Sep 23, 2020 |
White House adviser Dr. Scott Atlas accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield of “misstating” coronavirus data on Wednesday.
Referring to Redfield’s testimony before the Senate in which he said that 90% of the population remains susceptible to COVID-19, Atlas said:
“I think that Dr. Redfield misstated something there. When you look at the CDC data state by state, much of that data is old, some of it goes back to March or April, before many of these states have the cases.”
He added that people also may have other forms of immunity to the virus beyond the kind Redfield referred to.
Atlas, formerly a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, joined the White House in August. Since then, he’s appeared with President Trump at press conferences … Read more.
Dr. Scott Atlas: You Shouldn’t Be Punished For Doing Something Faster Than Other People Could Have, Or Thought
Sep 23, 2020
Real Clear Politics – White House Coronavirus task force member Dr. Scott Atlas spoke about the success of Operation Warp Speed at a White House press conference with President Donald Trump on Wednesday:
“I think that people don’t understand what’s going on with Operation Warp Speed. It’s unprecedented what’s happened here. A typical vaccine takes roughly four years or so and now we’re going to have a vaccine highly likely in far less than one year.”
“Without cutting any safety corners because the president has done things concomitant to the development of the vaccine … Read more.
September 4, 20208
President Trump’s New COVID-19 Adviser Is Making Public Health Experts Nervous
NPR – Dr. Scott Atlas has literally written the book on magnetic resonance imaging. He has also co-authored numerous scientific studies on the economics of medical imaging technology.
“He’s an MRI guy,” says Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. “If I was confused about some brain lesion and what the MRI findings were, I’d be happy to call him up.”
But President Trump has tapped Atlas for a very different role — as an adviser on the coronavirus pandemic. As such, he is counseling the president on life-and-death decisions about the virus, which has already killed more than 180,000 Americans so far this year.
That has Jha and others worried.
“He has no expertise in any of this stuff,” Jha says. “He’s been bringing out arguments that have been refuted week after week, month after month, since the beginning of this outbreak.”
Here are some of Atlas’ ideas and why they have scientists and public health experts fretting.
The controversial strategy known as “herd immunity”
In April on the conservative Steve Deace Show, Atlas spoke in favor of allowing the virus to pass through the younger segments of the population, while trying to protect older Americans.
“We can allow a lot of people to get infected,” he said. “Those who are not at risk to die or have a serious hospital-requiring illness, we should be fine with letting them get infected, generating immunity on their own, and the more immunity in the community, the better we can eradicate the threat of the virus.”
He described the process by name as “herd immunity” and described it as a “basic principle” of biology and immunology … Read more.
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