Jaya | Bhattacharya

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.

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

He looks out the window at the Palo Alto sun. "I regret that we stopped talking to each other. We built a firewall between 'safe' science and 'dangerous' science. That firewall is still standing. And the next virus is coming." To understand Bhattacharya, you have to forget the