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Deborah Birx– not Anthony Fauci – Was the Covid Ringleader
When I decided to read Scott Atlas’ book, A Plague Upon Our House, I had no idea how shocked and disillusioned I would become. I already knew from the excellent posts on Ricochet that our government’s strategies for understanding and managing the virus were a disaster, but I have every reason to believe that Dr. Atlas’ descriptions of the events during his service at the White House are true.
And it was a tragedy.
So why was Atlas brought on board to advise the president? His credentials are substantial, although in its usual frenzy to discount anyone associated with President Trump, the media harped on his long-ago work as a radiologist and that he wasn’t an epidemiologist. He was also a highly respected colleague of Dr. Jay Battacharya from Stanford, who has appeared many times in Ricochet forums and also been tarred and feathered by the media (which earns him high esteem from me).
Dr. Atlas did not initially want to go to the White House to be a senior advisor, but felt an obligation to help the President and the country with this viral crisis. He wasn’t politically motivated, but sought to bring the truth to all parties who would be affected. After a comprehensive and ongoing review of the data, Dr. Atlas repeatedly emphasized the implementation of certain key points:
My main points were that targeted protection made sense, not broad lockdowns, especially given that the elderly harbored a far higher risk than younger, healthier people; that children had an extremely low risk; and that the lockdowns and school closures were already enormously harmful.
And although nearly everyone ignored or refused to implement his advice, he was consistent in sharing it. And he was right.
Atlas determined early on that Deborah Birx was the person who was leading the Task Force. Quite simply, no one was willing to challenge her approaches, her ideas, or her data, including Fauci and Redfield. Except for Atlas. And when he did challenge her, she would interrupt him, argue with him and discount him. Everyone else fell in line at his example (since many had seen her similar behavior in other situations and knew better than to challenge her). In particular, Atlas was alarmed at her simplistic approach to the data:
I chose to avoid explaining her second serious mistake, which derived from a naive reliance on correlation—i.e., believing that a chosen correlation proved causation. This kind of unsophisticated reasoning was frequently demonstrated by the Task Force medical troika as they voiced similarly invalid conclusions about masks and lockdowns in subsequent meetings, conclusions that were so obviously unsound that they were questioned even by the nonscientists around the room.
Atlas finally realized the most important contribution he could make:
While Birx, Fauci, and Redfield focused solely on stopping cases at all costs, in media interviews and in their advice to governors, pushing their brain-numbing message of ‘wash your hands, stay away from others, wear your masks,’ I was the only doctor representing the White House who also explained to the public, providing data in written pieces, in interviews, and through the president’s remarks, that the lockdowns were destroying people. Now I more fully understood the importance of my being there, exactly why I was brought into the White House.
There were several appalling episodes that Atlas experienced: the refusal of participants to engage in open discussion and the lack of studying the data by most of the other medical experts, for two. But I have to admit that my own reaction duplicated Atlas’ with an exchange he had with Fauci, questioning a comment Fauci had made:
I challenged him to clarify his point, because I couldn’t believe my ears. ‘So you think people aren’t frightened enough?’ He said, ‘Yes, they need to be more afraid.’ To me, this was another moment of Kafkaesque absurdity. I replied, ‘I totally disagree. People are paralyzed with fear. Fear is one of the main problems at this point.’ Inside, I was also shocked at his thought process, as such an influential face of the pandemic. Instilling fear in the public is absolutely counter to what a leader in public health should do. To me, it is frankly immoral, although I kept that to myself.
Atlas was continually in a state of perplexity, trying to figure out the motivations and strategies of his colleagues on the COVID Task Force. Why did Jared Kushner keep sending him to Mike Pence when he had concerns? Why didn’t the contradictory information from the President’s speeches and the Task Force representatives cause Mike Pence concern? What were people so afraid of when it came to disagreeing with Deborah Birx? He finally reached some clarity regarding these questions and I found his conclusions credible:
Eventually I figured out the dynamic. Birx obviously was very knowledgeable about two things, regardless of her expertise on the pandemic itself. First, she knew that the VP had her back, often echoing her words. Clearly, he was conscious that the Task Force—which he directed—was the most visible evidence of his own work in the administration. That meant that its perceived positives must be protected—nothing about it that the public viewed as positive would be minimized or criticized. Pence had zero intention of ‘rocking the boat’ with Birx or Fauci, even though he was very receptive to my thoughts and readily agreed with the data I presented. Second, Birx, having been in Washington for decades, understood something else that I certainly did not—how politicians worked. She was fully aware, unlike me, that there was no one who really had the guts to tell the truth to her or to the public. After all, an election was approaching.
