The latest addition from President Donald Trump to the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Dr. Scott Atlas, is a frequent Fox News guest and critic of what he considers to be “media hysteria” over the COVID-19 pandemic.
Atlas was the lone doctor who joined Trump on the scene during last week’s pandemic introductions. The move signaled the administration’s widening gap with Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, who have directly opposed Trump in the past and have been blasted by conservatives and Trump allies who criticize their support of widespread social distancing efforts and opposition to re-opening low schools.
Now, Atlas, a former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center, offers a more temperate approach to the pandemic publicly shared by the president.
Get your unlimited Newsweek trial>
Atlas told Fox News in early July that the United States was an “outlier” that would not reopen its schools because the news media had created pandemic “hysteria.”
He criticizes government efforts to prevent ‘natural herd immunity’ from taking effect, as when a large part of the community becomes immune to a disease, resulting in a reduced chance of it being passed from person to person spreads.
“As a result,” writes the Mayo Clinic, “the entire community is protected – not just those who are immune.”
Atlas has previously shown that it is a ‘good thing’ for younger, healthy Americans to be exposed to coronavirus because children are essentially ‘zero risk’, something health experts told the Associated Press Sunday was false. The AP cited a study that found that 35 percent of young adults who contracted coronavirus two to three weeks after normal posture did not return to normal health.
Get your unlimited Newsweek trial>
“Scott is a very famous man who is also highly respected,” Trump told reporters last week in announcing Atlas’ addition to the task force. “He has a lot of great ideas and he thinks what we did is really good.”
White House spokesman Judd Deere published a statement describing Atlas as a “world-renowned doctor and school,” and he dismissed any challenges to his qualifications.
But other public experts and doctors are less optimistic. “I think he’s completely unqualified to help lead a COVID response,” Lawrence Gostin, a law professor at Georgetown University who specializes in public health practice, told The Associated Press. “His medical degree is not even close to infectious diseases and public health and he has no experience in dealing with public health outbreaks.”
Speaking in early July with San Diego County Board of Supervisors Jim Desmond, Atlas noted that the infection mortality rate for COVID-19 is “.04 percent for people under 70.” He said this means it is less than or equal to seasonal impact for anyone under 70 years of age.
Newsweek reach out to representatives with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace is an American, a conservative think tank where Atlas is a guy, for comment.
“But you will not hear much about it, because it is kind of against the fear and the panic in the media, it is only sensationalized if it is bad news for some reason,” Atlas added.
Atlas, writing in an April-on-ed, said: “Vital health care for millions of Americans has been postponed or skipped to meet potential COVID-19 patients,” who eventually did not need the enlarged room in hospitals. He said many Americans lost their lives as part of a “trade-off” caused by “our policy of total isolation.”
“In the absence of immunization, society needs circulation of the virus, assuming that people at high risk can be isolated,” he continued.
Screenshot: Fox News | America’s Newsroom | YouTube
