Voters' unhappiness with Trump's response to the global pandemic
that has killed hundreds of thousands helped propel his challenger,
Democrat Joe Biden, to victory in the Nov. 3 election.
"I am writing to resign from my position as special adviser to the
president of the United States," Atlas said in a letter to Trump
dated Dec. 1 that he posted on Twitter.
Public health experts, including Anthony Fauci, the leading U.S.
infectious disease expert, have sharply criticized Atlas, a neuro-radiologist,
for providing Trump with misleading or incorrect information on the
virus pandemic.
“Dr. Scott Atlas’ resignation today is long overdue and underscores
the triumph of science and truth over falsehoods and
misinformation," his peers at Stanford University's medical school
said in a statement issued late Monday. In September they had issued
a letter denouncing his views.
"His actions have undermined and threatened public health even as
countless lives have been lost to COVID-19. We will continue to
advocate for evidence-based public health policies that are grounded
in established science, including the use of proven preventative
measures like mask-wearing and social-distancing, and the safe
testing and delivery of effective therapies and vaccines.”
In his resignation letter, Atlas, a senior fellow at Stanford's
Hoover Institution, listed what he considered accomplishments in
reopening schools and expanding virus testing while also defending
himself against his many critics.
"Like all scientists and health policy scholars, I learned new
information and synthesized the latest data from around the world,
all in an effort to provide you with the best information to serve
the greater good," he wrote.
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Atlas was considered a special government employee on a 130-day detail that
expires this week. Fox News first reported his resignation.
Atlas has repeatedly downplayed the importance of masks and this month said
lockdowns had been "an epic failure" in stopping the spread of the virus.
He also had to apologize this month for an interview with Russia's
Kremlin-backed television station RT, saying he was unaware it was a registered
foreign agent.
Dr. Celine Grounder, a member of Biden's advisory panel on the crisis, greeted
the news of the resignation with relief.
"I’m relieved that in the future, people who are qualified, people who are
infectious disease specialists and epidemiologists like me will be helping to
lead this effort," she told broadcaster CNBC.
"You wouldn’t go to a podiatrist for a heart attack and that was essentially
what was happening.”
(Interactive graphic tracking global spread of coronavirus:
https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps)
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal, Aram Roston and Steve Holland; Writing by Lisa
Lambert and Eric Beech; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Gerry Doyle and Raju
Gopalakrishnan)
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