Scott William Atlas was born on July 5,1955 and is an American radiologist, political commentator, and health care policy advisor.
29 Facts About Scott Atlas
2.
Scott Atlas is the Robert Wesson Senior Fellow in health care policy at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank located at Stanford University.
3.
Scott Atlas was selected by President Donald Trump in August 2020 to serve as an advisor on the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
4.
Contrary to the recommendations of most of the scientific community, Scott Atlas recommended establishing herd immunity by allowing or encouraging low-risk people to get COVID-19 while attempting to protect more vulnerable people.
5.
Scott Atlas advocated that states should not engage in COVID-19 testing of virus-exposed but asymptomatic individuals, called for faster reopening of schools and businesses, and encouraged residents to resist or "rise up" against state restrictions adopted to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
6.
Scott Atlas resigned from his position in the White House on November 30,2020.
7.
From 1998 to 2012, Scott Atlas was Professor and Chief of Neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center in California.
8.
Scott Atlas trained more than 100 neuroradiology fellows in his teaching career.
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Scott Atlas is the editor of Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain and Spine, a 2,000-page illustrated textbook with 83 contributors.
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Scott Atlas has written four books on health care policy.
11.
Scott Atlas is the Robert Wesson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative public policy think tank.
12.
Scott Atlas served as a senior advisor for health care to the Republican presidential campaigns of Rudy Giuliani in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012.
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Scott Atlas has advocated eliminating the Affordable Care Act and replacing it with modified tax deductions and incentives.
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Scott Atlas has called for changes to Medicare and "aggressive reforms" to turn Medicaid "into a bridge to private insurance" and encourage health savings accounts.
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Scott Atlas opposes proposals to establish a public health insurance option or single-payer healthcare.
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In December 2021, Scott Atlas helped found the Academy for Science and Freedom with Martin Kulldorff and Jay Bhattacharya, a program of the private conservative liberal arts college Hillsdale College.
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Scott Atlas reportedly caught Trump's eye because of his frequent appearances on Fox News that summer.
18.
Scott Atlas claimed that children "have virtually zero risk of dying, and a very, very low risk of any serious illness from this disease" and "children almost never transmit the disease" although children can carry, transmit, and in some cases be killed by the COVID-19 virus.
19.
Scott Atlas expressed skepticism that face masks help prevent the spread of the virus, including in a tweet in October 2020 that Twitter removed after determining it was not accurate.
20.
Scott Atlas argued that only symptomatic individuals should be tested for the coronavirus, and pushed for the August 24,2020, change on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website saying that people who had been exposed to the virus but showed no symptoms should not be tested.
21.
Scott Atlas advised that the virus should be allowed to spread naturally among people deemed at low risk, while protecting the most vulnerable populations, so as to gain herd immunity.
22.
The Washington Post reported that Scott Atlas was the leading proponent within the Trump administration for a herd immunity approach to the virus, although some experts cautioned that such an approach could lead to hundreds of thousands more American deaths.
23.
Scott Atlas advocated for in-person school reopening and resumption of college sports during the pandemic.
24.
Scott Atlas quickly became influential within the administration, and Trump welcomed his recommendations such as faster reopening and less testing, which were in accord with Trump's own preferences.
25.
Scott Atlas was the only doctor to share the stage at Trump's pandemic briefings in the week after his appointment was announced, and he prepared Trump's briefing materials.
26.
When Fauci was asked whether Scott Atlas was providing misleading information to Trump, Fauci replied, without naming Scott Atlas, that "sometimes there are things that are said that are really taken either out of context or actually incorrect".
27.
Scott Atlas keeps talking about things that when you dissect it out and parse it out, it doesn't make any sense.
28.
Scott Atlas's comment urging Michiganders to "rise up" against measures to prevent COVID-19 transmission was widely condemned by health professionals and by Stanford University, home of the Hoover Institute where Scott Atlas is a senior fellow.
29.
On November 30,2020, Scott Atlas posted a letter resigning his White House position, days before the end of the maximum 130-day period in which he could serve with "special Government employee" status.