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WASHINGTON: Two senior U.S. public health experts have raised concerns that White House adviser Scott Atlas is providing misleading or incorrect information about the COVID-19 pandemic to President Donald Trump, according to media reports on Monday (September 28).
Top US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci told CNN on Monday that he was concerned that the information provided by Atlas, a late addition to the White House coronavirus task force, was “actually taken from context or really wrong “.
The comments from Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, came hours after a news report quoted Robert Redfield, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as sharing similar concerns. .
“Everything he says is false,” Redfield said during a phone call Friday as he was on a plane from Atlanta to Washington, NBC reported. Later, Redfield told NBC that he was talking about Atlas.
Atlas, a neuroradiologist with no experience in infectious diseases, has faced scrutiny for downplaying face masks and his views on “herd immunity,” an approach that maintains that once enough people have become infected and become immune, you are less likely than others to be infected.
The White House insists it is not following that strategy, although Trump himself has mentioned it and repeated on Monday his view that the United States was “turning the corner” from the pandemic.
READ: CDC Director Contradicts Trump on COVID-19: ‘We’re Nowhere Near the End’
Atlas’s views on handling the pandemic have been denounced by his colleagues at Stanford University medical school and other health experts.
Atlas defended his advice to the president on Monday. “Everything I have said is directly from data and science,” he said in a statement released by the White House.
In a statement, the CDC said the comments about Atlas heard by NBC were just one side of a “private discussion about a number of points it has made publicly about COVID-19.”
The agency said Redfield differed from Atlas on the use of masks, COVID-19 infections in youth and herd immunity status, but agreed with him on many other issues.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Matthews said Trump’s advisers sometimes disagreed and that the president made political decisions based on all the information he received.
The White House did not immediately comment when asked if Redfield’s position was in jeopardy.
“When the president loses trust in someone, you will know it,” said a senior administration official.
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“NOWHERE NEAR THE END”
The United States, which has not had a coordinated federal response to the virus, has recorded more than 7.1 million COVID-19 cases and nearly 205,000 deaths, both the highest in the world.
Health experts fear a second wave of infections as the weather turns colder and people spend more time indoors.
Both Fauci and Redfield were notably absent from an event in the White House rose garden on Monday, where Trump praised plans to send 150 million rapid tests to US states before asking Atlas to speak.
At the event, Atlas acknowledged that increased social mixing and testing was causing an increase in COVID-19 cases in some parts of the country, but predicted changes when a vaccine was finalized and launched.
“Fear is not the problem here,” he said. “We really know what’s going on.”
In the phone call, Redfield also said the threat of the coronavirus pandemic was far from over, contradicting the more optimistic assessments by Trump and Atlas.
“We are nowhere near the end,” Redfield said.
Trump earlier this month dismissed testimony before Congress from Redfield about when a vaccine could be widely deployed, saying the CDC director was “confused.” He previously criticized Redfield for saying that covering his face could be as effective as a vaccine.
“If we all did it, this pandemic would be over in eight to 12 weeks,” Redfield told NBC.
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