Dr. Death on Call at the White House

Last month, Dr. Scott Atlas of the Hoover Institution was selected by Donald Trump to serve as an advisor on the COVID-19 pandemic, though he has no specialist expertise in infectious disease or epidemiology.   

Atlas, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank and frequent commentator on Fox News, has frequently advocated for eliminating Obamacare, and also has called for eliminating Medicare and Medicaid and replacing them with private insurance and health savings accounts.

Atlas was initially active in Trump's efforts to reopen schools against the advice of a consensus of health professionals, saying, "We know that the risk of the disease is extremely low for children, even less than that of seasonal flu."   In actuality, researchers are still studying the effects of the virus on children and their rate of transmission.  However, a study published in JAMA Pediatrics last month found infected children have at least as much of the coronavirus in their noses and throats as infected adults.

And now, the Washington Post is reporting that Atlas is among the leading White House proponents for a proverbial "death cult"-- urging the White House to embrace a controversial “herd immunity” strategy to combat the pandemic, which would entail allowing the coronavirus to spread through most of the population to quickly build resistance to the virus,

The Trump administration has already begun to implement some policies along these lines, particularly with regard to testing.  Atlas is also advocating  that the United States adopt the model Sweden has used to respond to the virus outbreak, according to these officials, which relies on lifting restrictions so healthy people can build immunity to the disease rather than limiting social and business interactions to prevent the virus from spreading.

Sweden’s disastrous handling of the pandemic has been heavily criticized by public health officials and infectious-disease experts as reckless — the country’s infection and death rates are among the world’s highest, and up to five times worse than its neighbors.  Sweden was also unable to avoid the deep economic problems resulting from the pandemic.

Atlas has argued that an increased case count will move the nation more quickly to herd immunity and won’t lead to more deaths if the vulnerable are protected. But infectious-disease experts strongly dispute that, noting that more than 25,000 people younger than 65 have died of the virus in the United States. In addition, the United States has a larger number of vulnerable people of all ages because of high rates of heart and lung disease and obesity, and millions of at-risk people live outside nursing homes — many in households with children, whom Atlas believes should return to school in person.

 Under pressure from the White House, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also updated its testing guidance last week to say that those who are asymptomatic do not necessarily have to be tested. That prompted an outcry from medical groups, infectious-disease experts and local health officials, who said the change meant that asymptomatic people who had contact with an infected person would not be tested. The CDC estimates that about 40 percent of people infected with covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, are asymptomatic, and experts said much of the summer surge in infections was due to asymptomatic spread among young, healthy people.

Soumya Swaminathan, the World Health Organization’s chief scientist, said that given the transmissibility of the novel coronavirus, it is likely that about 65 to 70 percent of a population would need to become infected to achieve herd immunity.  In the United States, with a population of 328 million, reaching a 65 percent threshold for herd immunity may require 2.13 million deaths, assuming the virus has a 1 percent fatality rate, according to an analysis made by the Post.

It also remains unclear whether people who recover from COVID-19 have long-term immunity to the virus or can be reinfected, and scientists are still learning who is vulnerable to the disease. And from a practical standpoint, it is nearly impossible to sufficiently isolate people most at risk of dying of covid-19 from the healthier population, according to public health experts.

Atlas has argued that the country should be testing only people with symptoms, despite the fact that asymptomatic carriers spread the virus. He has also repeatedly pushed to reopen schools and has advocated for college sports to resume. Atlas has said, without evidence, that children do not spread the virus and do not have any real risk from COVID-19, saying that more children die of influenza.

 

Atlas’s appointment comes after Trump earlier this summer asked his White House advisers to find a new doctor who would argue an alternative point of view from Birx and Fauci, with whom the president has grown increasingly annoyed for public comments that he believes contradict his own assertions that the virus’s threat is receding.  To many, the key to Atlas' appointment was his frequent appearances on Fox News in recent months.

Atlas has said he is unsure “scientifically” whether masks make sense, despite broad consensus among scientists that they are effective.

Dr. Deborah Birx has been at odds with Atlas on several occasions, with one disagreement growing so heated at a recent coronavirus meeting that other administration officials grew visibly uncomfortable.  One of the main points of tension between the two is school reopenings. Atlas has pushed to reopen schools, and Birx is more cautious.

“This is really unfortunate to have this fellow Scott Atlas, who was basically recruited to crowd out Tony Fauci and the voice of reason,” said Eric Topol, a cardiologist and head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in San Diego. “Not only do we not embrace the science, but we repudiate the science by our president, and that has extended by bringing in another unreliable misinformation vector.”