A Plague Upon Our House Quotes

“Perhaps rooted in repudiation of President Trump’s less-than-full endorsement of masks, people were now full-blown zealots about masks, evidence be damned! They were so deeply, so emotionally, committed to the power of masks that facts literally did not matter to these people.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“I personally sat incredulously as I listened to Dr. Fauci state his opinion in a late August 2020 Task Force meeting. He insisted that Americans were not yet afraid enough. I distinctly asked for clarification of his statement to be sure I heard it correctly. He replied, “Yes, they need to be more afraid.” Using emotional distress as a tool to ensure greater adherence to government policy is immoral in public health,”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“Clearly, the largest part of the failure of the president was that he did not change his Task Force. Even before I arrived in Washington as an advisor, there should have been broad personnel changes made in the Task Force. None were made; it remained intact until the end of the president’s term.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“VP Pence himself also assured me that the data and policies I expressed were correct; he had requested from me, and personally read, summaries of studies and documents on schools, risks to children, testing, and other issues. Given that the VP was in charge of the Task Force, shouldn’t the bottom-line advice emanating from it comport with the policies of the administration? But he would never speak with Dr. Birx at all.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“While the president understood and fully supported this, he remained frustrated, as did I, because his most trusted advisors didn’t fully sign on to a strategic approach to testing. At one point he offhandedly remarked, “You’ll have to convince my son-in-law of that.” Naturally, Kushner and everyone else had been deferring to Fauci and Birx on all things medical. To make matters worse, the Fauci-Birx testing strategy was not merely unfocused; their strategy bizarrely prioritized more testing in the lowest-risk people and the lowest-risk environments—students and schools—while letting the deaths continue in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, where a once-per-week schedule was assumed to be effective.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“No opportunity to inflame the voters was going to be missed by what I now believe are the most despicable group of unprincipled liars one could ever imagine—the American media.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“Above all, the president stressed that even though the virus was extremely serious, continuing the lockdowns was shattering people, destroying the economy, keeping kids out of school, devastating small businesses.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“There was a safer, more logical, more scientific alternative—targeted protection of the vulnerable. That strategy saved lives and avoided the catastrophic harms of prolonged lockdowns. Public health policies should always consider the impact on whole health, not just stopping the spread of a single disease, and the harms and benefits of those policies.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“Bottom line: Lockdowns did not stop the virus or save lives. Massive lives were lost because of the lockdowns. Focused protection was the safer and more ethical strategy. “Long lockdown” is far worse than “long COVID.” It’s not even close. And that’s the science”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“In sum, the evidence shows that masks did not control rises in infections from COVID-19. Yet anyone questioning the efficacy of broad mask mandates was subjected to vilification and outright censorship.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“Nevertheless, I was warned by several prominent medical scientists, well-meaning colleagues, and friends that I should stay silent about masks. Their rationale was based on the idea that people would never accept evidence that masks are not effective. They told me people desperately needed to feel like they had some control, and the simple face covering, absurd pseudoscience or not, provided it.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“In their August 2020 review of several models, Ioannidis, Cripps, and Tanner lamented what other leaders in the field had similarly expressed, “In fact, it is surprising that epidemic forecasting has retained much credibility among decision-makers, given its dubious track record.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“As Stanford University’s Ioannidis, University of Sydney’s Cripps, and Northwestern’s Tanner documented in August 2020, forecasts built directly on significant data at hand also fared poorly. As one example, a Massachusetts General Hospital model predicted over 23,000 deaths within a month of Georgia’s reopening—the actual deaths were 896.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“History will undoubtedly malign many of the Trump administration’s activities and its legacy, but it will be very difficult to deny the accomplishments of Operation Warp Speed.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“Hoover’s John Cochrane wrote what most at Stanford were afraid to even say: “What is the point of all this? There can only be one: Don’t work for Republicans, don’t advise them, don’t deviate from the campus orthodoxy on policy issues, censor yourself from speaking unpopular opinions. And expect to be isolated, publicly shamed with vague and undocumented charges, and drummed out of the university if you do.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“At the end, I slowly raised my hand and made a simple pronouncement. “I completely disagree.” That was it. Nothing more. I had no more energy left to explain how misguided and harmful her policies were. Lockdowns were killing people, destroying millions of families and children, in this obsessive desire to stop a virus that was deadly only to the high-risk. And no one seemed to care.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“To this day, I cannot understand why the human cost of the lockdowns never mattered to anyone else on the Task Force. It was never brought up while I was there, not a single doctor ever spoke of it.