A prominent physician says Americans will have long-term psychological damage after the coronavirus pandemic due to irresponsible messaging from authorities.
The video: During an appearance on Fox News on Monday, Scott Atlas, former chief of radiology at Stanford University Medical Center, accused the media and public health officials of “instilling fear” in the public.
Atlas, who is currently a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, spoke with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham about what he described as overly negative press coverage of the pandemic.
- “At this point, when you have people that keep repeating that kind of stuff, misinformation, totally ignoring the science on the masks, actually completely ignoring and therefore pushing false information. They’re instilling fear,” said Atlas, who advocated the “herd immunity” approach to the coronavirus while advising former President Donald Trump.
- “That’s what’s worrisome here,” he added. “Because when you look at the data on the surveys, over 70% of Americans say that they will wear a mask after the pandemic is over.”
- “That’s very frightening,” Atlas concluded. “We have a damaged American psyche and it’s due to these public health officials that are just really not saying the real data, probably because they don’t want to admit that they were so wrong.”
Narratives: Conservative commentators have slammed the “doublethink” on virus measures, not least Ingraham, who began her Monday show with a montage of apparently self-contradictory public statements from Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor and a lead on the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
- Fauci claimed in a Sunday CNN appearance that Americans may need to wear “life-saving” protective masks into 2022, despite his statements early in the pandemic dismissing the use of masks.
- “Well, the reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N-95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply,” Fauci told The Street in June. “And we wanted to make sure that the people, namely the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harmS way, [had masks] to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected.”
