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Birx lists Atlasโs โdangerous assertionsโ:
That schools could open everywhere without any precautions (neither masking nor testing), regardless of the status of the spread in the community.
That children did not transmit the virus.
That children didnโt get ill. That there was no risk to anyone young.
That long Covid-19 was being overplayed.
That heart-damage findings were incidental.
That comorbidities did not play a critical role in communities, especially among teachers.
That merely employing some physical distance overcame the virusโs ill effects.
That masks were overrated and not needed.
That the Coronavirus Task Force had gotten the country into this situation by promoting testing.
That testing falsely increased case counts in the United States in comparison with other countries.
That targeted testing and isolation constituted a lockdown, plain and simple, and werenโt needed.
That every word of Atlasโs assertions was obviously 100% true only made them all the more dangerous. As Alexandr Solzhenitsyn said, โOne word of truth shall outweigh the whole world,โ and nothing would derail the worldโs communist destiny faster than letting these self-evident truths spread freely.
In particular,CNNโs Sanjay Gupta was a key component of my strategyโฆ He specifically spoke about a mild diseaseโanother way to describe silent spread. I saw this as a sign that he got it. As a doctor himself, he could see what I was seeing. He could serve as a very good outside-government spokesperson, echoing my message that family members and others they were in close contact with could unknowingly bring the virus home, resulting in a catastrophic and deadly event.
Birx frequently emphasizes her fixation with the concept of โasymptomatic spread.โIn her mind, the less sick a person is, the more โinsidiousโ they are:
Asymptomatic, presymptomatic, and even mildly symptomatic spread are particularly insidious because, with these, many people donโt know they are infected. They may not take precautions or may not practice good hygiene, and they donโt isolate.
As Scott Atlas recalls in his own book, A Plague Upon Our House:
Birx commented on the importance of testing asymptomatic people. She argued that the only way to figure out who was sick was to test them. She memorably exclaimed, โThatโs why itโs so dangerousโpeople donโt even know theyโre sick!โ I felt myself looking around the room, wondering if I was the only one who had heard this.
Birx spends roughly the next 150 pages of her book recalling her anguish asAtlas thwarted her plans to keep America in a near-permanent state of lockdown. As Atlas recalls:
She threw a fit, right there, in front of everyone, as we stood near the door before leaving the Oval Office. She was furious, screaming at me, โNEVER DO THAT AGAIN!! AND IN THE OVAL!!โ I felt pretty bad, because she was so angry. I had absolutely no desire for conflict. But did she actually expect me to lie to the president, just to cover up for her? I responded, โSorry, but he asked me a question, so I answered it.โ
Indeed, Birxโs memoir corroborates the testimony in Atlasโs book of the outsized role he played in bringing lockdowns in the United States to an end. More than anything, this involved standing up toBirx who, contrary to popular belief, did more than even Fauci to promote and prolong lockdownsacross the United States. As Atlas explains:
Dr. Fauci held court in the public eye on a daily basis, so frequently that many misconstrue his role as being in charge. However, it was really Dr. Birx who articulated Task Force policy. All theadvice from the Task Force to the states came from Dr. Birx. All written recommendations about their on-the-ground policies were from Dr. Birx. Dr. Birx conducted almost all the visits to states on behalf of the Task Force.
Unlike the vast majority of our leaders and institutions, Atlas did not shrug this responsibility, and for that, our entire nation owes him a special thanks. I vividly recall reading Atlasโs articles in early 2020, correctly predicting that โThe COVID-19 shutdown will cost Americans millions of years of life,โ a rare light in that dark, dystopian period.