Dr. Scott Atlas, the radiologist turned faux Coronavirus expert and member of the White House's coronavirus task force, resigned today from his post in the Trump administration. Atlas posted a copy of his resignation letter on twitter today. The letter is dated December 1. No reason was specified or provided by the White House.
Apparently, Atlas had a 130-day window in which he could serve and that window was technically coming to a close this week.
Atlas was a champion of the herd immunity strategy for managing the COVID-19 pandemic and was a fierce advocate of allowing people to get infected naturally, while (somehow) protecting the elderly. He was against lockdowns and closings, against masks, against social distancing, against doctors and officials who advocated slowing down the spread of the virus, against Dr. Fauci, he was pretty much against the entire medical community, save a few quacks and con-men on the right. He even took upon himself to incite some deadly violence against the Governor of Michigan.
He will not be be missed; the reactions to his resignation are a mix of relief and anger at the damage he has caused during his brief stint.
Why did he resign? Was it because of the reality of COVID-19? He was merrily tweeting COVID-19 graphs until early November and then stopped as cases and deaths began their exponential march.
He was hired due to his Fox connection. Perhaps, that’s where he is headed or some other dark corner of the right (e.g., Parler).
Here is an example of Dr. Atlas spouting nonsense about herd immunity on Fox news in early October — www.foxnews.com/...
This is a widespread, highly contagious infection, and this is going to be very mild or asymptomatic for the overwhelming majority of people, especially if you’re a healthy person. And if you can, do your best at the usual mitigation — hand washing, social distancing, the usual masks, if you are in very tight spaces and you cannot socially distance, or are with high-risk family members.
We know the severe harms of locking down with prolonged isolation and prolonged closures of schools and businesses, and nothing has changed about the message—which is, this is a widespread infection, the vast majority of people do well, we need to protect the highest risk people and open schools up and society and get back to functioning
He was an enthusiastic supporter of the Great Barrington Declaration group, whose website has a declaration promoting herd immunity and has a bunch of “scientists and health practitioners” who have signed it.
Some of the reactions to his resignation are brutal -
It’s time for Stanford to step up for the sake of humanity.
We doubt he will ride quietly into the sunset. He will just go back to the right wing swamp and continue his destruction from there.
Well said!
Why do you think he resigned? What happens to the Coronavirus task force and the handling of the pandemic in the next 7 weeks? Will trump sabotage the vaccine roll-out? How can the Biden team slow them down?
We can easily put an end to this nightmare if we win the Senate. Let’s give it our all for Georgia.