Dr. Birx reportedly asked Pence to remove COVID-19 adviser pushing 'junk science'

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Dr. Deborah Birx has reportedly been trying to get controversial adviser Dr. Scott Atlas removed from the White House coronavirus task force.

A new report in The Washington Post describes the "discord on the coronavirus task force" that has reportedly "worsened" ever since the arrival of Atlas, a neuroradiologist who has no background in epidemiology. Atlas has reportedly "succeeded in largely sidelining" other doctors on the White House coronavirus task force, has challenged analysis from Birx and others with what experts have dismissed as "junk science," and is seen by colleagues as "ill-informed, manipulative and at times dishonest."

Birx, who serves as the task force's response coordinator, recently confronted Vice President Mike Pence about Atlas, telling his office he should be removed from the task force and that she "does not trust" him nor does she believe "he is giving Trump sound advice," the Post also reports. Her effort was evidently unsuccessful, and Pence reportedly "did not take sides" in the conflict.

The report also describes how Atlas has baselessly claimed to the task force that the United States is close to achieving herd immunity, an idea scientists have rejected, and that all coronavirus restrictions should be lifted. This, the Post says, led Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to demand he produce data to support his claims during a "fierce debate." Atlas over the weekend also falsely claimed that masks don't work in fighting COVID-19, leading Twitter to remove the post.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/dr-birx-reportedly-asked-pence-140222162.html
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Trump’s den of dissent: Inside the White House task force as coronavirus surges

Oct. 19, 2020 at 3:00 a.m. PDT

As summer faded into autumn and the novel coronavirus continued to ravage the nation unabated, Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist whose commentary on Fox News led President Trump to recruit him to the White House, consolidated his power over the government’s pandemic response.

Atlas shot down attempts to expand testing. He openly feuded with other doctors on the coronavirus task force and succeeded in largely sidelining them. He advanced fringe theories, such as that social distancing and mask-wearing were meaningless and would not have changed the course of the virus in several hard-hit areas. And he advocated allowing infections to spread naturally among most of the population while protecting the most vulnerable and those in nursing homes until the United States reaches herd immunity, which experts say would cause excess deaths, according to three current and former senior administration officials.

Atlas also cultivated Trump’s affection with his public assertions that the pandemic is nearly over, despite death and infection counts showing otherwise, and his willingness to tell the public that a vaccine could be developed before the Nov. 3 election, despite clear indications of a slower timetable.

Atlas’s ascendancy was apparent during a recent Oval Office meeting. After Trump left the room, Atlas startled other aides by walking behind the Resolute Desk and occupying the president’s personal space to keep the meeting going, according to one senior administration official. Atlas called this account “false and laughable.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-den-of-dissent-inside-the-white-house-task-force-as-coronavirus-surges/2020/10/19/7ff8ee6a-0a6e-11eb-859b-f9c27abe638d_story.html

[tanyev]

1. Dr. McSeamy.

[Buns_of_Fire]

2. But if he leaves, who will teach Blubberboy the finer points of

Dynamic Tension???


Oops. Wrong Atlas...

[halfulglas]

3. Someone should challenge the opportunist Atlas

Challenge the opportunist to try a little experiment. Lock him in a Covid ward for a couple days without a mask. After all, masks don't work according to him and Covid isn't any more deadly to a "healthy person" than the flu and we should have less isolation of these patients, not less. It's just us old people and those weaker types who have other comorbid conditions that are dying off. That way he can become immune himself and build up the herd immunity - one more member of the herd immune. Shouldn't he be willing to help his country this way. Surely he's at least as patriotic as those epidemiologists. immunologists who he is treating with such contempt. Here's his chance to prove himself.