When Trump lost the election, Atlas had already decided to return to California. He had gone through quite enough of the media attacks, lies, and distortions. He despised the political environment, and returned home for Thanksgiving without going back to the White House. Since the Task Force was not interested in his expertise and contributions, there was no reason to stick around.
I’ll end my observations about Atlas with one of his most powerful conclusions about COVID-19, the pandemic, and the Task Force:
Published in PoliticsIn the end, the most egregious failure of the Task Force was its complete and utter disregard for the harmful impact of its recommended policies. This was outright immoral, an inexplicable betrayal of their most fundamental duty. I have no doubt it will go down as one of the greatest public health failures in history.
I understand that. I am really sorry the Massachusetts health care bureaucracy did that to you instead of listening to you. It’s disgusting.
But what happened as a result of the unleashing of the pandemic is not Donald Trump’s fault. I don’t think he could have done anything differently.
That first lockdown–I remember it vividly–was Trump’s optimistic attempt to slow it down. It wasn’t a crazy idea at all. Our local pediatricians several times shut down our school system for a week or two when there was a flu bug making the kids and the teachers sick. Honestly, I wanted to do the same thing. It was in late March. I thought spring would take care of it. We just needed to interrupt the spread. Donald Trump and I both wrongly believed the stupid thing would be gone by Easter that year.
These CDC power structures predate Trump’s presidency by a hundred years.
I agree with Atlas on many things, but his putting Trump’s name in his book’s subtitle infuriates me.
And the circular encomium continues apace. In today’s news, the famous Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center in Seattle has announced it is giving its most pretigious award, the “Hutch”, to Fauci (the fraud) for his lifetime of service for the public health. [spit]
As the kids say, “I can’t even.”
That’s putting it much more forcefully than I would. But I, too, have always felt that Trump got rolled by those arrogant fools whose advice he was taking, even, I feel certain, against his own instincts. Trump allowed the economy to be shut down…the achievement of his administration for which he was most proud, was vanquished.
I’m saying the doctors at the CDC etc. would not have listened to Trump. They would never listen to someone who was not a doctor. That’s why Trump brought in Atlas to begin with, and wisely so.
One Amazon reviewer who gave the book one star says this:
I favor citations, too, but I don’t know if their absence matters if the book is about the political interactions in the White House (as the title indicates). I’ve added it to my Kindle queue. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
Well, if they think that they didn’t need to take orders from Trump, they certainly wouldn’t have taken them from Atlas. So you think Trump couldn’t have issued an Executive Order to stop the lockdowns? Or would he have had to look to the states to act? This was a tough issue to deal with: who was in charge?
You are correct in your assessment: he was addressing the politics. He repeatedly gave the Task Force reports on his review of the data; they ignored it. I just wonder if he published any papers online?
He left it to the states. And correctly so, I believe.
Marci, I don’t think we are that far apart in our assessment. Key people had responsibility. We could argue about percentages of blame, but I don’t think either of us wants to do that! I think part of our back-and-forth is about the frustration and disappointment we share about the whole thing, and how we wish it had gone better. What do you think?
Links work on the Internet, not in books. If that commentor thinks that footnotes are easy to follow, he doesn’t read like I do. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing.
I prayed a lot for Trump. I followed the pandemic from the very beginning, as he did, and in real time. It was an incredible situation. I could not have borne the pressure he was under.
I wish I could thank him for not running away, which is probably what I would have done. :-) It was really wild from 2019 to 2020.
The best thing he did–and if he made any mistakes before or after, this was so fantastic the other things didn’t matter–was convince the CDC, and this was all Donald Trump who gets the credit for this, to let the private labs run the PCR tests. The CDC could not keep up and was not giving the public accurate information.
I just think the world owes him some thanks. After that, we need to rethink our public health “government” structures. They don’t work. This was the ultimate stress test, and they failed in many ways. But that was a crisis brewing for decades, and it was not Trump’s fault.
I spend my professional life reading leadership books, and he passed the test, as far as I’m concerned, handling the pandemic.
I think @Marcin has it right here, Trump was surprisingly exactly on the mark. His leaving it to the states followed by his putting Pence in charge of the task force, but Pence failed. Pence went with the institutional bureaucrats. With what we now understand about FDA, NIH, and CDC coupled with the influence of academic and professional organizations and the money flowing into medical institutions, Pence go along attitude was just what was necessary to undo Trump’s approach. State governors, mostly Democrats but not all, went along with the junk coming from Fauci and Birx (I don’t remember much of anything from Pence) and did everything possible to ruin small business enterprise in America. This fits very well with the big business and their globalist approach. This is not over yet.
I agree. I’d say Trump’s only mistake was putting too much trust in the experts . . .
