Dr. Scott Atlas resigned from his post on the White House’s coronavirus task force on Monday, ending an experiment in governance by Fox News that has caused skyrocketing COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, with even darker weeks ahead.
Atlas’ appointment in August represented the purest example of the disastrous impact of the feedback loop between President Donald Trump and Fox’s propaganda. An unqualified ideologue launched to power because the president liked his Fox hits, under his guidance Trump oversaw a predictable and horrifying surge in the virus that repeatedly reached the White House itself.
Shortly after Fox broke the news of Atlas’ resignation, he appeared on the program of network star Tucker Carlson, who praised him for being “brave” and “right.” “We see that objective journalism is nearly dead, and I think we now saw that science has been politicized, and it's very, very dangerous,” Atlas told the host. “I think we should all be very concerned about it.”
Atlas had no prior expertise in infectious diseases or pandemic response before joining the White House. His medical background is in diagnostic radiology, while his bio page at Stanford University’s right-wing Hoover Institution, where he is a senior fellow, states that his focus is on “the impact of government and the private sector on access, quality, pricing, and innovation in health care.”
Despite Atlas’ lack of qualifications, he confidently adopted a contrarian view on the virus early in the pandemic. In April op-eds for The Hill, he argued that “unprecedented isolation policies and near-total economic lockdowns” were not sustainable and that the “appropriate policy” was to “protect the known vulnerable, self-isolate the mildly sick and open most workplaces and small businesses with some prudent large-group precautions.”
https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/staggering-cost-scott-atlas-debacle
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