Trump's New COVID Adviser Is Basically the Anti-Fauci

[dalton99a]

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/09/trumps-new-covid-adviser-is-basically-the-anti-fauci

Trump’s New COVID Adviser Is Basically the Anti-Fauci
Scott Atlas is telling Trump what he wants to hear, though Fox News—where he got on the president’s radar—is reportedly giving him less opportunities to speak these days.
BY CHARLOTTE KLEIN
SEPTEMBER 2, 2020

After Fox News gave Scott Atlas a platform early in the pandemic, the cable news network has lately appeared less willing to book the neuroradiologist who joined the White House last month as Donald Trump’s new pandemic adviser. Fox News producers are reportedly skittish about extending an invite to Atlas, the Daily Beast reported, a shift away from welcoming his contrarian views that some critics consider misguided and even dangerous. Senior staff involved in Fox’s “hard news” shows, the division he has been most absent from since joining the administration, say Atlas lacks credibility and the relevant medical expertise to discuss the pandemic. “Atlas has a background in radiology, not infectious diseases,” one of the sources said. “It makes no sense to have him on to discuss a contagious respiratory virus that continues to spread through parts of this country like wildfire.”

The Daily Beast notes the network has not gotten rid of Atlas entirely—he’s still featured semi-regularly on pro-Trump opinion news programs like Tucker Carlson Tonight and the The Ingraham Angle. But the daytime and weekend news shows that once featured his unsupported claims and controversial theories—including herd immunity, which Atlas has been pushing inside the White House—are apparently taking heed to infectious disease experts alarmed by Atlas’ problematic views.

Atlas’ lack of scientific authority on the coronavirus may be part of why Trump picked him for his pandemic team in the first place. He was reportedly hired last month to bring a new perspective to the White House coronavirus task force, where experts like Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx were annoying the president with medical advice at odds with his insistence on returning to normalcy. And since joining the task force, the New York Times reported, Atlas has brought with him a host of scientifically unsound ideas, arguing with Fauci and Birx over the science of mask wearing and falsely claiming children cannot spread the virus to push for schools reopening. “I think Trump clearly does not like the advice he was receiving from the people who are the experts—Fauci, Birx, etc.—so he has slowly shifted from their advice to somebody who tells him what he wants to hear,” said Dr. Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease expert at Emory University.

Trump has essentially turned to Atlas as a replacement for Fauci and Birx, giving the new pandemic adviser a high perch to reshape the administration’s coronavirus response. “It was Dr. Atlas who helped prepare [Trump’s] briefing materials” for the coronavirus briefings he resumed in July and August, “and it was his ideas that spilled from the president’s mouth,” the Times writes. “He has many great ideas,” Trump told reporters at a White House briefing last month, praising the adviser seated just a few feet away. “And he thinks what we’ve done is really good, and now we’ll take it to a new level.” Atlas’ influence was clear on Monday, when the president cited his controversial herd immunity approach to Fox News’ Laura Ingraham. “Once you get to a certain number—we use the word herd — once you get to a certain number, it’s going to go away,” he said, echoing his repeated claims that the virus will simply disappear.

[Thekaspervote]

1. That explains why the solely dotard owned CDC is now saying expect a vaccine by November