Hoover Institution (Stanford, CA) – The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation announced Wednesday that Jay Bhattacharya, Hoover Institution senior fellow and Stanford University professor of health policy, is a recipient of a 2024 Bradley Prize. The Bradley Prize is awarded annually to individuals whose “extraordinary work exemplifies the Foundation’s mission to restore, strengthen, and protect the principles and institutions of American exceptionalism.”
Bhattacharya coauthored the Great Barrington Declaration, which in October 2020 called for public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic to be focused on the most vulnerable, allowing the rest of society to largely reopen and continue as normal.
An international recognized authority in the fields of medicine, economics, and health policy, Dr. Bhattacharya argued against mass lockdowns, saying they were a mistake that would cause harm to young pupils unable to attend school and exclude frontline workers who did not have the luxury of working from home. He also questioned public health officials’ early estimates of the mortality rate of the disease—estimates that vastly overstated the risk presented by COVID-19 to much of the population, according to countless more recent studies, using population seroprevalence and other data.
Dr. Bhattacharya was one of three recipients of the award in 2024, which comes with a $250,000 stipend. The Bradley Foundation Prizes Selection Committee considered more than sixty nominees.
Bhattacharya is scheduled to receive his prize at a ceremony on Tuesday, May 21, at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC.
“[Bhattacharya] did not conform to the prevailing orthodoxies about aspects of the pandemic that we now know were often fostered without full access to or analysis of data,” Bradley Foundation president Rick Graber said in a news release. “Jay’s relentless pursuit of scientific freedom has benefitted millions. We look forward to celebrating Jay’s remarkable work at the Prizes ceremony.”
Jay Bhattacharya, MD, is a senior fellow (courtesy) at the Hoover Institution. He is also a professor of health policy at Stanford University, director of Stanford’s Center on the Demography and Economics of Health and Aging, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research.
For more information, contact Jeffrey Marschner at 202-760-3187, jmarsch@stanford.edu.
