Dr. Scott Atlas

From LifeSiteNews

By Emily Mangiaracina

Dr. Scott Atlas revealed how the White House Coronavirus Task Force squashed dissenting voices without critiquing the actual scientific data, setting the foundation for irrational and harmful COVID policies.

A former adviser and dissident on the White House Coronavirus Task Force condemned the U.S. COVID policy response for having ignored scientific data and “brok(en) the social contract” by “harming our children as a society.”

In an interview with PragerU CEO Marissa Streit, Dr. Scott Atlas gave a scathing rebuke of nearly every aspect of the U.S. policy response to COVID, the formulation of which he was able to witness up close, as an adviser to former President Donald Trump in 2020 alongside high-ranking health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci. Atlas told Streit how he was stunned to see that during the COVID meetings, key officials appeared indifferent to the health data that Atlas argued should guide their policies.

“There was never a single meeting — and this is sort of shocking to even keep reliving — not a single time where Deborah Birx or Anthony Fauci or Robert Redfield brought scientific papers into the meeting,” Atlas told Streit regarding the powerful trio that shaped the direction of the COVID task force’s meetings. Birx served as the White House Coronavirus Response coordinator; Fauci was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID); and Redfield was the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Atlas said that the trio was critical of his own views but did not once address the data he presented or the validity of any design study. Instead, they made “ad hominem” attacks, accusing him of being an “outlier.”

“And even worse, not a single time did they disagree with each other, which of course is unheard of — implying that they were just there was a groupthink going on, not critical thinking,” Atlas said.

It is noteworthy that, as Atlas pointed out, the trio made a pact with each other to resign from their task force position if any of them were fired by Trump, which Birx revealed in 2022. “That strikes me as people not caring if people are dying — they care about their own position,” Atlas told Streit.

Atlas believes the team purposely excluded dissenting scientific voices when possible, citing at least two instances which seemed motivated by this desire to maintain groupthink.

The first occurred when Fauci called Atlas to request an invite of epidemiologists researching COVID. “ I said, ‘That’s great. I’m going to have some of the world’s top epidemiologists and infectious disease experts and virologists come in…and we’ll have a discussion of the data.” However, Fauci ended up dropping the plan. “That was never brought up again, because what they instead wanted was Fauci, Birx, Redfield and me only, with no witnesses as to what was going on,” said Atlas.

A second, “more flagrant” example of the apparent suppression of dissenting voices occurred when Atlas arranged for five health experts to speak with President Trump in the Oval Office and answer his questions about COVID, including Dr. Martin Kulldorff, then a professor at Harvard Medical School; Jay Bhattycharya, a professor at Stanford Medical School; Dr. Cody Meissner, a professor in pediatric infectious disease; And Joe Ladapo, a professor in health policy at UCLA, and now Surgeon General of Florida.

Atlas told how he was called into Jared Kushner’s office less than 24 hours before the meeting, with some of the health experts already flying into Washington D.C., to be told it was now canceled. He was told that Birx sent an email to the team saying that she was “uncomfortable” with the meeting and that she was not going to attend.

“So I said no, that’s unacceptable. I said first of all, the meeting was set to have her come. Second of all, if she doesn’t know enough or is so insecure about her knowledge that she can’t come, okay, well that’s too bad,” recounted Atlas.

“In fact this is the only time where I really thought I was going to quit,” said Atlas, adding that the thought of canceling the meeting was “so outrageous,” since people were “dying” at the time.

Kusher then proposed that they have a meeting with Trump, but only for “five minutes.” However, the president proceeded to ask Atlas’ team of health experts questions on the relevant issues such as school closures, the virus’ risk to children, hydroxychloroquine, etc. Meanwhile, Atlas “kept being tapped on the shoulder” as he was told to wrap up the meeting.

Atlas refused to interrupt, explaining, “I’m not going to interrupt the president of the United States, that’s obvious. Secondly, this was important. Third, he was asking great questions. And in fact…[Trump] said he was so happy to have what he called ‘five geniuses’ here.”

“Why are they afraid to have expert scientists come in?” said Atlas, going on to note that their behavior was “the mark of people who were extremely insecure,” and “had different motivations” than that of saving people.

“My motivation was very simple. People were dying. It’s my country. I’m going to help. I was really appalled at the perverse motivations that I saw,” he continued.

Of each failure amid the COVID response, Atlas was most grieved over the harm done to children. When asked if leaders of the teachers’ unions were aware that children “were not big spreaders” of the COVID virus, Atlas replied:

“This is one of the greatest sins, in my view…what we as a society did to children. I don’t want to get choked up …it’s so awful. We broke the social contract we have as a people by harming our children…and injecting, for instance, experimental drugs into children that have side effects, many of which are uncertain, for a disease that those healthy children did not have a significant risk from, to use them as shields. I mean, this is almost unspeakable.”

Given that studies in early 2020 showed that open schools do not increase the infection rate of the community, and that about a dozen studies during that time showed that children suffered a miniscule risk from the virus, and “were not significant spreaders,” Atlas asserted that school closure policies were utterly “irrational.”

He explained the massive harm that was inflicted on children through these closures.

By August of 2020, the CDC had already shared evidence that it is “extremely harmful” to children’s learning to shutter in-person learning, with “much worse” losses for minorities and poor children.

“Secondly, there was an explosion of psychiatric illness in teenagers and college kids from the isolation,” Atlas continued, elaborating that there was an “explosion” of visits to doctors for self-harm —teenagers putting out cigarettes on their skin and slashing their wrists” because of the psychological pain of the isolation from school closures — as well as a “massive explosion in drug abuse substance abuse in teenagers.”

There was furthermore a “massive increase” in suicidal thoughts in teenage girls, and a whopping one in four college-age kids in the U.S. thought of killing himself during lockdowns, the CDC reported in July of 2020.

Pointing out that teachers objected to the possibility of even teaching their students remotely, Atlas lambasted them for breaking “every ethical and moral responsibility they had to teach our kids.” He added that according to studies, teachers were generally severely afraid of getting COVID at work, much more afraid than people in other professions.

“Are these people even thinking? These are the people we’ve entrusted to teach our children. They have disqualified themselves by being irrational, and by sacrificing children for their benefit,” concluded Atlas.

He laid blame on other doctors as well, for not questioning what they were being told by the medical establishment.

“The medical community failed, and they failed because they acted like sheep. They didn’t question what they were told. They didn’t read the studies. They weren’t fluent in the data. And it’s very sad, it’s embarrassing, and they rightfully have lost trust,” said Atlas.

He further explained that besides “doctors being spineless sheep and not critical thinkers,” there is another major reason that the medical profession capitulated to the official narrative on COVID. It is that science and medical research is funded and controlled by a “cartel of people at the top,” according to Atlas.

“The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the main funder of science in the U.S. and therefore the world,” said Atlas, and “indirectly is controlled by a cabal of very powerful politically connected, interdependent people who are also the chairs of departments and medical schools.”

“It turns out that every academic scientist, every university scientist, to get promoted needs an NIH Grant…I don’t think the public understands that they’re therefore dependent on the NIH. So you’re not going to get many assistant professors who are willing to sacrifice their career advantage by speaking out against the NIH,” including its department heads like Fauci or Collins.

He also pointed out that more than 15 university medical centers in the U.S. receive over $500 million every year from the NIH alone, naturally compromising their independence.

“I’m not making excuses for them, I’m explaining their behavior…one of the things I learned about all this is there’s so many people in our government in positions of leadership that don’t have the necessary integrity to be leaders, because integrity at very least is telling the truth,” Atlas said.