White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx recently confronted Vice President Pence about the increasing influence of Scott Atlas over the administration’s handling of the pandemic, a person familiar with the exchange confirmed to The Hill.
Birx raised concerns about the information Atlas was giving President Trump and suggested he be removed from the White House coronavirus task force. Atlas is not an infectious diseases expert but has emerged as one of Trump’s most influential advisers on the pandemic.
The exchange was first reported by The Washington Post, which said Pence asked Birx and Atlas to work out the strife on their own and to present data to their colleagues supporting their viewpoints.
Atlas advocates policies that put him at odds with the mainstream of infectious diseases experts and other health officials on the task force.
Most controversially, he praises the herd immunity strategy outlined in a document called the “Great Barrington Declaration,” which calls for allowing the virus to spread among lower-risk, younger people to build up immunity while having “focused protection” on older, high-risk people.
Many leading experts have denounced that approach as leading to hundreds of thousands of more deaths as the virus circulates freely. Tom Frieden, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, estimated last week that the herd immunity strategy would lead to at least 500,000 more deaths.
Twitter also removed a tweet from Atlas over the weekend that questioned the effectiveness of masks, which are embraced by leading experts as a way to slow the spread of the virus. “Masks work? NO,” Atlas’s tweet began.
As Democrats push to expand testing in talks over a coronavirus response package in Congress, Atlas is also pushing back on the idea, saying testing should be focused on the vulnerable only.
“When you start seeking out and testing asymptomatic people, you are destroying the workforce,” Atlas told The New York Times.
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Birx confronted Pence about the increasing influence of Scott Atlas https://t.co/5KJ9nPrdkL pic.twitter.com/hVG45ca8xR
— The Hill (@thehill) October 19, 2020
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