SCOTT W. ATLAS, MD
Adapted from A Plague Upon Our House by Scott Atlas, MD, due out from Bombardier Books on Dec 7.
It was February 2020, and news accounts had been describing increasingly alarming information about a deadly new virus emanating from Wuhan, China.
Apart from my general concern about the spread of the infection, I was confused about some of the basic numbers being aired. The overall message coming from the World Health Organization (WHO) seemed to have obvious flaws.
The extremely high risk estimates seemed very misleading. Even worst—the reported fatality rates were based only on patients who were sick enough to seek medical care rather than on the undoubtedly much larger population of infected individuals.
I was stunned that this basic methodological flaw was being overlooked by almost everyone, while the resulting fatality rate of 3.4 percent was highlighted throughout the media. Every legitimate medical scientist should have called that out. Their silence was puzzling.
In the United States and throughout the world, a naive discussion about statistical models ensued. To an extraordinary and unprecedented extent, these epidemiological models were featured front and center in news coverage, with no perspective on the models’ usefulness. Reminiscent of other legendary frenzies in history, like the tulip bulb mania or the tech stock bubble, hypothetical extreme-risk scenarios went seemingly unchallenged and were given absolute credence.
At the same time, common sense and well-established principles of medicine were being ignored. Every second-year medical student knew that the elderly were almost certainly the most vulnerable group of people, since they were virtually always at highest risk of death and serious consequences from respiratory infections. Yet this was not stressed.
To the contrary, the implication of reports and the public faces of official expertise implied that everyone was equally in danger. Even the initial evidence showed that elderly, frail people with preexisting comorbidities—conditions that weakened their natural immunological defenses—were the ones at highest risk of death. This was a feature shared by other respiratory viruses, including seasonal influenza.
The one unusual feature of this virus was the fact that children had an extraordinarily low risk. Yet this positive and reassuring news was never emphasized. Instead, with total disregard of the evidence of selective risk consistent with other respiratory viruses, public health officials recommended draconian isolation of everyone.
The architects of the American lockdown strategy were Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx. With Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC, they were the most influential medical members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
The task force quickly expanded to include a new chairman, Vice President Mike Pence. The White House also announced that Birx would be the task force’s coordinator. She had worked in the State Department as the U.S. AIDS coordinator under the Obama and Trump administrations—hence she was often addressed by the honorific “ambassador.” The task force ultimately included representation from numerous federal agencies concerned with health, science, national emergencies and logistics, the economy and many other relevant concerns.
The task force dealt with a number of issues at its origin. Since the country had not been well prepared for a pandemic, one of the primary tasks was to develop adequate testing—a key public health measure in early infectious disease outbreaks. The second main set of tasks centered around the production and logistics of supportive medical equipment, including ventilators, personal protective supplies for hospitals and extra beds and personnel to accommodate sick patients anticipated to overwhelm the system.
Dr. Birx, Dr. Redfield and Dr. Fauci—often called “the nation’s top expert in infectious disease”—dominated all discussions about the health and medical aspects of the emerging pandemic. One thing was very clear: all three were cut from the same cloth.
First, they were all bureaucrats, with a background in various government agencies. Second, they shared a long history in HIV/AIDS as a public health crisis. That was problematic, because HIV couldn’t be more different from SARS2 in its biology, its amenability to testing and contact tracing, its spread and the implications of those facts for its control. Indeed, the three of them spent many years focusing on the development of a vaccine, rather than treatment, for HIV/AIDS—a vaccine that still does not exist.
It’s also worth noting Dr. Fauci’s history in regard to AIDS. He created headlines for his alarmist speculations in his 1983 JAMA editorial that AIDS could be transmitted by “routine close contact, as within a family household.” It had already been known that transmission happened via fluids through blood or sexual contact.
Less than two months later, on June 26 in The Baltimore Sun, Fauci publicly contradicted his own explosive claim: “It is absolutely preposterous to suggest that AIDS can be contracted through normal social contact like being in the same room with someone or sitting on a bus with them. The poor gays have received a very raw deal on this.” That seemed like quite a flip-flop, with no new evidence or explanation given—more reminiscent of a politician than a reliable scientist.
Most others on the task force were juggling several concerns or had no medical background. This was one more responsibility added to their portfolios, so they deferred to those deemed medical experts. Drs. Birx and Fauci commandeered federal policy under President Trump and publicly advocated for a total societal shutdown. Instead of focusing on protecting the most vulnerable, their illogical and extraordinarily blunt response—despite its predictable, wide-ranging harms—was instituted as though it were simple common sense.
Over those first several weeks, fear had taken hold of the public. Media commentators and even policy experts, many of whom had no expertise on health care, were filling the airwaves and opinion pages with naive and incorrect predictions. This misinformation was going unchecked, and was indeed repeatedly endorsed and sensationalized. Some whom I had previously considered among my smartest colleagues and friends expressed great confusion and a striking absence of logic in analyzing what was happening.
I asked myself time and again, “Where are the critical thinkers?”
