Dr. Scott Atlas, who served as an advisor on President Trump’s Covid task force, is not a political figure. Or, at least, he doesn’t wear his politics on his sleeve. Instead, he is former Professor and Chief of Neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center. Today he serves as a senior fellow in public health policy at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

But, because he served the Trump administration, and, worse yet, countered the lockdown mandates of Drs. Birx and Fauci, he must be shamed. So when he delivered the keynote graduation address on May 19 at the New College of Florida, graduating students jeered and heckled him.

Giphy.com. 

It’s not like Atlas praised Trump during his address. In fact he barely mentioned him, and even criticized Trump’s handling of the pandemic, telling students:

Under two administrations – Trump and Biden – the United States management of the pandemic was a failure, in deaths per million among the worst compared to all our peer nations – a straight line of increase in deaths per day, from March 1, 2020 through April 2022 – two full years, no change in the slope of that line even after the vaccine becoming available on December 16, 2020.

However, he spoke truths. And the graduating seniors, on the cusp of entering the adult world, couldn’t bear to listen. So they booed Scott Atlas. And when he was ending his speech, advising students to “learn the facts, use critical thinking, and then form the opinion,” they couldn’t accept that, either. It was too much for them. So they shouted “wrap it up!” — drowning out his final encouragements:

We desperately need leadership that unites, not divides; leaders with a moral compass, who know right from wrong, who believe in strong family values; leaders who are not afraid to defend our precious freedoms — America’s hard-earned freedoms that uniquely provide opportunity sought by millions the world over; leaders with integrity — or this country, as an ethical society, as a virtuous society, as a free and diverse society, is in serious trouble. 

The Defamation of Scott Atlas

Ever since Dr. Atlas questioned the wisdom of the Covid lockdowns, he has been the target of media vigilantes. Last year, he appeared on The Megyn Kelly Show to explain how the mainstream media defamed him because he questioned the so-called “science” of lockdowns.

But criticism from the media didn’t end with Covid. Recently, LA Times writer Michael Hiltzik included Scott Atlas in a column disparaging those researchers who stood against the herd, calling them the “experts” who never paid a “professional price” for speaking out. The basis for this upbraiding? A new book by neurologist Jonathan Howard of New York University, entitled We Want Them Infected. In it, Howard blasts not only Scott Atlas, but in particular epidemiologists Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford; Martin Kulldorff, then of Harvard; and Sunetra Gupta of Oxford for formulating the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for “focused protection” of seniors and the medically at-risk, while letting life continue as usual.

The Declaration has been vindicated, but in elite circles, these courageous public health researchers who promoted it are still villains. That includes Dr. Scott Atlas, as well as others.

“A Plague Upon Our House”

In December, 2021, Scott Atlas published a memoir of his time with the White House Covid Task Force. Called A Plague Upon Our House, it reveals what happened behind the scenes.

I read the book, and what Atlas revealed about the incompetency of the chief drivers of the task force — Drs. Deborah Birx, Anthony Fauci, and Robert Redfield — stunned me. None of these individuals are academics nor researchers, but are career bureaucrats. Plus, while Atlas wrote that he would arrive for meetings with a briefcase of research papers and data, neither Birx nor Fauci seemed to care much for science. Even though Fauci has called himself “the science.”

Atlas wrote:

Unlike scientists with whom I had worked for decades, I never saw them voice any critical assessment, methodological or otherwise, of the pitfalls of any published studies. That analytical process is an extremely important part of evaluating medical research. Likewise, none of the three ever brought scientific publications into the meetings that I attended. 

Atlas also wrote:

No one on the Task Force presented any data. No contrary evidence was mentioned. Warnings, broad statements, and assertions were uttered, but never any data or evidence. 

Yet both Fauci and Birx were the god and goddess of the Covid Task Forcd. All hail, Fauci and Birx!

But President Trump didn’t come away unscathed in the memoir, either:

On this highly important criteria of presidential management — taking responsibility to fully take charge of policy coming from the White House — I believe the president made a massive error in judgment. Against his own gut feeling, he delegated authority to medical bureaucrats, and then he failed to correct that mistake. 

Even though the curtains have been opened on the ineptitude of the Covid Task Force, the media still cover for them. So do academic elites. No wonder that coddled children of Covid rejected the wisdom of Dr. Scott Atlas when he told the graduates of the New College of Florida:

We cannot have a civil society if it’s filled with people, led by people, who refuse to allow discussion of views counter to their own.

Whether they heard it or not is questionable. The students were too busy shouting down Dr. Atlas and refusing “to allow discussion of views counter to their own.”

Featured image: Trump White House Archived/flickr/cropped/public domain.