I fault Pence. I’ve suspected this was exactly what was happening. Later on, Trump was more visible, I suspect because he felt Pence was being too passive. I do support Trump in most things, but I do believe he made an egregious error if in fact he pushed for the genetic innoculations to be approved too soon. Yes, they very likely could have been approved under the Occupant Biden administration later, but I believe there were enough problems even during the trials that ought to have stopped the approval.
I think that it is entirely too easy, even for people such as yourself, to grant too much trust to expert opinion and not enough on trusted and elected leaders like Trump who have to apply practical wisdom after hearing from all the experts. Expert knowledge is narrow. Practical wisdom requires courage to face the entirety of outcomes.
I have no issue with Right to Try as long as the patient is informed that these things are novel and there is limited data on efficacy and safety. The patient has a right to try and getting them out quickly for people wanting them, I think was the right call.
What was absolutely dastardly was the medical community claiming that these were well tested, had plenty of data and claiming mRNA vaccines weren’t new. And then lying about the data around COVID and the vaccines while forcing them on people.
That was WAY WAY too far. Right to try means right to refuse.
They work on the internet if you can look up the citation. If you work for a large university, you probably have access to any journal articles that are cited. Even if you don’t, you probably have access to an abstract, at least. It’s not as easy as clicking on it, but it can be done. I found myself doing it a lot on covid issues.
Marci, I have the highest regard for your experience and wisdom, but the CDC doesn’t listen to anything but money and power. It is a corrupt organization and I would wager was quite ready for the spread of the virus when it came, but not in the way that we would like. At a time when the governors needed medical leadership, the CDC made it very difficult for anyone to disagree with their direction.
Trump failed, and bigly, but given the corruption in the medical system, e.g., impossibly bad medical statistics and inaccurate testing, I’m not sure he could have managed to persuade even his own followers to do what the Swedes did. Can you picture the outrage with every ventilator/Remdesevir death? Medical tyranny is as powerful as any tyranny, and like any tyranny operates by fear, and I suspect that in this case Trump did not have the confidence to go against the “experts.”
Pence’s task force and the agencies behind them including all associated with Medicare and Medicaid are what was driving the medical community in its misbehaviors. A society of individuals and institutional leaders who refuse to think for themselves is a disaster.
Very few people understood the evil nature of the folks who took over the Democratic Party, including Trump, but let’s not go after him. What we want is that early in the 2024 campaign, if we can even get there, Trump tips his hat to a small clique, the aim to have De Santis as the candidate but without tarnishing him with the fabricated, wide spread view that Trump is the problem. We do not know the depth of the evil that is in charge of our country. It includes massive second and third level idiots, but it’s run by three people or cliques. I’ll bet with out mentioning any of them, folks can name everyone effortlessly.
I am sure blue states would be as upset if Trump prevented their governors from taking actions just as red states would be upset if the President forced them to take actions. As far as the CDC goes, it was rogue long before Trump was elected. Trump didn’t fail but was better than any of the other choices he beat out in the primary.
Well we who were doing our own research knew that there was high stink going on – and not in Denmark either.
TheConservativeTreeHouse had a series of wonderfully written articles, offered up the revelatory Sundance. They included this one, which Sundance set up so that at the article’s tail end, it listed many very decently done studies: https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/08/09/must-see-family-medical-physician-dr-dan-stock-delivers-an-important-message-to-mount-vernon-school-board-about-coronavirus/
It was obvious that this entire shebang was a hoax and it was designed by ultimate mind blowing powers which most people cannot contemplate. The hoax was a decade in the planning.
It was never about a virus with a 99.63% or better survival rate for anyone who was healthy.
It was never about “2 weeks to flatten the curve.” It was always about control, including bringing down the Trump WH.
It was always about another transfer of middle class incomes to the larger companies. A thrift shop in Lakeport Calif that might only have 5 customers an hour had to shut its doors. Meanwhile policies were enacted such that the largest companies in America remained open. So people could line up by the hundreds each hour inside WalMart, CostCo, Home Depot or else create orders on line at Amazon.
Our very health was monetized. Those who tested positive for COV – especially in places like NYC – were shuffled off into hospital wards where they were slammed with drugs that people like Birx and Fauci must have known would kill them off.
Meanwhile to keep your job, you had to decide if you would hope to win the “health lottery” – that is to say, would you luckily get the placebo or pray you wouldn’t get the real thing & then lose your job due to the resulting vax injury?
The injuries suffered by those who got vaxxed and boosted have continued to pile up and are on going. As have the deaths.
Then there is the media.
As the quote in the OP demonstrates, Atlas indeed knew something was going on, but he knew the media would never let him express his concerns for even a second. The media was clearly bought and paid for.