After more than 15 years a health policy researcher and decades in medical science and data analysis, I had never seen such flawed thinking. I was bewildered at the lack of logic, the absence of common sense and the reliance on fundamentally flawed science. – Scott Atlas, MD
Suddenly, computer modelers and people without any perspective about clinical illnesses were dominating the airwaves. Along with millions of other Americans, I began witnessing unprecedented responses from those in power and nonscientific recommendations by public health spokespeople: societal lockdowns including business and school closures, stay-at-home restrictions on individual movements, and arbitrary decrees by local, state, and federal governments.
These recommendations were not just based on panic; they were responsible for generating even more panic. Covid rapidly became the most important health policy crisis in a century.
Scott W. Atlas, M.D. is the Robert Wesson Senior Fellow in health care policy at the Hoover Institution. This column first appeared in Newsweek and is used with permission.
Yup…and there’s more.
“https://www.hoover.org/”
See Uncommon Knowledge
Thank you Dr. Atlas for being honest, but I would like for you to have addressed the effects of panic on the psych of the nation, and that this misrepresentation was WRONG – not just a panicked mistake at multiple levels. The virus accomplished exactly what the CCP wanted – an experiment in neutering the West.
We are approaching and interesting (and profoundly sad) inflection point–where suicides and drug overdoses combined will exceed ‘covid’ deaths. Actually, they did exceed the deaths that were purely from ‘covid’ long ago…
Wow! Good article and this guy actually sounds quite intelligent. I was beginning to believe that there were no longer intelligent MDs.
Search Dr. Peter McCullough and watch some of his vids. He is right on as well.
I know less about Drs Birx and Redfield, but is fair to say that Dr. Fauci last practiced medicine sometime in the 70s. He then became a researcher. Next he morphed into a bureaucrat and a politician. Now he is a reptilian menace to all mankind.
JMark, I totally agree with your comment regarding Anthony Fauci.
Nothing more annoying than a dripping Fauci………Sorry, couldn’t resist.
To Jmark, what seems most worth knowing about Dr. Birx is this infamous April 2020 quote:
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“There are other countries that if you had a preexisting condition and let’s say the virus caused you to go to the ICU and then have a heart or kidney problem some countries are recording as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death. Right now we are still recording it and we will I mean the great thing about having forms that come in and a form that has the ability to —market— as COVID-19 infection —the intent is right now that if someone dies with COVID-19 we are counting that as a COVID-19 death—” (emphases added)
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(realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/04/08/dr_birx_unlike_some_countries_if_someone_dies_with_covid-19_we_are_counting_that_as_a_covid-19_death .html#!)
13,000 doctors signed the Rome Accord, thousands of others are on board.
Great article by Dr. Atlas!
We are far past the information in this article, but baby steps required for the masses.
Now you even blocked my wife. You are controlled opposition. I hope you got the vaccine
Now, Dalton, do you want to try posting something that actually makes any sense?
Your unspecified accusation (to whom?) is opaque to the point of meaninglessness.
Nice information. I only hope that doctors like yourself don’t get “disappeared “ like they did in China. The “disinformation “ police are just getting started in our country. They are already taking political prisoners, and people who know too much just disappear. If these so- called vaccinations were so great then how come Congress is exempt? I am starting to believe in “ conspiracy theories “, although I am only of average intelligence with no formal education. Everyone I know who has been really sick from this virus has had the shot. “ Breakthrough “ cases. There must be more going on than “ they “ are letting us know. Now, it’s been discovered, by third world countries, that a medicine once used to treat livestock for parasites is effective against the virus, and now you can’t get it in our country, even though it is cheap and harmless given in proper doses with no known side effects. Who is being protected, making this unavailable in our country? Are we not a free country anymore? Make your own choices, trust an administration that is constantly lying and controls the media or use your common sense. USSR did it for many years. China has contributed billions of dollars into the American electoral system since the Clintons. And when they discovered that it it wasn’t going to work on the last presidential campaign they introduced germ warfare. And the loosing party embraced the opportunity, using mail in ballots to manipulate the vote. Say what you will, but the USPO was the only other Federal agency besides Congress to be exempted from the “vaccine “ mandates. They would have lost too many employees to make mail-in voting possible. And risk loosing power. As long as this system remains in place, there will never be a fair election in this country again. All will be lost.
Fauci et. al are viewing this entire episode as a large-scale lab experiment. The impact on lives of the lab-rats or the country is inconsequential to them. Of course those who fund this idiocy (and need to stay in power) get a pass, but all others better knuckle under. Here they rely on all “Karens” of any stripe (be it media, social platforms or medical practitioners) jockeying for favors from the ones in power. The court of Henry VIII could not have been more depraved.
It is a scientists dream to have his research tested on a global scale, to see what happens. For this experiment to continue, all unbelievers have to be marginalized. If a large enough number of these “rebels” had the virus, herd immunity might break out or they find a medication that mitigates the effects of the virus and the vaccine/booster testing phase will seize to exist. Dr. Fauci now hopes to vaccinate infants and toddlers by next Spring. The irresponsibility and cruelty in this is breathtaking.
RFK Jr’s new book shows what a horror a of a barely human being Fauci is.
AIDS research and experiments on underprivileged children with mass graves.
Fauci is a modern day Mengele.
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