It is a stunning reversal. The man who was treated as a plague rat is now being asked to run the zoo.
Was he right? Partially. Was he politically destroyed? Absolutely.
At that moment, most of America is applauding healthcare workers from balconies. Anthony Fauci is on 60 Minutes. And Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford, is about to commit academic heresy.
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."