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I PHOTO: LEXEY SWALL

n May 2020, with anonymous callers

vowing to kill him and similar threats

mounting on social media, Rick Bright

gave up his cellphone and went into

hiding for more than a month. “If I

heard tires rolling over the road in the

middle of the night in the driveway

where I was staying, it was panic,” says

the 55-year-old immunologist, who un-

til that month had been a powerful, if ob-

scure, U.S. government public health official.

The threats began after Bright filed a

whistleblower suit alleging he had been de-

moted from the top job at the Biomedical

Advanced Research and Development Au-

thority (BARDA) for protesting the govern-

ment’s COVID-19 contracts and what he

saw as its misguided, plodding response

to the growing pandemic. He accused his

bosses of trying to steer taxpayer dollars

to firms run by “cronies” or “for political

purposes.” The “straw that broke the cam-

el’s back,” the complaint stated, is that he

publicly criticized hydroxychloroquine—

the antimalaria drug then-President

Rick Bright raised the alarm about the Trump administration’s response to COVID-19.

Now, he wants to build an alert system for future threats

By Jon Cohen

THE PANDEMIC

WHISTLEBLOWER

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16 7 JANUARY 2022 • VOL 375 ISSUE 6576