“We Would Have…”
SBM readers will be very familiar with my thoughts about this Tweet from Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. While he probably sent it without much thought, it ended up being a highly revealing comment. Like all MAHA/MAGA doctors, Dr. Bhattacharya didn’t actually do anything when COVID raged. Rather, he spent his time on Fox News, podcasts, and social media portraying himself as a superhero more powerful than SARS-CoV-2.
Incredibly, many “intelligent” people fell for this boastful fantasy, and Dr. Bhattacharya leveraged his imagined feats of glory to gain positions of great power and responsibility. We’ve all gotten an opportunity to evaluate his real-world competency, which matters infinitely more than make-believe Tweets like this.
“RFK Jr Will Disrupt the US Medical Establishment”
Dr. Bhattacharya claimed the best was yet to come, however. In November 2024, as MAHA loomed, he wrote an article titled RFK Jr Will Disrupt the US Medical Establishment. In it, he predictably pushed the fantasy of the optional pandemic, treated vaccines as the worst part of the pandemic, and blamed the “left-leaning medical establishment” for the consequences of SARS-CoV-2. However, his main goal was to promote Kennedy as the savior of American medicine and science. He wrote:
Medical officials failed badly in the Covid era by supporting lockdowns, school closures, toddler masking, and mandates. Their championing of anti-science policies has caused massive health and social harm, which reverberates today. The 2024 US election was a vote against the establishment and in favour of fundamental reforms; it is unsurprising that the same establishment which endorsed lockdowns and mandates now fights kicking and screaming against oncoming change.
The rot, having accumulated over decades, was plain for all to see. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), whose annual budget is $45 billion, orchestrated under the leadership of Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci a massive suppression of scientific debate and research. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) exaggerated risk and issued policy guidance with little evidence in support of unprecedented vaccine mandates. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical industry meant vaccines and therapeutics were approved with little to no evidence, sometimes based on faulty modelling. And the Biden administration pushed all of this with orchestrated PR campaigns, spreading falsehoods and misinformation.
Clearly, the status quo is no longer tenable. Trust in American physicians and hospitals dropped from 71% to 40% between 2020 and 2024, according to a July study in JAMA. A Covid-era political realignment facilitated Trump’s electoral win last week, with a coalition that included disenchanted Left-liberals who rejected the centralised power of scientific bureaucrats and found an ally in Kennedy…
His agenda will focus on decentralising power in America’s recalcitrant scientific and medical institutions, offering an opportunity to allow true scientific research and evidence-based policy to flourish. With his focus on chronic disease and children, research priorities will realign with public health ones. Kennedy also plans to confront the veil of secrecy and dishonesty that inhibits transparency and integrity in public health and medicine. He intends to strengthen checks and balances in Government health bureaucracies to confront groupthink and undue corporate influence. More than that, he is seeking to ensure open public debate in medicine, recognising that science is incompatible with censorship.
‘Explosive Diarrhea’ Parasite Cases Up Over 400% In A Week In Hardest-Hit State — As Experts Search For Source
A lot has happened since then. Have Kennedy and MAHA/MAGA doctors allowed true scientific research and evidence-based policy to flourish as Dr. Bhattacharya promised? It doesn’t seem that way to me,
ProPublica journalist Annie Waldman wrote a social media thread that provided a glimpse into what Kennedy’s disruption and MAHA/MAGA doctors’ competence looks like in action. She noted that “Thousands of Americans are getting sick from a foodborne parasite, and federal regulators have still not publicly identified the source.” She then posed a vital question:
So what’s been happening in the federal government over the past year that might be a factor in this outbreak?
Her answer revealed the incompetence and malevolence of our bumbling medical establishment and it’s worth sharing in its entirety, along with the links she provided.
Before we go there…what is driving the outbreak? It’s called Cyclospora, a parasite that causes watery (sometimes explosive) diarrhea, nausea and fatigue. While it can be treated with antibiotics and is not typically deadly, it can persist for weeks. Outbreak Of Diarrhea-Causing Parasite Grows to More Than 1,000 Cases
The parasite spreads through feces; and past outbreaks have been linked to fresh produce, which may be washed or grown with contaminated water. During an outbreak, the FDA and CDC typically work together with states to investigate and identify the source. CDC Surveillance of Cyclosporiasis
These investigations are challenging, and federal regulators are surely working around the clock to figure out the source of this current outbreak. However, the administration made some changes over the past year that may be impacting critical regulatory work.
Last year, the FDA lost +400 workers that support inspections of everything from dairy farms to seafood processors. More than 240 consumer safety specialists left across the agency, including nearly 40 workers responsible for safeguarding food. Gutted: How Deeply Trump Has Cut Federal Health Agencies
~40% of fresh vegetables are imported from foreign countries. Last year, due to staffing cuts, American inspections of foreign food facilities plummeted to historic lows. Food safety experts said there would be a higher risk of outbreaks. Foreign Food Safety Inspections Hit Historic Low After Trump Cuts
The workforce cuts coincided with other actions the administration took that poked holes in our food safety net. Last year, the FDA announced it was delaying compliance w/ a rule to speed up the identification and removal of harmful food products. FDA Constituent Update.
It also suspended a quality control program that ensured consistency and accuracy across its 170 pathogen and contaminant labs as a result of staffing cuts. US FDA Suspends Food Safety Quality Checks After Staff Cuts.
And it quietly scaled back the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network, also known as FoodNet, shrinking the required surveillance to just two pathogens: salmonella and a common type of E. coli. One of the pathogens they made optional for states to report: Cyclospora.
Today, HHS maintained on X that it never stopped tracking Cyclospora, and that the FDA and the CDC were working with state and local partners to investigate the current outbreak.
Ohers pointed out that the CDC team responsible for processing parasite samples was cut from 11 to 3 scientists, and though Ms. Waldman wrote her thread only a few days ago, it is already hopelessly out of date. There are now nearly 7,000 confirmed or suspected cases in over 30 states. Over 100 people have been hospitalized, and affected individuals describe weeks of misery. One woman from Ohio said:
There were moments where I was literally just camped out in the bathroom… It’s not for the weak, and it’s kind of scary to think of the effects it would have on elderly people or young kids or people who aren’t healthy or who are already immunocompromised… I was extremely weak. I couldn’t even do the flight of stairs to get into my house without getting short of breath.
As with measles, shot-out windows at the CDC, and pretty much everything else, Dr. Bhattacharya hasn’t demonstrated an iota of competence now that he has the opportunity to prove his real-world mettle. Though he claimed he “would have” perfectly contained COVID, he’s totally AWOL today, with nothing to say about the current cyclospora outbreak.
Instead of doing his job, keeping Americans safe from dangerous pathogens, Dr. Bhattacharya is still, even today, relitigating 2020 on revisionist history propaganda podcasts. However, in 2025, thanks to his “leadership” at the CDC and the wreckage left by exiled MAHA/MAGA doctors at the FDA, lettuce is dangerous to Americans. Meanwhile Kennedy, whom Dr. Bhattacharya claimed would usher in a scientific golden age, is spending his time making bizarre work-out videos and podcasts with wellness influencers.
In his article claiming that Kennedy would be a “disruptor”, Dr. Bhattacharya, bitter and accusatory as always, said the following about his predecessors:
Yet the officials continue to deny their own culpability, avoiding a long look in the mirror.
This wasn’t true then, but it is true now, and “explosive diarrhea” is a fitting legacy for Dr. Bhattacharya and everyone else involved with the failed MAHA/MAGA project he enabled.