Reaction to Scott Atlas's Remarks at Stanford Pandemic Policy Conference

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This is a reaction to Dr. Scott Atlas’s remarks delivered at the recent Pandemic Policy: Planning the Future, Assessing the Past conference at Stanford, titled “On Censorship, Academic Freedom, and the Pandemic”.¹

My comments should not be construed as a judgment about Dr. Atlas’s motives, character, or services rendered during his COVID Era roles & advocacy. I admire his ability to speak plainly & directly and will not forget how he stood against the abhorrent and anti-child pronouncements of Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, et al. during his appointment on the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

Dr. Atlas is also a fierce defender of free speech and strikes me as someone unlikely to take personal offense at criticism directed toward his views.

I limit my focus here to a core claim:

Lockdowns were instituted, they failed to stop the dying, they failed to stop the spread - that’s the data: Bjornskov, 2021; Bendavid, 2021; Agarwal, 2021; Herby, 2022; Kerpen, 2023; Ioannidis, 2024.²

My reactions to each part of the statement follow:

1) Lockdowns were instituted.

I find it difficult to say something was instituted when that something is ill-defined and outside the law. Lockdown is a term from the prison world and is best applied to highly temporal, actual-emergency situations (e.g., active shooter, credible bomb threats) in specific buildings or quadrants. CNN was an early-adopter of the word in later January 2020; there may be earlier uses with respect to “novel coronavirus”.

As far I know, lockdown has no legal meaning in federal or state communicable-disease codes. The sad truth is, the U.S. government issued illegal decrees amounting to mass quarantine and isolation orders without due process, unconstitutional instructions for business, school, & church to close, and egregious violations of fundamental freedoms.

I admit lockdown has been a politically-powerful synecdoche that casts a wide net (or Big Tent) over those with disparate views on other aspects of the COVID event. I’ve used it myself as shorthand but grew uncomfortable with doing so as it became clear there is no unified definition or common understanding of it as either an “action” or set of “reactions” taken by governing officials.³ Saying our leaders did something they aren’t allowed to do to “control” disease spread validates their actions and provides no way to keep them from doing it again.

The real “locking down” in spring 2020+ occurred with healthcare settings — not only in nursing homes but in hospitals. Visitors and third-party witnesses were locked out and patients & residents locked up as deadly, government-directed protocols were implemented. The only honest examination of such practices I’m aware of is occurring in Scotland, not in the United States.

If Dr. Atlas or anyone else at the Stanford conference has called for a federal or independent review of hospital patient records, those entreaties have escaped my notice and I would appreciate being directed to instances where he/they have said an official inquiry is needed. (My recommendation is to start with the deeply-problematic New York City event.)

2) Lockdowns failed to stop the dying.

Atlas implies there was above-normal dying going on in need of stopping.

Numerous analysts have shown there was no sign of a spreading pathogen adding risk of death until governments decreed emergencies and deployed mass testing in hospitals, including in Northern Italy and New York City.⁴ The severe, successive and/or near-simultaneous spikes in locations around the world in spring 2020 can be entirely explained by implementation of iatrogenic (if not Democidal) policies in hospitals, care homes, and ambulance services, an onslaught of propaganda, and fraud. There was no public health or disease emergency involving a contagious illness and therefore nothing for “lockdowns” to stop.

If the word lockdown must be used, it would be more accurate to say lockdowns started or initiated the dying, both in real-life and according to Scary Numbers on the Screen.⁵

3) Lockdowns failed to stop the spread.

Similar to the claim about death, Atlas implies there was “spread” of something occurring from which some people needed to be protected and that (ideally) needed to be stopped.⁶ I assume the “something” is SARS-CoV-2, but Atlas’s doesn’t name a pathogen or specific illness. He says the virus twice and does not mention the disease the WHO said it causes, i.e., COVID-19/covid.⁷

Based on his remarks at Stanford and writing to date, it seems Dr. Atlas accepts the WHO/U.S. government’s claims about a spreading risk-additive pathogen unreservedly. I’m not sure what kind of lab-adulterated or naturally-occurring biological agent “lies in wait” for official orders before wreaking havoc on the populace, but I do know that testing can create the illusion of a newly-named/freshly-minted virus spreading.

See spring 2003 with SARS, spring 2009 with H1N1, and March 2020 with SARS-CoV-2.

4) [Implied] “The data” say lockdowns failed to stop the dying and stop the spread.

From my point of view, “the data” in the studies Atlas cites does not and cannot say much about lockdowns failing to stop dying or spreading, because the studies:

• assume something that presented new or additional risks was suddenly spreading in need of slowing or stopping, and

• focus on whether and to what extent various policies and decisions at the federal and state levels accomplished the slowing/stopping goal.

