White House Coronavirus Task Force finally gets an adult in the room

Leave a CommentWhite House Coronavirus Task Force finally gets an adult in the roomHealth

Scott W. Atlas, M.D. is the Robert Wesson Senior Fellow in Scientific Philosophy & Public Policy at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University and a Member of Hoover Institution’s Working Group on Health Care Policy. He is currently serving as a Special Advisor to the President and is a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. Yesterday he schooled the White House Press corps and challenged the CDC Director on herd immunity.

It’s not his first attempt to inject some commonsense into the Back in April Dr. Atlas wrote The Data Is in — Stop the Panic and End the Total Isolation.

In it he explained five facts that were blindingly obvious just a few weeks into lockdown and if heeded would have saved the collapse of our economy, the backlog of regular medical cases, the suicides and the rise of the Karen Army.

  • Fact 1: The overwhelming majority of people do not have any significant risk of dying from COVID-19.
  • Fact 2: Protecting the older, at-risk population would have been sufficient to prevent hospital overcrowding, (which it turns out was never a danger anyway).
  • Fact 3: Total isolation policies, if effective, PREVENT vital herd immunity and, hence, only PROLONG the problem.
  • Fact 4: People are dying because medical care for other ailments was shut down due to hypothetical COVID-19 fatality projections (that were produced by a guy with a history of massively inflated projections and, predictably, turned out to be total garbage).
  • Fact 5: We have a clearly defined population at risk who could’ve been better protected by adopting targeted measures.

In May, (Great article on The Hill’s Opinion page) Dr. Atlas tried to get the word out that the useless untargeted measures inflicted on us are going to kill far more people than even the most exaggerated projections about the virus’s death toll used to con us into accepting them.

And then he schooled the press and challenged the CDC Director, Robert Redfield’s testimony to Congress hours before. Redfield had states that 90% of Americans still don’t have immunity to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that’s supposed to cause the array of symptoms characterizing COVID-19. Dr. Atlas explained how the latest data does not corroborate that statement and that some of the CDC data referred back to March, when in fact the landscape is greatly changed now.

NBC’s Peter Alexander asked Dr Atlas, “Who should we believe?” Atlas replied “The science,” then, “You could take a look at the research.” SHOCK! A journalist doing research? Whoever heard of such a thing?!

The other point Dr. Atlas made relates to T-cells. Medical experts know that besides antibody-producing B-cells, your body also has a second equally important defense against infections provided by T-cells. (Remember them from the HIV/AIDS race to the cure?) In fact, the development of the magical elixir called the COVID-19 Vaccine actually depends us having T-cells that respond to the COVID-19 virus. And have them we do.

ScienceNews.com: Researchers have found T cells that target SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in the blood of people who had recovered from a coronavirus infection. Some people who had never been exposed to the virus also had T cells that could recognize the virus. That finding suggests that previous infections with other coronaviruses, like the ones that cause common colds, could provide some level of protection against the new coronavirus, such as keeping people from developing severe disease.

Red State has done a great job on explaining the science in more detail here. There’s lots to learn about the importance of T-cells and immunity.

We’re just pleased there’s now someone on the team who isn’t in the WHO’s pocket nor beholden to Bill Gates and his Foundation.