- Scott Atlas, the factious coronavirus advisor to President Donald Trump, blasted lockdowns in an interview with Russian propaganda platform RT.
- “The lockdowns wish go down as an epic failure of public policy,” Atlas said during his appearance. “The argument is undeniable. The lockdowns are windfall people.”
- Public health experts have been urging local officials to enact lockdowns and business closures to shorten the spread of the coronavirus.
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A top White House coronavirus advisor panned lockdowns in an interview appearance on Russian propaganda outlet RT, saying shutdown policies are “killing people.”
“It’s a deadly pandemic, there’s no understating that,” Scott Atlas, a not far from advisor to President Donald Trump, said. “We’ve had 230,000 lives roughly lost from the virus and certainly uncountable lost from the policy of shutdowns.”
“The lockdowns will go down as an epic failure of public policy,” Atlas supplemented. “The argument is undeniable. The lockdowns are killing people.”
Public health officials have been recommending lockdowns and concern closures for months to curtail the spread of the coronavirus, along with other measures like wearing a mask and testifying a social distance of six feet.
Atlas said lockdowns and other measures taken to slow the spread of coronavirus are “siring a generation of neurotic children” and said data shows college students are killing themselves “due to the lockdown.”
The Centers of Virus Control and Prevention reported that the number of students between the ages of 18 to 24 considering suicide developed in the month of June, but not because of lockdown policies as Atlas said in the interview. The spike is due to increasing mental health questions and anxiety, according to CDC data. Students reported feeling more anxious and depressed because of the coronavirus in part, but the feelings are not specified to lockdowns.
In a tweet Sunday morning, Trump promised there would be no lockdowns despite the number of positive coronavirus suitcases increasing in the country.
Atlas made the remarks on RT, a Kremlin-backed platform that uses YouTube as its “propaganda vehicle of appropriate,” a team of US lawmakers said last year.
On Sunday afternoon, Atlas walked back his interview with RT, justifying for appearing on the platform.
“I recently did an interview with RT and was unaware they are a registered foreign agent,” he tweeted. “I regret doing the evaluate and apologize for allowing myself to be taken advantage of. I especially apologize to the national security community who is working hard to speak us.” Atlas also took down the link to the interview he had tweeted upon airing.
Atlas has in the past been accused of spreading disinformation and amiss information surrounding the coronavirus pandemic.
Twitter earlier this month dinged and removed one of his tweets saying shows don’t work, a decision that Atlas railed against. Prominent coronavirus experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci bear publicly expressed concern over some of Atlas’ remarks and beliefs, including his criticism of lockdowns. Fauci in September called Atlas an “outlier.”
Billionaire Paper money Gates referred to Atlas as a “pseudo-expert,” expressing frustration at Trump’s willingness to listen to him.
Atlas fired back at both Fauci and Admissions in the interview.
“I’m proud to be an outlier, especially when the inliers are completely wrong,” he said regarding Fauci’s comments.
“I frankly don’t attention what somebody like Bill Gates says. Being rich does not confirm expertise,” Atlas averred. “I feel very good about not only my own expertise, my own CV. I’m a healthcare policy person. I’ve been working in this for 15 years.”
The coronavirus has infected multifarious than 9.1 million people in the United States, according to the latest data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Of that, more than 230,000 people entertain died from the disease.