COVID-19 and evaluation of the various policy responses to the epidemic. He is a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, a controversial document proposing a relaxation of social controls that delay the spread of COVID-19.

Early life and education

Bhattacharya has four degrees from Stanford, including an MD from Stanford Medical School and a PhD in economics.

Career

Bhattacharya is a professor of medicine at Stanford University, a professor by courtesy of economics at Stanford, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and a senior fellow by courtesy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

From 2006 to 2008, he was a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 1998 to 2001, he was an economist at the RAND Corporation and a visiting assistant professor at the UCLA Department of Economics.Template:Short description

COVID-19 pandemic

Main article: Great Barrington Declaration

Bhattacharya is a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, a proposal arguing for an alternative public health approach to dealing with COVID-19, through “focused protection” of the people most at risk. In it, Bhattacharya and the two other researchers called on governments to overturn their coronavirus strategies and to allow young and healthy people to return to normal life while protecting the most vulnerable. This would let the virus spread in low-risk groups, with the aim of achieving “herd immunity”, which would result in enough of the population becoming resistant to the virus to quell the pandemic. The authors conceded that it was hard to protect older people in the community, but suggested individuals could shield themselves and that efforts to keep infections low "merely dragged matters out". Bhattacharya wrote the declaration with Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, and Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford University. It was published on 5 October 2020.

The World Health Organization and numerous academic and public-health bodies have stated that the proposed strategy is dangerous, unethical, and lacks a sound scientific basis.

Writing for Science-Based Medicine, David Gorski speculated whether the scientists fronting the declaration were simply being useful idiots for American Institute for Economic Research, the organization promoting it, or whether they were actively being "motivated more by ideology than science", but said that the practical effect was that the declaration provided a narrative of scientific division useful for political purposes.

In an interview, Bhattacharya said he hoped the declaration would prompt a dialogue about the benefits and harms of public health interventions. In May 2020 Bhattacharya met with U.S. President Donald Trump's health officials to explain his criticism of lockdown policy and his proposal of "focused protection" on people.

Publications

Bhattacharya has published 135 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals in the fields of medicine, economics, health policy, epidemiology, statistics, law, and public health, among others.

• Bendavid, Eran; Oh, Christopher; Bhattacharya, Jay; Ioannidis, John P.A. (2021). "Assessing Mandatory Stay‐at‐Home and Business Closure Effects on the Spread of COVID‐19". European Journal of Clinical Investigation. doi:10.1111/eci.13484. ISSN 0014-2972.
• Technological Progress and Health Convergence: The Case of Penicillin in Post-War Italy
• Will Divestment from Employment-Based Health Insurance Save Employers Money? The Case of State and Local Governments
• The Gorbachev anti-alcohol campaign and Russia's mortality crisis
• Public Avoidance and the Epidemiology of Novel H1N1 Influenza A
• Bhattacharya, Jay; Bundorf, Kate; Pace, Noemi; Sood, Neeraj (2009). "Does Health Insurance Make You Fat?" (PDF). Cambridge, MA: w15163. doi:10.3386/w15163.
• Chronic Disease and Trends in Severe Disability in Working-age Populations
• Incidence of the Healthcare Costs of Obesity

External links

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