How we restore public trust in our medical institutions

At what point are transparency and accountability to the people required of America's leaders?

Lies were told. Those lies harmed the public. Those lies were directly contrary to the evidence, to decades of knowledge on viral pandemics, and to long-established fundamental biology.

America uniquely sacrificed its children by closing in-person schools in 2020 and 2021, forcing testing and quarantining of asymptomatic, healthy students and requiring injection of experimental drugs in schoolchildren with no clear benefit to them.

We need universities to be robust centers of debate, not rigid enforcers of ideological conformity.

The nation’s experience during Covid has revealed that the scientific community is not giving Americans what they need, what they deserve, and what they pay for. We must do better.

It was February 2020, and news accounts had been describing increasingly alarming information about a deadly new virus emanating from Wuhan, China. Apart from my general concern about the spread of the infection, I was confused about some of the basic numbers being aired.

Atlas is waiting for me outside Le Diplomate, a French bistro beloved of the American political class. “So, you don’t eat indoors at all?” he asks as we sit down. 

As the pandemic enters its second year, Americans will continue to demand evidence to justify the severe restrictions on their liberty. Lockdowns interfere with the constitutional rights to free speech and religion and the economic liberty of owners and workers. Government leaders must persuade the public with proven facts and transparent decisions. Americans, our judges especially, should expect no less.

The COVID pandemic has been a tragedy, no doubt. But it has exposed profound issues in America that threaten the principles of freedom and order that we Americans often take for granted.

The media’s politicization of Covid has proved deadly and puts Americans’ freedoms at risk.

World-class universities are among America’s most treasured institutions. Unfortunately, several universities have recently announced their plans to shut down in response to new COVID-19 cases among students. That’s wrong: Universities should stay open, even when they see an increase in cases.

Scott Atlas is the newest member of the White House senior staff. Appointed barely a month ago, he’s undergoing a public hazing. His brief as a special adviser to President Trump, he tells me in an interview by Zoom, is to “advise the president on integrating the science and developing a policy for how we deal with the coronavirus pandemic.” Still living out of “multiple suitcases” in a Washington hotel, he was paid a mighty Beltway compliment this week when two national newspapers ran hit pieces on him.

Thank goodness that President Trump has appointed a knowledgeable, credible counterbalance to the Coronavirus Taskforce. Dr. Scott Atlas is not a bureaucrat like Dr. Anthony Fauci or Dr. Deborah Birx; he is a world-renowned scientist and physician who seems to actually study the totality of the impacts of the COVID-19 epidemic. Dr. Fauci, by contrast, has repeatedly conceded that he hasn’t considered the economic impacts and secondary public health crises of his COVID-19 advice.

The media-driven attempt to paint his views on health policy as “unscientific” is a smear.

To stop COVID-19 dead in its tracks, many governors, mayors and superintendents are threatening to keep schools closed this fall, failing to consider the greater harm that comes from refusing to open them.

Our governmental COVID-19 mitigation policy of broad societal lockdown focuses on containing the spread of the disease at all costs, instead of “flattening the curve” and preventing hospital overcrowding. Although well-intentioned, the lockdown was imposed without consideration of its consequences beyond those directly from the pandemic.

Now is the time for the design of sound public policy — and that involves a far broader formulation than a single-minded focus on stopping COVID-19 at all costs.

The tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be entering the containment phase. Tens of thousands of Americans have died, and Americans are now desperate for sensible policymakers who have the courage to ignore the panic and rely on facts. Leaders must examine accumulated data to see what has actually happened, rather than keep emphasizing hypothetical projections; combine that empirical evidence with fundamental principles of biology established for decades; and then thoughtfully restore the country to function.