A new face walked out with President Trump during his daily coronavirus briefing on Monday: Scott Atlas, MD, a board-certified radiologist.
“He's working with us and will be working with us on the coronavirus," Trump said during the Aug. 10 meeting. "And he has many great ideas. And he thinks what we've done is really good, and now we'll take it to a new level.”
Atlas is a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank, according to Forbes. He served as a professor and chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center from 1998 to 2012, according to his online university profile.
Additionally, his Stanford bio states that he has served as a senior healthcare advisor to a number of presidential candidates, and has counseled Congress members on national healthcare issues. He’s the editor of Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain and Spine, a “leading” textbook in the field, now in its fifth edition.
CNN has reported that his official title is adviser to the president, and noted that he has made a handful of recent appearances on Fox News, calling for schools to reopen and college football to resume this fall.
“We have to become rational here,” Fox quoted him as saying during a Monday night interview on one of the channel’s programs. “The risk for people that age is less than seasonal influenza,” Atlas said referring to college students. "I mean, you have to really look at the data...You can't say it's all about the science and then act contrary to science.”
Many news outlets have reported that Atlas’ views on COVID-19 appear to more directly align with the president’s, with Rush Limbaugh praising the new adviser during his radio show this week, saying “he is countering Fauci.” In late July, Trump called Anthony Fauci, MD, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, "a little bit of an alarmist." Fauci responded by saying, "I consider myself more of a realist."
In an op-ed published by The Hill in April, Atlas shared his opinions on the coronavirus, promoting herd immunity until a vaccine is available.
"In the absence of immunization, society needs circulation of the virus, assuming high-risk people can be isolated," he wrote in the piece. "It is very possible that whole-population isolation prevented natural herd immunity from developing."
According to CNN, Atlas has attended two briefings this week but has not been given any speaking time.
Matt joined Chicago’s TriMed team in 2018 covering all areas of health imaging after two years reporting on the hospital field. He holds a bachelor’s in English from UIC, and enjoys a good cup of coffee and an interesting documentary.