October 26, 2025 • 32 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Michael Barry Show. The story comes to us from
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(00:23):
of our show, but we do listen to their stuff
and we're big fans of it. And this week we
seek to amplify a great story that was told there
and encourage you to support them. Preger U's CEO, Marissa Street,
I don't know if it's Streeter Strike talks with doctor
Scott Atlas, former member of the White House COVID nineteen
task force. He reveals how shocked he was to see
(00:45):
how powerful Washington figures, including doctor Fauci, were incentivized to
politicize and monetize the response to the pandemic. It wasn't
about your health. Doctor Atlas reveals what, of course everyone
now knows. Many people died because of censorship, dishonesty, and
the demonization of medical dissent.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Doctor Scott atlis, thank you so much for coming in
here today. Before we get started, I'm anticipating that the
entire Internet is going to pile on us. By the time,
we're done with this interview because too much truth is
going to be said here, So to prevent that, can
you please share with us your credentials, your backgrounds, your accomplishments,
(01:30):
all of these things that you have done that have
really led you to be able to speak bravely and
accurately about what we're seeing right now in the medical
world in America.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Okay, I'm an MD. I went to University of Chicago
for medical school. I for the past decade have been
full time healthcare policy. In fact, I've worked on healthcare
policy for about twenty years, overlapped with a twenty five
(02:02):
year career as a clinical doctor and academic medical scientist
and a professor at some of the best medical centers
in the country. I've published over one hundred peer reviewed papers.
I had received over thirty NIHN other grants. I've been
(02:23):
a visiting professor at probably every top medical school in
the country. I've given hundreds of invited lectures pre COVID,
and I was a professor and chief of a division
of a department at Stanford University Medical School before I
took the full time position in healthcare policy at Hoover Institution,
(02:46):
which is a public policy institute at Stanford University.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
So some of this background led you to become an
advisor on the COVID Response Committee for the White House.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Right.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
I was called up in July of twenty twenty by
the Personnel Office in the White House and they asked
if I would be interested in at least speaking to
the President. So, of course, I'm an American. It's my
field health care policy. The policies that were being done
(03:17):
were completely wrong. It was obvious from the earliest days
to anyone who knew anything about infectious disease and clinical
or really medical science at all, that these were very harmful.
It was contrary to known pandemic management. So in July
of twenty twenty, I of course said yes, and I
(03:37):
went to Washington and talked to everybody who people have
heard of, you know, the Vice President, the President, Mark Meadows,
Jared Kushner, many other people about what was happening in
the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
I bet you remember those moments pretty vividly, given how
significant it was. What was it like working there? Who
were you interacting with? Were you interacting with doctor Fauci,
doctor Burks, Did you have meetings, did you converse about
the data that you were finding and the policies that
were set for the country.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Well, the first the day that I got there, which
was in mid July, I went through and I was
asked a bunch of questions by all these various people.
At the end of the day, Jared Kushner turned to
me and said, well, we'd like you to advise the president.
Would you be willing to do that? And I said, well,
of course I would. People are dying. But this is
(04:34):
what you're going to get. And I said, you're going
to get somebody who I'm not going to agree with
something that's wrong. I don't care who tells me to,
even the President. I'm not going to agree with a
group statement if I don't believe in it. I'm not
going to sign on to what someone else said because
they said it. And Jared turned to me and said, well,
(04:55):
that's exactly what we want you and so I was
happy to hear that done. The next sentence he said
was but I'm very concerned if it becomes once it
becomes public, they're going to destroy you. So you know,
I'm not a political person. I was very naive about
the way Washington worked, and I said well, that doesn't
(05:15):
sound so good to me. I was sort of shocked
to even care that they were going to destroy me.