Bill Gates had invested in CNN, and that is no secret. It is also no secret that he had his “charity foundation” “donate” vast sums of monies to at least 50 non-profit concerns, including the BBC and NPR radio. Additionally the tens of billions of monies that Big Pharma offers radio and TV outlets annually for their “ads” keeps the media even further under control.
Gates also made a remark that he had put $10 billion into the vaccine programs. On another interview, one that focused on his business acumen, he revealed that whenever he puts forth a serious outlay of monies, he expects a 2,000% return on his investment.
If only some day soon some heads roll!
###
If only the 79 billion for IRS auditors was instead going into auditors of current and past “public servants.” Of course often these people do not take money – they take job offers that come about a circumspect few years down the line for themselves or family members.
Great comment.
Doing a lockdown early on makes sense.
But here in Calif, no one really got their panties in a knot until the last Thursday in June 2020.
Why the delay? Newsom had ordered a billion bucks worth of masks from China and when they arrived they were faulty and had to be sent back. By the time they were ready to be released, the Golden State was far beyond the initial 6 weeks of the infection’s spread. Basically, the virus was already out there. But Newsom wanted his investment to pay off and issued mandates like they held meaning.
So much of the COVID matter was not related to science.
Susan : “The problem began with giving the feds too much power at the start. They were the ones who insisted on the lockdowns. Yes, I know the states were ultimately in charge of many of these decisions. But the initiation of them started with the feds. If the feds started it, maybe they should have withdrawn their decisions and then turned to the states. Yes, Atlas couldn’t get the Task Force Troika to change its mind. So I guess that puts the blame for their terrible decisions on him? Again, he didn’t have the power to make them change direction.”:
Yep.
President T: “There are effectively 4 branches of government now: legislative, executive, judicial, + administrative. The unofficial (extra-Constitutional) one has no checks and balances–it is self-governing, self-financing, and self-perpetuating. It is a cancer that grows all the time.”
This is perhaps the greatest issue facing the nation- one that few are aware of. It’s a good question whether Trump could have over-ruled Fauci and Brix because of the power given them by the Supreme Court. That is why Birx thought she could lie to the President at will; because she thought she was protected and above the law as do many Washington bureaucrats.
I think Trump did some good things, but despite his reputation for being a tough guy, I think he always preferred to work within the system – and in Washington the “system” is irrevocably broken, and that was Trump’s big problem. More than half of cabinet betrayed him horribly during his Presidency, yet he stayed with them when he should have had them indicted instead . Trump never really faced the fact that Washington is thoroughly corrupt and to really “drain the swamp” you need to confront head on the pervasive corruption. President T above was correct – there are now no “checks and Balances” on the power of the Adminstrative State and that is why corruption is so pervasive.
Trump should have never put forward Fauci and Birx as renowned health authorities and make them the face of the Pandemic Response, which allowed the Media to deify them. With his wealth, he should have hired for himself outside consultants that were not beholden to the bureaucracy, and who were outside the bureaucracies’ control that would have given him reliable and good alternative advice from the get go. He should have realized he would be conned like he had by Sessions, Barr, McConnell and the rest of UniParty apparatus. He did do some really good things like bring in Peter Navarro who was exemplary, but Trump never seemed to grasp the pressure points of power in Washington and how to use them effectively. Washington is a mean, low down dangerous place full of people who will betray their country at the drop of a hat, like Pence, Fauci, Birx, Bill Barr and others. The next President’s job one is to drain the swamp, which Trump didn’t do.
I think it is possible he didn’t realize the extent of the corruption in the administrative bureaucracy itself until late in his term. He knew this about the politicians. Then, with the pandemic he was faced with an area where he personally had no knowledge and he thought he was dependent on the medical expertise and that expertise was as corrupt as all the rest, maybe worse.
Good comment, Unsk. I do have one question re the comment I copied here. What power did SCOTUs give Fauci & Birx?
He worked within the system of government we have. It is up to us to demand the agencies that exist outside of the Construction.
Cabinet secretaries must be confirmed by the Senate..
I believe he eventually figured that out. You need to face the fact the corruption is too deep for a president to fix.
That is not how it works. Like them or hate them, they are paid to do what they did.
“The swamp” has been like this for decades. No one man is powerful enough to do that.
I disagree. The Fourth Branch is the Intelligence Services “community” (IC). It has already been labeled as such by those who have been in it and punished by it. I’m specifically thinking of Flynn, who corrected Tucker Carlson on this point, and said that the Fourth Branch is the most powerful branch, and that the CIA actively spies on, infiltrates, and controls people in all other offices in the so-called Three Branches of Government. The Swamp, if you like is the administrative state which doesn’t serve the interests of the citizenry but serves their own purposes. But de facto it is ultimately subordinate to the IC.
But Trump’s eye was always on not shutting down the economy and then restarting it as soon as possible.