President-elect Donald Trump’s choice this week to lead the National Institutes of Health is a controversial Stanford researcher who was highly critical of the COVID-19 pandemic response, drawing pushback from the medical community and some still suffering from the long-term effects of the disease.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of health policy and senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, was one of three co-authors of a 2020 letter that challenged policies like lockdowns and mask mandates, and called for speeding up herd immunity.