So I was relieved, but I was very worried, and
so I said, let me try this from California, and
so I flew back home to Stanford, and over the
next few days it just was obviously it wasn't going
to work. It was ad hoc things were being made,
decisions were being made, statements were being made that were
(05:36):
completely wrong, and the President in the United States was
being fed completely wrong information from Fauci and Burks, who
were at that point having They were running the White
House Coronavirus Task Force for six months before I walked in.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
So I decided to.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Go back at the end of July, and July thirty first,
I showed up as an advisor to the President. I'm
getting around answering your question and so fascinating. Actually, I
got there and I thought I would be the advisor
to the president, behind the scenes, non public. I wasn't
(06:15):
interested in being a public figure at all. And I
was told, well, no, we want you to sit in
on the task force too and be part of that.
And I said, well, but that doesn't make sense to
me that they're not going to they we know what
they're doing. They're doing lockdowns, school closures, they're destroying people.
They're not going to take an advice of someone from
the outside. And they said, well, no, we want you
(06:38):
to try to convince them.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
You know the data. So I said, okay.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
So I was part of the task force also, and
then therefore the task force I could talk about how
that worked. There were task force meetings. My first one
really that I sat in on was mid August, second
week of August twenty twenty, and it was a table
of about eight people. Vice President Pence was the actual
(07:05):
head of the task force, but at the table were
doctor Fauci, who was not head of anything, but he
was there as the head of the infectious disease part
of the NIH Deborah Burkes, who was the head of
the White House Coronavirus medical side of the task force.
She was the official head. She was the White House
Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator. Redfield, Robert Redfield, was the head
(07:29):
of the CDC. He was at the table, and then
there were various other people at the table, and then
in the room around the table the perofy were another
dozen or so people. Then there was a spillover room
filled with people. Then there were people on video and telephones,
so there were a lot of people, but there was
this set of about eight people at the table, and
(07:51):
those meetings were irregularly held, but I was at those meetings,
and at those meetings. In the first meeting, I remember
there was some statements made. They were completely wrong about
the risk of children, and Vice President Penn said, well,
we all agree with this, right, because I hadn't said
(08:11):
anything at that point, and I was the newcomer, the outsider,
and he sort of saw the look on my face
that I probably probably didn't agree, and he said, well, Scott,
you're here because we want to hear what you.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Have to say.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
And I said, okay, I totally disagree. And that became
sort of a catchphrase that my friends in the White
House would say because I said it so often. I
totally disagree because these people were completely wrong, And the
sad part was they had no data. There were these
sophomoric charts tabulated by Deborah Burkes that a middle school
(08:47):
a student could put together with color coding arbitrary categories
of red, yellow, green, danger, risky, not a risk, but
they were just arbitrary the cutoffs for cases, for whatever
the criteria was. There was no real science or scientific
(09:08):
debate except when I was asked a question. I was
prepared with a dozen two dozen scientific papers, all the
data I had gone through, with the skepticism about the
study designs that you're supposed to have as a medical scientist,
and so when I was asked a question, I would
go through the data. And there was never a single meeting.
(09:29):
And this is sort of shocking to even keep reliving.
Not a single time were Deborah Berks or Anthony Fauci
or Robert Redfield brought scientific papers into the meeting. Not
a single time was anything I had ever refuted by
criticism of the data or our alternative numbers or other data.
(09:52):
Not a single time was there a criticism about a
study being designed, except from me when I would say,
of course, as a medical science for decades, the way
you look at a study as you look at the
study design first. If the study design is flawed, the
conclusions are not valid. Not a single time did I
ever hear Redfield, Berks or Fauci ever criticize a study design,
(10:16):
And even worse, not a single time did they disagree
with each other, which course is unheard of, implying that
they were just there was a group think going on,
not critical thinking. But the bottom line of not a
single time is not a single time did they disagree
with me on data. The only comment was Scott, you're
an outlier, which of course is not the thinking, not
(10:39):
a scientific argument, it's not a debate, it's not a
way to have a discussion you discuss the data. Instead,
it was ad hominem, you're fringe, you're an outlier. And
it's also the thinking of a bureaucrat, because it's not
the way any scientific conference I've ever attended was. It's
(11:00):
not the way we do discussions of scientific data. It's
just not it's not appropriate. So it's very it should
be very frightening everybody is watching this to even know
this that the people running and advising on the medical science,
advising the medical policy were not medical scientists. They were bureaucrats.