While there’s something to be said for meeting The Enemy (i.e., the government) on his terms and holding him accountable to his own cockamamie standards, it comes with the risk of perpetuating his lies. Unfortunately, that’s what I think has happened with those who accept the government’s claims about a spreading thing prima facie and proceed with their research accordingly.

I see no evidence a deadly coronavirus was suddenly spreading, no pandemic, and no reason to believe a true disease-spread emergency involving transmission of something in the air or between people is possible.

Unlike Dr. Atlas, the studies he cites, and every participant in the Stanford conference I heard speak, I accept neither the WHO pandemic declaration, nor the assertion that a new viral threat or risk presented itself in 2020.

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My summary of the ’Next Pandemic’ View - which Dr. Atlas seems to hold - is as follows:

The ‘Next Pandemic’ View

• There was pandemic in 2020. (The WHO’s 11 March 2020 pandemic declaration is legitimate.)

• A biological and pathogenic entity called SARS-CoV-2 (née 2019-nCoV) caused that pandemic.

• SARS-CoV-2 is the causal agent of a disease with unique etiology - Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) – and adds risk of severe illness or death to one or more groups of people. Its sudden presence and/or “spread” created more risk beyond other known or hypothesized causes of respiratory illness, versus displacing it.

• COVID-19 does not exist without SARS-CoV-2; other pathogens do not/cannot cause COVID-19.

• There will be another pandemic.

• This future pandemic will be/can be caused by a pathogen with characteristics similar to SARS-CoV-2.

My View

I reject the Next Pandemic assertions and at this point believe the opposite:

• There was no pandemic in 2020. The WHO pandemic declaration is fraudulent and criminal, even by their own bogus “redefinition” in 2009, because a newly-named coronavirus was not suddenly, quickly, or exponentially spreading from person to person or circulating “in the air”.

• The biological entity called SARS-CoV-2 (née 2019-nCoV) did not cause a pandemic.

• It was never demonstrated scientifically or medically that SARS-CoV-2 is the causal agent of a disease with unique etiology or that it is additive to the risk of severe illness or death for groups of people, independent of testing and maltreatment in response to a positive test results.

• At most, COVID-19 is an ICD code (U07.1) and coding guidance. It is not a demonstrable “new” cause of death. The acronym may have multiple or alternate meanings (e.g., Covert Operation for Vaccine Induced Disease, Coronavirus Opioid, or Viral Infection Death)

• Pandemics are not epidemiological or biological phenomena; no virus has ever been shown as the casual agent of a global disease spreading around the world over a brief period.

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Post subject to revisions, updates, & changes of mind.

1. Videos from the conference are now posted. I chose Scott Atlas’s remarks for comment after seeing them as an article before the videos were available.

2. Dr. Atlas’s spring 2020 writing includes “Widespread isolation and stopping all human interaction will not contain the COVID-19 pandemic” (26 March 2020), “How to reopen society using medical science and logic” (2 May 2020), which is a version of his 6 May 2020 testimony to a Senate Sub-Committee. He is the author of A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America

3. As an example of my growing discomfort in 2023 with the term lockdown, I reached out to Jeffrey Tucker of Brownstone Institute, which had graciously republished my “Osterism” article in October 2022, under the headline “Osterism Won’t Prevent Lockdown From Happening Again”. I had not said “lockdown” in the essay and requested the headline be changed to remove the term. Tucker obliged and retitled the piece “Osterism Won’t Prevent March 2020 From Happening Again”.

4. e.g., Pospichal, 2020; Rancourt 2020; Rancourt et al, 2024; Engler, 2022; Verduyn et al, 2023; Hockett, 2022; 2024

5. Numbers that still haven’t been substantiated with basic proof in many U.S. cities, including New York City.

6. This is consistent with Atlas’s spring 2020 writing, as well as with his 6 March 2023 op-ed “America’s COVID response was based on lies,” in which he said, “Even after draconian measures, including school closures, stoppage of non-COVID medical care, business shutdowns, personal restrictions, and then the continuation of many restrictions and mandates in the presence of a vaccine, there was an undeniable failure—over two presidential administrations—to stop cases from rapidly escalating.”

7. First mention: “Over the next 15-20 years, the unemployment alone will cause 900k to 1.2 million EXTRA American deaths – from the economic lockdown, not the virus.” | Second mention: “Remember - Lockdowns were not caused by the virus.” Which virus? Atlas does not say.