As we wrap up, I ask him the question that haunts every pandemic policy maker: Do you have any regrets?

It is a stunning reversal. The man who was treated as a plague rat is now being asked to run the zoo.

It is March 2020, and the world is holding its breath. In a cramped home office cluttered with medical journals, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya stares into a laptop camera. He is not wearing a lab coat. He is wearing a rumpled sweater, the uniform of a man who hasn't slept in 48 hours.

"We didn't have the infrastructure," he admits. "We needed to build field hospitals for the old, free housing, hazard pay for caregivers. The government chose mandates over logistics."

Bhattacharya recalls the day his son came home from school crying. "The kids told him his dad was a killer."

"We locked the old people in with the virus," he tells me over Zoom, his voice measured but clipped. "And we locked the young people out of their future."

Jaya Bhattacharya | ((top))

As we wrap up, I ask him the question that haunts every pandemic policy maker: Do you have any regrets?

It is a stunning reversal. The man who was treated as a plague rat is now being asked to run the zoo. jaya bhattacharya

It is March 2020, and the world is holding its breath. In a cramped home office cluttered with medical journals, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya stares into a laptop camera. He is not wearing a lab coat. He is wearing a rumpled sweater, the uniform of a man who hasn't slept in 48 hours. As we wrap up, I ask him the

"We didn't have the infrastructure," he admits. "We needed to build field hospitals for the old, free housing, hazard pay for caregivers. The government chose mandates over logistics." It is March 2020, and the world is holding its breath

Bhattacharya recalls the day his son came home from school crying. "The kids told him his dad was a killer."

"We locked the old people in with the virus," he tells me over Zoom, his voice measured but clipped. "And we locked the young people out of their future."