(11:22):
Vout She was in his position for thirty eight years.
Deborah Berks was a government employee for forty years. These
were bureaucrats. They didn't act like scientists, they didn't think
like scientists, they didn't.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
Know the data and when they.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Were wrong, because they were typically wrong everything they were saying,
and I was showing the data to show they were wrong.
They were frustrated rather than coming back and having the
engaged discussion.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Can you give examples of things that you brought to
the table, things that are so obvious? I'm assuming there
are things that we know today that are clearly obvious
that you brought to the table then and that they rejected.
And also why would they reject these things? Like why
were they so married to a certain perspective And we're
(12:11):
not open to hearing from somebody like you, or even
bringing in more people like you to the table so
that there is real scientific debate.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yeah, I'm going to answer the last part first because
I think this is this is a perfect illustration of
why they didn't want to bring in more people.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
I have two stories to relate that.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
One was Fauci called me up and he said, Scott,
we'd like to have a meeting of the doctors on
the task force and see what we have as common ground.
And I said, okay, that's great. I'd like to bring
in some of the epidemiologists who are doing the research.
I want to bring in medical scientists who are doing
(12:51):
the research on the pandemic, because of course Fauci Redfield
birks they're not doing research. And I said, that's great.
I'm going to have some of the world's top epidemiologists
and the infectious disease experts and virologists come in who
are doing the research on this pandemic, and we'll have
a discussion of the data. That was the end of
(13:12):
the discussion. Because they didn't want to do that. Fauci
dropped that. That was never brought up again because what
they instead wanted was Fauci Burke's Redfield in me only
with no witnesses as to what was going on. I
wanted to bring in the people doing the research and
let's have a real discussion.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
So that was that's one example.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
The second example, though, is more flagrant, and this is
my role as an advisor to the president was to
answer his questions and give them the best information that
was available. And I thought, okay, this is very important
to get the people doing the research in to answer
the President of the United States questions, not to get
him to be persuaded by me, to have him ask
(13:58):
his questions to the people doing the research. So I
arranged five people to come in and including myself and
answer questions, have a discussion with the president in the
Oval office. And we arranged that to occur in August
of twenty twenty, which is one of the first things
(14:18):
I did with the idea that Burkes would be able
to come, because we kept we arranged it and she
couldn't come because of her schedule, so we changed the
date so she could come. And this was all set up,
and I had doctor Martin Kohldorf, who was a professor
at Harvard Medical School. I had Jay Bodachari, a professor
at Stanford Medical School. I had Cody Meisner, professor at
(14:42):
Tuff's in preteratric infectious disease in Boston. I had Joe Ladoppo,
a professor in health policy at UCLA, and I had
myself and we all were organized and we were coming
in and this was all set to have Burke's attend also.
And then I was called into Jared Kushner's office less
than twenty four hours before the meeting and I was
(15:05):
told the meetings not on It's canceled. First of all,
some of these people are already flying to Washington, and
I said, what do you mean it's canceled, And they said, well,
Burke sent an email saying she's uncomfortable, she's not going
to come, And so I said, well, no, that's unacceptable.
I said, first of all, the meeting was set to
have her come. Second, well, if she doesn't know enough
(15:27):
or is so insecure about her knowledge that she can't come, okay,
Well that's too bad. That's an indication about her that
doesn't We canceled the meeting because of the optics of
how it would look to have a meeting without Deborah
Burke's there were there to answer the President's questions.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
And in fact, this is.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
One of the This is the only time where I
really thought I was going to quit, because if they
were to cancel that, I thought it was so outrageous.
People are dying. We need to stop people from dying.