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“It was too much for me. To sit in that Task Force, to listen to these so-called experts, with such influence, people who denied the data, who were not even critiquing the scientific literature. People who hadn’t worked with patients for decades, who showed no perspective on clinical medicine. Public health officials who heinously and consistently disregarded the horrible destruction occurring in the wake of their policies—policies that were undeniably followed throughout the country, no matter what they claimed otherwise, no matter what the president or anyone else tried to say. The lockdowns—their lockdowns—were at this point, in my mind, reprehensible, totally unforgivable, a crime against humanity.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“That was validated by Agrawal’s study in June 2021, who found that deaths were falling before lockdowns were imposed, but once lockdowns were instituted, the death toll began rising.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“Unfortunately, nothing actually changed. Birx persisted in promoting her own advice: recommendations that prompted fear and perpetuated the lockdowns. And that advice was implemented by almost all the governors, regardless of any attempt to deny that and avoid accountability. 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.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“Unfortunately, nothing actually changed. Birx persisted in promoting her own advice: recommendations that prompted fear and perpetuated the lockdowns. And that advice was implemented by almost all the governors, regardless of any attempt to deny that and avoid accountability”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“No one on the Task Force presented any data. No contrary evidence was mentioned. Warnings, broad statements, and assertions were uttered, but never any data or evidence.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“The logical implications of these belated declarations are striking: If steps need to be taken to protect children from COVID-19, then those same steps are required each and every year that the influenza season arrives, a disease that kills more children, that causes hospitalization of more children and that is frequently transmitted from children to the same high-risk teachers and family members who then die.” Of course, we would never close schools annually for seasonal flu.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“In the middle of my initial Task Force meeting in mid-August, I realized that my assumptions were correct—nothing good would come of my being on the Task Force.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“Therefore, they were reluctant to voice concerns, knowing they could not possibly carry the day. They had also witnessed the unpleasant reactions from Birx whenever she had been challenged.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“The next Task Force meeting also had a full agenda. As always, more items were listed than would be covered. At the end of the meeting, the VP remembered to squeeze in the testing guidance document, quickly asking for the added section on nursing homes in order to finish with the whole issue. Redfield distributed it around the table to everyone. It had no annotation of changes—all “Track Changes” indicators were now removed. I glanced through the document. It had been completely changed from the version approved by everyone at the previous Task Force meeting. True, a separate section on testing inside nursing homes had been added. However, nearly the entire document had been reverted to the original, old version of the guidance. Virtually none of the changes we had all agreed upon one week ago were present. I pulled out my notes from last week’s meeting. I was correct—that entire document had been ignored.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“The media was rabid. Anonymous “officials” were quoted saying that the document was “published against scientists’ objections”—as if the scientists they always trusted, Fauci, Birx, the CDC, HHS, and the FDA, had not all approved and written it; as if the director of the CDC himself had not written, finalized, and then published the document himself. The blame was directed against HHS officials or me or the president—anyone except Fauci and Birx—because it simply had to be that way. An unending stream of wild accusations and smears filled the media, all from people who knew nothing about the truth. Pure speculation was published and repeated endlessly as fact.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“Birx commented on the importance of testing asymptomatic people. She argued that the only way to figure out who was sick was to test them. She memorably exclaimed, “That’s why it’s so dangerous—people don’t even know they’re sick!” I felt myself looking around the room, wondering if I was the only one who had heard this.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“The main reason for my presence was to impact policy, not just try to help the president and the country accurately understand the current status of the pandemic. After all, I was a health policy expert, not an epidemiologist or virologist. My expertise, my role, was to devise a set of policies that minimized the harms of the pandemic—including the harms of the policies themselves. Americans would have been frightened if they had realized that there was no one on the Task Force with any medical background who understood, or was even concerned with, these impacts. To delegate policy to people solely concerned with stopping the infection, without any understanding of the destruction of the lockdowns, would have been reckless.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

“The truth will prevail,” John repeatedly assured me. Jay encouraged me as well: “Keep it up, Scott, you’re right! The tide is turning. I know it!” They were insistent on being optimistic, but I had my doubts. “I feel like I’m living in a Kafka novel!” I kept repeating at home and finally even said in some interviews. A lack of logic and common sense was already pervasive and crippling the country.”
― Scott W. Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America