The anti-science left attacks lockdown critic in White House

 Federalist:

The evidence continues to accrue that the dominant policies sold to mitigate the COVID-19 outbreak were catastrophically wrong, yet those who pointed this out early on continue to be reputationally crucified by media and Democrat elites. A premiere case in point is White House Coronavirus Task Force member Dr. Scott Atlas, who has been making science-based arguments against locking down healthy people since the earliest months of the pandemic.

Because he has courageously presented evidence that gums up the media’s goal of ending Trump’s presidency by using coronavirus to punish Americans, the knives have been out for the views Atlas represents since the beginning.


Atlas is not at all alone in professional skepticism about the value of extended lockdowns, cloth masks, and obsessing about case counts as opposed to hospitalizations and deaths. So far, more than 12,000 medical and public health scientists and more than 35,000 medical professionals from around the world have signed the Great Barrington Declaration that summarizes this advocacy of “focused protection.”

Atlas is just a prominent face for this view that the power-hungry elites need to crush to avoid responsibility for their horrifically bad leadership during the COVID outbreak, as well as to get Trump. So they seek to destroy him because he and the scientific coalition he represents makes it clear that these public health emperors may have plenty of masks, but no clothes.

Thus YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook have repeatedly banned or slapped warnings on Atlas’s statements and all scientific evidence that might support the Great Barrington view. This week a former Obama official called for Atlas’s medical license to be revoked for the crime of practicing science.
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Things like this are not only anti-science, they are anti-public health. Yanking Atlas’s license because he participated in the scientific process by challenging interpretations of evidence with more evidence will not only end scientific advancement, it will legitimize the growing anti-vaccine movement by providing a legitimate martyr to rally around instead of a fake one.

Anyone who cares about public health should not be giving people more reasons to distrust the people who stamp their foreheads with “public health expert.” That is what all this suppression of research and of discourse does. It is also what all the personal attacks on people like Atlas do. Refusing to engage with the evidence he cites and instead attacking his professional background — “he’s only a radiologist, not an epidemiologist”– or smearing him — “he’s a grandma killer” — makes the people doing this look like the real hacks.

The only way to legitimately destroy Atlas’s credibility would be to engage with him on the science, to point out where his arguments are wrong or weak or what they are missing. This is called the scientific process, and it is essential to the advancement of knowledge. Since very little of that has been forthcoming, the thinking public is left to assume his coalition’s stance is legitimate and the people who use dirty tactics are attempting to avoid facing that their policies have devastated the world while possibly causing additional deaths.
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As The Spectator UK pointed out, “The results of the Danmask-19 trial mirror other reviews into influenza-like illnesses. Nine other trials looking at the efficacy of masks (two looking at healthcare workers and seven at community transmission) have found that masks make little or no difference to whether you get influenza or not.”

Those who say these results are because “my mask protects you, and your mask protects me” need to take a long and hard look at the fact that countries, states, and cities with near-universal mask-wearing have the same patterns of COVID spread. “No matter how strictly mask laws are enforced nor the level of mask compliance the population follows, cases all fall and rise around the same time,” notes a recent Federalist roundup of such examples. This is likely why Fauci, who criticizes Atlas’s statements publicly, doesn’t wear masks when the cameras aren’t on.
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The leftist cancel culture does not tolerate debate and inquiry on a subject they have closed their minds on.  What they are doing in response to Atlas is acting like a lynch mob instead of making a serious argument.  Their assumption that all opposing points of view are not only wrong, but deadly is dangerous.  It is like those who attacked people who took the position that the earth was round.