Atlas, optimistic and unforgiving on message that Americans need to restore lives as much as they can, is the live performance of the President’s Covid-is-not-that-big-of-a-deal approach. Where school superintendents and football club officials see a risk of the virus spreading this autumn, he warns against overly strict measures. During Fox News appearances, he downplayed the need for students to wear face masks or practice social distance as schools reopen.
“It has been proven that children do not pose a significant risk,” he said during a July 15 TV appearance. It’s a line that Trump has parroted, but which has not been carried out in districts where personal learning has been restored: Schools in Georgia, North Carolina and Indiana had to close shortly after the start of the year due to positive cases. .
In private meetings at the White House, Atlas has annoyed other helpers by arguing against extended Covid-19 testing. He opposed a proposal presented by Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, to scale up home tests using methods such as speech tests. And recently, he told a task force meeting Dr. Anthony Fauci, the expert at the Top of Infectious Diseases, says science definitely does not support government mandates when wearing masks. (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises Americans to wear masks when interacting with those outside the home and in cases where social distance is not possible.)
The increase in Atlas within the White House comes at a time when Trump aides are trying to give the perception of doing everything possible to fight the virus and find a vaccine about 80 days after the election, as the rate of infection rises and the United States’ test capacity falls short. Trump has sidelined or lashed out at many of his top care professionals, including Fauci and Birx, and has welcomed the different medical perspective that Atlas provides, said one senior administration official.
Atlas declined to comment when reached by phone.
Critics, including other conservatives and health officials, say he blames science and facts with a partisan lens to elevate himself and gain power in Republican circles.
“At the end of the day, this is a problem for Stanford,” said one former colleague of the Hoover Institution, the law-abiding think tank at the university where Atlas is a guy. “Look, we have an administration that lies about the virus, and it intervenes for everyone in a senior academic role. If they can use that branding and that title, it’s immediate credibility and that’s what the administration is looking for. ”
White House Deputy Secretary of State Judd Deere said in a statement: “We are all together in this fight, and only the media have disrupted and diminished Dr. Atlas’ infamous career simply because he came to the fore. Dr. Atlas works, like all medical professionals in the administration, to implement the president’s number one priority: protecting the health and safety of the American people. ‘
Atlas first came to the attention of the Trump administration the way it finds so many top officials: through its appearance on Fox News. His remarks about the lockon of the coronavirus and the need to reopen the economy and schools caught the attention of the president and several top assistants, including Jared Kushner, according to a second senior administration official.
A few weeks ago, Atlas officially joined the administration as an advisor, and in a short time he has become a frequent presence in the Oval Office and runs the White House complex.
He spoke publicly at a White House event about reopening schools and appeared at one of the president’s evening letters, the only medical professional to do so in recent weeks. He has quickly established himself as a voice pushing for the reimbursement of daily activities, including playing college football and opening schools – which Trump advises and advisers see as a key marker of normality leading the reelection campaign of Trump will help.
More importantly, he is part of a small group of advisers who meet every morning to chart the daily response to Covid-19: a group that includes long-standing helpers like Kushner and Stephen Miller. He has been so influential that he even helps prepare the president in the Oval Office for the newly hosted evening letters and suggestions for Trump’s opening remarks, according to interviews with six senior administration officials and Republicans near the White House. House.
Atlas often asks or spares with other administration officials about data on the spread of the virus, or on the effectiveness of the government requiring people to wear masks, as the merits of spreading tests among the wider population – all of which other health professionals consider important boards in fighting the virus, a type of Pandemic 101.
He has become the go-to doctor of the president, the anti-Fauci, even though he has no background in infectious diseases like epidemiology. Instead, he specializes in radiology and neuroradiology, subjects he taught for many years as a professor and head of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center.
“There’s nothing inherently bad about having a non-vacancy task force leader, like an epidemiologist,” said Juliette Kayyem, a former Obama chief of staff who was heavily involved in Homeland Security. in response to the H1N1 pandemic.
“Every crisis has brains and muscles,” Kayyem added. “You have the scientists who know how to get the vaccine and protect us from the virus, and then you have the people who get things, but Dr. Atlas does not seem to fit either. The only thing that is to say, he will be another hindrance to real science or real action. “
In addition to his research at the Hoover Institute on Health Care Policy and Price, Atlas has advised past presidential candidates, including Rudy Giuliani in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012. At the White House, he works as a paid special employee of the government.
Two colleagues from the Hoover Institution praised Atlas’ work as serious and evidence-based.
“He’s a strict scientist,” said Paul Peterson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at Harvard University with whom Atlas recently wrote an op-ed about reopening schools. “Just look at his previous research. Everything he says is supported with quotes. ”
Michael Boskin, a professor of economics at Stanford and a senior fellow at Hoover, added: “Scott is a high-quality colleague. He brings someone from the perspective of academic medicine to health policy, who complements with the economists, lawyers and others working on the subject, and since joining Hoover, he has been an important part of the discussion in and around health policy. ‘
Former colleagues and other health professionals say that Atlas is someone who has always been at the center of the action and has always been interested in gaining power – and that now includes his position in the White House.
Trump “has found someone who will take him back to 2019, who says,‘ Don’t wear masks. Open the schools, ” said Kayyem, the former Homeland Security official. ‘We’m going through here. We’re not going back.
“The strategy of not seeing evil may work for Trump, but it does not work for America. This is just more of the same. ”
