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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.
You’re going to let the rest of the administrative state off that easily?
Impeachments are rare occurrences. And yet they impeached Trump twice. And remember the flack Trump was getting in 2020 with all the reporters blaming Trump for the rising death count? Can you imagine what they would have done if Trump had ignored the so-called experts within government medical agencies? What would they not have done?
But did he really have choice?
Yes, I hate to say it because Trump didn’t have much of any choices, but yes, I think covid was one of Trump’s two major failings.
I agree with you whole heartedly. Although I have always wondered about the power that the Troika held. Can you spell out the details of “the power that was given to them by the Supreme Court”?
Agencies hold so much power & with 79,000 new IRS auditors abt to be unleashed on the public, many people are going to find out that most of the civil rights we “are guaranteed” should we ever be apprehended as criminals by the police immediately vanish if it is an agency official doing the apprehending.
Yep. This is why I think no one but Trump among those who are possibly running for president in 2024 realizes the extent to which the Intelligence Community will go to corrupt and control, and kill everything to further their purposes.
The CIA sets up the mind framework by which “the news” via our Talking Heads present various events. A narrative is formed such that the public responds in a certain way. Panic and fear are useful tools.
They micro manage information that they have shielded from public knowledge in various interesting ways. For instance, a person will be set up to be a “whistle blower” so that some dirty fact about a VIP comes to light before it would be discovered on its own. Then after that “fact” is written up, blown up and discussed across media platforms, it is suddenly revealed that the “fact” is meaningless as the whistle blower is actually a former convict who deserves only discredit. (Remember Hatfield as “whistle blower” against George W’s blemished military record?)
The CIA also simply sees to it that a troublesome individual is mysteriously rendered lifeless. Such was the New Years’ 2010 death of John Wheeler, an individual about to expose the phosgen gas release that killed thousands of cattle across US southeastern farms. In some cases, like Wheeler’s, the individual’s body is found. In other cases, a debilitating illness descends.
Two such cases, which affected me as the individuals were friends of mine, involved an introduction of a pathogen leading to a severe illness resulting in death.
And certainly better than what we have in the Oval Office now – yet some people still refuse to admit that . . .
And the agencies hadn’t had an opportunity to expose their corruption. Even the American people were unaware, and some have willingly worked hard to stay unaware.
They knew they couldn’t remove him but used impeachment to tie the hands of his staff and limit Trump’s ability to govern
Which begs the question, which candidate in the primary would have done better- answer – none of them.
Excellent! Thank you, Susan.
Americans are busy people and it takes a lot of attention to keep up with the level of corruption developed over the decades by these federal agency bureaucrats. The long-standing relationships between professional organizations representing teachers, including university academics, lawyers, doctors, the various types of insurance businesses, have grown to dominate government actions to an extent the people could not have detected in their daily lives. I now see the damage inflicted by the teachers’ unions and leftists higher education academics using federal tax dollars but it took me a long time to get here. So we and President Trump got slammed by these federal medical infrastructure bureaucrats. I would like to change this direction.
It is a behemoth with many employees who would lose jobs • this monster will not willingly and peacefully cede power and go on unemployment.
That makes impeachment even more egregious.
I think most of the criticism of Trump from the Right is that he wasn’t absolutely perfect, and that every imperfection was a fatal flaw — or stoopid, or unpardonably gauche.
It was the real coup.
I haven’t gotten too far into the book yet. So far it’s turning out to be more of a polemic than a report on what happened, but it’s not so bad that I’ve given up on it.
As far as citations go, there is discussion of an essay article early in the pandemic that is identified in the text by author and title. A proper footnote citation would also tell us the publication in which it appeared. But searching on the author and title brought it up quickly. That’s better than a lot of news articles I read early in the pandemic that didn’t give enough information to make it that easy to find the publication they were referring to, and it’s also better than a lot of the articles by covid-vax opponents who make it extremely hard to find out what study they are referring to.
I’ve read about 25% of the book so far, and am finding it increasingly informative. Dr. Atlas does tend towards polemics, but that isn’t getting in the way where he reports on his time advising President Trump, and his interactions with Dr Birx, etc. Reading the book also helps me understand some of the reaction people here on Ricochet had to Dr. Fauci, which I never completely understood, partly because I can’t stand to watch the news and never understood why he was the person people blamed for some of the disastrous policies that were being implemented around the country. His role is becoming a little clearer to me now.
I don’t regret my method of following the news, and even wish more people would do as I do. But my method does mean that this is the way I sometimes catch up on things.
I follow national news thru various “social influencers” on my social networks.
But locally I am often clueless. The progressive CCP-aligned newspapers are so atrocious that I simply refuse to purchase their products.
Sounds good to me, Ret. I had the same reaction to Atlas regarding his seeming to be over the top at times (particularly since he made some of the same points repeatedly), but under the circumstances, it made sense. I can’t even imagine spending four months, with excellent credentials, being ignored. And frankly, as long as you get your news, and you trust your sources, you should get it wherever you wish.
It keeps getting better and better, and helps explain my frustration with the Trump administration’s approach to covid testing. Scott Atlas was on top of the issue, but Birx was a problem.