The President of the United States says, questions. It's insane
not have the world's best scientists who are doing the
research on the pandemic come in and help because of
(16:07):
some optics to the public if Birks can't come, and
so to Jared's credit, he said, okay, we'll have the
meeting you're right, but it'll only be five minutes, and
it'll be a hello, meet and greet was the term
that it was told to me. And at first I
was like, oh my god, but I said, okay, I
(16:29):
mean that's let's see how it goes. It's better than nothing.
So we all went and right before the meeting in
the Oval Office where they originally were going to have
open press Q and a press release, because you know,
not just answering the president's questions is good. But obviously
the country was in a state of panic.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
The news media.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Was saying Trump doesn't listen to the science. You would
think people would want to have their fear allayed and
the press would want it publicize the actually great scientists
were talking to the president, but no, the people in
the PR side or whatever political consulting thought this was
(17:14):
a bad idea to have other scientists come in and
answer the president's questions. This is in August of twenty twenty.
So anyway, we come in and I was told five minutes.
People were tapping on. We're sitting at the Oval Office
right in front of the desk of the President, and
I was told, okay, Scott, you got five minutes so
(17:36):
the President said, okay, Scott, tell us what we're going
to do here. So I introduced everybody and I said,
we're here to answer your questions. And I had had
previously said to the doctors who I had come in,
we have no time here. Don't go off pontificating about
your favorite topic here. Just answer his questions and be
truthful whatever he asked. And so he started the questions,
(18:00):
and he went through and asked all the appropriate questions
about lockdowns, about school closures, about the risks of children,
about hydroxychloric went about Sweden, about what's happening with economical shutdown,
et cetera, on public health, and he went through and
asked point by point, all of the five of us
(18:21):
these questions. And it went on for forty five minutes,
and I kept being tapped on the shoulder saying, Scott,
you know, wrap it up. We have other things. And
I said, okay, but meantime, I'm not going to rupt
the President of the United States. That's obvious. Secondly, this
was important. Third he was asking great questions and in
fact called in his video maker and said he was
(18:47):
so happy to have what he called five geniuses here
that he brought in the video and I narrated a
small video and we introduced ourselves on the video. Of
course video has been suppressed. There was never a press release.
It was viewed as harmful that it was held without Burks.
But Burkes backed out of it and in fact tried
(19:09):
to sabotage it, I believe, but luckily we were there.
So this is an example, to get back to your question,
people that are advising the president, why are they afraid
to have expert scientists come in. They're just protecting themselves.
(19:31):
This is the mentality of an insecure bureaucrat doing the
CYA for their own position. And in fact this was validated.
This opinion of mine was validated later because Burkes in
early twenty twenty one admitted, although I didn't know it
at the time, during twenty twenty when I was there
(19:51):
for the three and a half months I was there,
Burkes admitted that they had a pact Burkes, Fauci, and
Redfield that if any of them were fight by Trump,
they would all quit immediately. Now, first of all, to me,
that strikes me as people not caring if people are dying.
They care about their own position. Okay, But second of all,
(20:12):
this is the mark of people who were extremely insecurity
at different motivations. My motivation was very simple. People were dying,
It's my country, I'm going to help. And I was
really appalled at the perverse motivations that I saw. Akay, Admittedly,
(20:32):
I'm naive. I'm not a political person, but I was shocked,
and I think people should be shocked and appalled at
what happened.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I'm very curious about the motivation of this political medical
group that seems to be running DC policy and shutting
the doors of those who actually understand what's happening out
there on the ground. And I want to get into it.
But before we get into the motive, I just want
to know the truth, doctor, I really really do. I mean,
(21:01):
I have three kids. I know that many people who
are listening, we want to know the truth. Given that
the truth has been censored. What were things that you
knew back then and you still know today that we
should know. I have a list of these things about
Corona COVID. First of all, Corona SARS COVID to us,
(21:23):
it was projected as if it's a completely brand new
beast and nobody knew how to handle it, and it
was just this like overwhelming environment where you know, the
scientists can't really do science because it's completely new.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Is it really?
