Public health officials are growing alarmed at President Donald Trump's decision to hire a doctor whose strategy for handling the novel coronavirus pandemic is to build herd immunity by having more people get sick.
The Washington Post reports that the president has increasingly embraced the views of Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist from Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution who has no background in the study and treatment of infectious diseases.
One senior administration official tells the Post that Atlas sees himself as the "anti-Dr. Fauci," as he has been pushing for fewer restrictions on economic activity with the goal of letting more people contract the disease, thus pushing the population more quickly toward herd immunity.
"Atlas has argued both internally and in public that an increased case count will move the nation more quickly to herd immunity and won’t lead to more deaths if the vulnerable are protected," the Post writes.
However, health experts argue that it is all but impossible to protect vulnerable people if the virus is allowed to spread unchecked.
"The United States has a higher number of vulnerable people of all ages because of high rates of heart and lung disease and obesity, and millions of vulnerable people live outside nursing homes -- many in the same households with children, whom Atlas believes should return to school," the Post reports.
