What a difference an election makes.

Five years ago, Jay Bhattacharya was a pariah in Boston’s biomedical establishment. Sainted public health officials Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci branded him a “fringe epidemiologist.” His Great Barrington Declaration, the “infamous” October 2020 manifesto that challenged The Science, was denounced as dangerous disinformation.

Things sure have changed now that Babbling Beaver advisory board member Dr. Jay wields the $48 billion NIH checkbook.

On December 5th Massachusetts’ scientific elite apparently discovered what they’d been missing all along: Jay’s charm and merit.

MIT President Sally Kornbluth, whose institution spent years enforcing vaccination mandates the Declaration opposed, delivered the opening remarks at Jay’s victory-lap truth and reconciliation forum.

UMass Medical School Chancellor Michael Collins convened 60 biotech executives for an intimate chat with the man who now controls their research funding streams.

The Broad Institute, which in March 2020 implemented lockdown protocols Bhattacharya found appalling, rolled out the welcome mat.

Vice President for Research Ian Waitz, who orchestrated MIT’s campus evacuation and remote learning transition in 2020, concluded the public event with Bhattacharya.

It was political theater at its finest.

The Harvard faculty who co-authored the John Snow Memorandum, calling Bhattacharya’s herd immunity approach “dangerous”, were conspicuously absent. Marc Lipsitch, who said the Great Barrington Declaration made his “blood boil,” received no invitation. William Hanage, who called it “disgraceful,” was nowhere to be seen.

Experts™ who spent years pouring slime on Bhattacharya’s epidemiology in “peer-reviewed” papers and hatchet-job media interviews now find themselves on the outside looking in.

Big Science institutions living at taxpayers’ expense may have spent half a decade opposing Bhattacharya, but they sure know where their bread is buttered. They sent fawning administrators to smile and nod for their new paymaster.

In Boston’s biotech world, settled science sure changes quickly when the flow of research dollars is at stake.