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Was it really that new for you guys? Were you
so lost that you didn't even know where to start
when it came to COVID? How new was it?
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Well, the answer is no, it was not so lost
and new and new information. No information was known. This
is one of the many lies. And I don't want
to use the word missing because it's such an overused word.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
But.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
There were several false beliefs put forward to the public.
And when I say false, I'm talking about things that
we knew in spring of twenty twenty, not learned, not
learned in twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three,
we knew?
Speaker 4 (22:22):
What did we know? Okay?
Speaker 3 (22:23):
What were the false statements? Number one, everybody's at risk
to die? That's just false. From the earliest data of
the cruise ship, the Japanese cruise ship, we knew that
this was a virus that, thank god, was essentially spared
younger people and the high risk population were elderly people
(22:47):
with a lot of comor abilities. But you know, one
of the false everyone's at risk to die. The fatality
rate was extraordinarily high three point four percent by the
World Health Organization.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
That was false. We knew it at the time.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Anybody with five minutes of time who's a medical scientist
would have known that that's a fraction. And then it's
the number of people who died divided by the number
of people were infected. And the bottom number in the
who calculation was only considering the people who were so
sick that they went to see a doctor. But as
(23:20):
we know from other viral respiratory infections, including coronaviruses, which
this is one of the members of the family of coronaviruses,
four or five of which are already circulating in our
in our civilization, the bottom number should have been everybody
who's infected, because many, maybe half, are totally asymptomatic, maybe
(23:42):
even more have such minimal symptoms. So the infection fatality
it was grossly overstated. That was known, there was no
protection from this virus, that it was totally new.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
No, it wasn't.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
It was not completely new in that it's a member
of a virus family coronaviruses, that other that parts of
the world had a lot of protection from and this
is probably one of the reasons why some of the
countries in Asia had lower infection fatality rates from this virus,
because they had more experience with sars I, for instance.
(24:14):
And there already was data in the summer of twenty
twenty that showed that there's immunological reaction of old blood
samples from sars IE. We're talking about many, many years beforehand,
so therefore we're never exposed to stars to when you
put the SARS two virus in, it elicited an immunological response. Okay,
(24:38):
that implies an overlapping biological protection because a member of
the same family. Okay, the other lies everyone has the
same risk. I already said that's false. Everyone spreads equally.
That's just not true. That was not true from the
data in Europe that everyone.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
Can I ask you about that.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
So one of the things that we were told was
that asymptomatic people would spread the virus and that's why
children who were not symptomatic were very dangerous because they
would possibly carry it and kill the elderly without knowing it.
Did you guys know, first of all, is that even true.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Yeah, there's two parts to the answer. Part one is
that it was known from schools open in studies were
done in Sweden and Finland and elsewhere. Early on in
spring summer twenty twenty, it was known that open schools
do not have a higher rate of infection than close schools.
(25:43):
They do not increase the infection rate of the teachers,
They do not increase the infection rate of the community.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
There was zero harm.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
It was known that schools should be open. That whole
thing was a lie. The second sub bullet point sort
of under that, is that in the United States, teachers
did not have a higher risk and in fact, teachers
are a low risk population. The median age of a
K through twelfth teacher in the United States is forty one. Okay,
(26:10):
so half the people are under forty This is a
low risk group. Ninety two percent of teachers are under
sixty in the United States. Remember the high risk group
as people who are very old. And are there any
high risk teachers? Of course there are. There are immuno
compromise teachers are immuno compromised students. Okay, we could protect them,
they don't have to even go in. So but teachers
(26:31):
were not high risk. But the second part is, and
there was also several studies. There were about a dozen
studies in the early twenty twenty literature from Sweden, the Netherlands, France,
South Korea, the UK, Spain, Italy, Finland, Denmark that children
(26:55):
were not significant spreaders. Okay, so that was proven. Children
were not significant spreaders of this virus and children were not,
of course at high risk. In fact, healthy children had
a minuscule risk. This was known early on, and in
fact even on retrospective analysis of the Nation of Germany's
(27:20):
data during twenty twenty pre vaccine and the most lethal
form of the virus, zero healthy children died in Germany. Zero,
not zero percent. Zero. The numbers of children that died
in the United States are extremely low. Were their children
(27:40):
that died, Yes, there were children that died, almost all
of them, and perhaps all of them it's not clear
had underlying comorbidities. Healthy children had minuscule risk, This was known.
