Scott Atlas

On March 24, 2020, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya co-published an article in the Wall Street Journal, “Is The Coronavirus As Deadly As They Say?” He argued that Covid lockdowns and quarantines had no grounding in scientific fact. That was a rare opinion in those isolated days. Anyone who spoke out against lockdowns, mask mandates, booster shots for toddlers, school closures, business shutdowns and any number of other injustices large and small that stemmed from Covid panic feels vindication today, as Bhattacharya, a sensible, mild-mannered scientist whom former National Institutes of Health head Francis Collins publicly smeared as a “fringe epidemiologist” is about, barring some sort of confirmation calamity, to take Collins’s job.

‘Trust the experts’ is the battle cry of America’s elitists. After President Trump’s shock election in 2016 showed that Americans are sick of hearing from politicians, the politicized classes adopted experts as their proxy for power. Climate change ‘experts’ justify AOC’s radical Green New Deal with prophecies of planetary extinction. Foreign policy ‘experts’ claim America will destabilize the Middle East if, as Trump wants, we withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan. Medical ‘experts’ are wheeled out to justify increasing control over the lives of everyday Americans through draconian lockdowns, mask mandates and stringent travel restrictions.

White House coronavirus task force member Dr Scott Atlas said during a Tuesday interview with The Spectator there was 'no fair basis' for canceling this week's presidential debate between President Trump and Joe Biden following the President's coronavirus diagnosis. 'The debate absolutely should have been able to continue. Honestly, I think there is no fair basis for canceling that debate — none,' Atlas said. Trump and Biden were scheduled to meet for the second time on the debate stage on Thursday in a town-hall style event moderated by Steve Scully. The Commission on Presidential Debates announced last week, without agreement between the two campaigns, that the debate would be conducted virtually due to health concerns raised by the President contracting the virus.

'Please tell me you’re Republicans,' President Ronald Reagan joked with his doctors as he headed into surgery after an assassination attempt against him in 1981. The joke worked in part because it was obviously absurd to think any doctor would alter their standard of care based on the politics of their patient. In 2020, can anyone be so sure? In the age of COVID, medical opinion has often become indistinguishable from politics. Laypeople cherrypick statements and studies that seem to confirm their biases, and when all else fails, glob on to anecdotal evidence from a friend, family member, or celebrity who got the virus. Sadly, too many doctors are no better.