Jaya Bhattacharya -

That is his weakness, and his strength. He is an idealist in a cynical field. He believes that if you give people the truth about risk—that a 7-year-old is safer at a birthday party than a 75-year-old is at a bingo hall—they will make the right choice.

But here is the rub. Sitting in his Stanford office, Bhattacharya is now the establishment. He is the guy with the MD and the PhD. He is the guy the billionaires call. jaya bhattacharya

Critics panned the methodology. Supporters called it vindication. Years later, the CDC would admit that the infection fatality rate was indeed an order of magnitude lower than initial hysterical projections. That is his weakness, and his strength

When I press him on the failures of the "Great Barrington" model—specifically, the logistical impossibility of perfectly isolating the elderly in a multi-generational household—he grows quiet. But here is the rub

To understand Bhattacharya, you have to forget the caricature. He is not a libertarian firebrand in the mold of Rand Paul, nor is he a vaccine nihilist. He is, by training, a physician and an economist—a hybrid creature who sees a virus not just as a clinical problem, but as a triage of social costs.

Unlike the armchair epidemiologists, Bhattacharya rolled up his sleeves. He led the charge on the "Stanford antibody study," which suggested the virus was far more widespread—and far less lethal—than models predicted.