This was known early on. In fact, people under twenty,
the survival rate is ninety nine point nine nine seven
(28:01):
percent of people under twenty. The data now, by the way,
shows in retrospect not now, but the data from the
most lethal form of the virus, two thirds of deaths
were in people that were over the age of life expectancy.
It's not minimizing that people died, but two thirds of
(28:22):
deaths were in people that had six or more comorbidities.
So if you're old and you have hypertension or high
blood pressure that's treated, you're not necessarily at high risk.
It's old people who had six comorbidities or more. Okay,
you have to be elderly and frail. So there was
(28:44):
a gross overstatement as to who had risk. There was
a distortion, and there was not significant risk really from
children specifically. It was nothing special about them. And then
the last part of your question is asymptomatic spread. And
Fauci said he was all over the map on many
different things, but early on he said something correct, which
(29:04):
is that asymptomatic people are not the drivers of viral
respiratory epidemics. And that's true in this one. Okay, most
of the infection was not driven by asymptomatic people. Could
asymptomatic people spread, Yes, No, one's saying that that never happened.
That isn't the point. Similarly, Interestingly, almost all cases, or
(29:27):
the vast majority of cases, were spread indoors, so of
course the lockdowns, recommending people stay indoors and pulling people
off the beaches, forbidding them from being in the parks,
taking boats out to arrest people surfing out off the
coast of San Diego. I mean, this was completely antithetical,
opposite to what was known. So so many things were
(29:49):
known by the way. I do want to get to
one other thing that was a lie that was perpetrated
on the public, which was that there's no protection other
than a vaccine. Okay, this this doesn't just erase decades
of immunology literature that we get a recovery from a
virus infection. You have biological protection that is long lasting
(30:11):
against the serious illness or death. That was known not
just for decades, not just for hundreds of years, but
as my friend Martin Koldorff said, for thousands of years.
I mean, this recovery from a virus generating long lasting
biological protection was known, yet it was overtly explicitly denied
(30:34):
by people in the task force, by the media, and
by many medical scientists.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
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(31:00):
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Hope at eight seven seven seven one seven PTSD and
(32:12):
a combat veteran will answer the phone to provide free counseling.
The Michael Barry Show. The story comes to us from
praguer you. Prager you like Hillsdale College does amazing, amazing work,
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(00:23):
of our show, but we do listen to their stuff
and we're big fans of it. And this week we
seek to amplify a great story that was told there
and encourage you to support them. Preger U's CEO, Marissa Street,
I don't know if it's Streeter Strike talks with doctor
Scott Atlas, former member of the White House COVID nineteen
task force. He reveals how shocked he was to see
(00:45):
how powerful Washington figures, including doctor Fauci, were incentivized to
politicize and monetize the response to the pandemic. It wasn't
about your health. Doctor Atlas reveals what, of course everyone
now knows. Many people died because of censorship, dishonesty, and
the demonization of medical dissent.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Doctor Scott atlis, thank you so much for coming in
here today. Before we get started, I'm anticipating that the
entire Internet is going to pile on us. By the time,
we're done with this interview because too much truth is
going to be said here, So to prevent that, can
you please share with us your credentials, your backgrounds, your accomplishments,
(01:30):
all of these things that you have done that have
really led you to be able to speak bravely and
accurately about what we're seeing right now in the medical
world in America.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Okay, I'm an MD. I went to University of Chicago
for medical school. I for the past decade have been
full time healthcare policy. In fact, I've worked on healthcare
policy for about twenty years, overlapped with a twenty five
(02:02):
year career as a clinical doctor and academic medical scientist
and a professor at some of the best medical centers
in the country. I've published over one hundred peer reviewed papers.
