WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump has found a new doctor for his coronavirus task force – and this time there is no daylight between them.
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FIL – In this August 12, 2020, file photo Scott Atlas, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, speaks at a news conference in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington. Trump has announced that Dr. Scott Atlas, a frequent guest on Fox News channel, has joined the White House as a pandemic adviser. (AP Photo / Andrew Harnik, File)
Trump announced last week that Dr. Scott Atlas, a frequent guest on Fox News Channel, has joined the White House as a pandemic adviser. Atlas, the former head of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center and a fellow at Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution, has no expertise in public health or infectious diseases.
But he has long been a critic of coronavirus locks and has campaigned for children to return to class and to return to college sports, just like Trump.
“Scott is a very famous man who is also very respected,” Trump told reporters when he introduced the add-on. “He has a lot of great ideas and he thinks what we did is really good.”
The hiring of Atlas comes amid ongoing tensions between the president and Drs. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert, and Deborah Birx, the task force coordinator. While Birx remains closely involved in the response to the administration’s pandemic, both she and Fauci have publicly objected to the rosy image the president has painted of a virus that now affects more than 167,000 people. killed in the United States and infected millions nationwide.
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FILE – In this August 12, 2020, file photo Scott Atlas, former colleague at the Hoover Institution, left, and press secretary of the White House, right, come ahead of President Donald Trump for a news conference at the White House in Washington. Trump has announced that Dr. Scott Atlas, a frequent guest on Fox News channel, has joined the White House as a pandemic adviser. (AP Photo / Andrew Harnik, File)
Atlas, the only doctor to share the stage at Trump’s pandemic briefings this past week, has long questioned policy rights embraced by public health experts both in the U.S. and abroad. He called it a “good thing” for young, healthy people to be exposed to the virus, while falsely claiming that children are almost “zero risk.”
In an April article in The Hill newspaper, Atlas claimed that lockdowns may have prevented the development of natural herd immunity. ‘
“In the absence of immunization, society needs circulation of the virus, assuming that people at high risk can be isolated,” he wrote.
In television appearances, Atlas has called on the nation to “get a grip” and claimed that “there is nothing wrong” with low-risk people being infected, as long as the vulnerable are protected.
‘It does not matter if younger, healthier people become infected. I do not know how often that has to be said. “They have almost zero risk of a problem here,” he said in one statement. Infecting younger, healthier people is a good thing, “he said,” because that’s exactly the way immunity for populations develops. ”
While younger people are certainly at a much lower risk of developing serious complications of the virus, they can still spread it to others who may be more vulnerable, even if they have no symptoms. And while their chances of death are slim, some are dealing with serious complications, with one study finding that 35% of young adults had not returned to normal health two weeks to three weeks after normal posture.
But Atlas’ thinking is closely in line with Trump’s perspective on the virus, which he has been playing out since his early days. While Trump has ultimately supported the lockdowns that once helped slow the spread of the disease, he has since put pressure on states to reopen schools and businesses while trying to revive a prosperous economy. for the elections in November.
Public health experts have long acknowledged Trump’s attempts to politicize the virus and have encouraged him to let doctors and scientists lead the nation’s response. But they doubt the decision to create Atlas, whose expertise is in magnetic resonance imaging and whose research has concentrated on factors that have implications for health care policy.
“I think he’s completely unqualified to help lead a COVID response,” said Lawrence Gostin, a law professor at Georgetown University who specializes in public health. “His medical degree is not even close to infectious diseases and public health and he has no experience in dealing with public health outbreaks.”
“It is very clear to me,” Gostin added, “that the president brought in someone who will simply be a mouthpiece for his agenda and a ‘yes’ person.” Gostin expressed his concern that Trump sidelined other doctors, including Birx and Fauci, because he had soured on their advice.
“In the face of an epidemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of Americans, that is unforgettable,” he said. “You clearly want independent advice from people with long experience in combating novel pandemics and he has none of those references.”
Kavita Patel, a primary care physician and policy expert who served in the Obama White House, said there is not much a doctor can do on the presidency of a presidency staff, let alone work for the famous volatile Trump.
“I expect Dr. Atlas’ time to be marked by highs and lows and hopefully he will realize that the country needs truly credible expertise and guidance, not partisan bias,” Patel said. “By being partisan as a politician while playing such an important (role), doctors endorse their credibility and eventually disappear the role of science.”
White House spokesman Judd Deere praised Atlas in a statement as “a world-renowned doctor and scholar” and dismissed questions about Atlas’ qualifications.
“We are all in this fight together, and only the media would disrupt and diminish Dr. Atlas’ highly acclaimed career simply because he has come to serve the President,” he said.
Deere declined to say how long Atlas, who is now a paid special government employee, had advised the president, insisting that his addition would not diminish the roles of Fauci and Birx.
Paul E. Peterson, director of the education policy and management program at Harvard University and a senior fellow at Hoover with Atlas, praised Atlas as “a really brilliant boy” with “a great knowledge base” about the virus. Peterson said Atlas is one who “conducts the strictest and most accurate investigation” before reaching a conclusion. ‘
Some colleagues have found Atlas abrasive. But Peterson, who has written several op-eds with Atlas for advocacy for reopening schools and who appeared with Atlas this past week at a White House event, praised Atlas as “wonderful to work with” and emphasize the value of Trump having input from people with a variety of backgrounds.
“If you get a variety of people from one perspective or one type of training out there, that’s not desirable,” he said. “It is very important to have diversity on the Advisory Committee.”
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Associated Press writer Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report.
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