I had received over thirty NIHN other grants. I've been
(02:23):
a visiting professor at probably every top medical school in
the country. I've given hundreds of invited lectures pre COVID,
and I was a professor and chief of a division
of a department at Stanford University Medical School before I
took the full time position in healthcare policy at Hoover Institution,
(02:46):
which is a public policy institute at Stanford University.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
So some of this background led you to become an
advisor on the COVID Response Committee for the White House.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Right.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
I was called up in July of twenty twenty by
the Personnel Office in the White House and they asked
if I would be interested in at least speaking to
the President. So, of course, I'm an American. It's my
field health care policy. The policies that were being done
(03:17):
were completely wrong. It was obvious from the earliest days
to anyone who knew anything about infectious disease and clinical
or really medical science at all, that these were very harmful.
It was contrary to known pandemic management. So in July
of twenty twenty, I of course said yes, and I
(03:37):
went to Washington and talked to everybody who people have
heard of, you know, the Vice President, the President, Mark Meadows,
Jared Kushner, many other people about what was happening in
the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
I bet you remember those moments pretty vividly, given how
significant it was. What was it like working there? Who
were you interacting with? Were you interacting with doctor Fauci,
doctor Burks, Did you have meetings, did you converse about
the data that you were finding and the policies that
were set for the country.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Well, the first the day that I got there, which
was in mid July, I went through and I was
asked a bunch of questions by all these various people.
At the end of the day, Jared Kushner turned to
me and said, well, we'd like you to advise the president.
Would you be willing to do that? And I said, well,
of course I would. People are dying. But this is
(04:34):
what you're going to get. And I said, you're going
to get somebody who I'm not going to agree with
something that's wrong. I don't care who tells me to,
even the President. I'm not going to agree with a
group statement if I don't believe in it. I'm not
going to sign on to what someone else said because
they said it. And Jared turned to me and said, well,
(04:55):
that's exactly what we want you and so I was
happy to hear that done. The next sentence he said
was but I'm very concerned if it becomes once it
becomes public, they're going to destroy you. So you know,
I'm not a political person. I was very naive about
the way Washington worked, and I said well, that doesn't
(05:15):
sound so good to me. I was sort of shocked
to even care that they were going to destroy me.
So I was relieved, but I was very worried, and
so I said, let me try this from California, and
so I flew back home to Stanford, and over the
next few days it just was obviously it wasn't going
to work. It was ad hoc things were being made,
decisions were being made, statements were being made that were
(05:36):
completely wrong, and the President in the United States was
being fed completely wrong information from Fauci and Burks, who
were at that point having They were running the White
House Coronavirus Task Force for six months before I walked in.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
So I decided to.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Go back at the end of July, and July thirty first,
I showed up as an advisor to the President. I'm
getting around answering your question and so fascinating. Actually, I
got there and I thought I would be the advisor
to the president, behind the scenes, non public. I wasn't
(06:15):
interested in being a public figure at all. And I
was told, well, no, we want you to sit in
on the task force too and be part of that.
And I said, well, but that doesn't make sense to
me that they're not going to they we know what
they're doing. They're doing lockdowns, school closures, they're destroying people.
They're not going to take an advice of someone from
the outside. And they said, well, no, we want you
(06:38):
to try to convince them.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
You know the data. So I said, okay.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
So I was part of the task force also, and
then therefore the task force I could talk about how
that worked. There were task force meetings. My first one
really that I sat in on was mid August, second
week of August twenty twenty, and it was a table
of about eight people. Vice President Pence was the actual
(07:05):
head of the task force, but at the table were
doctor Fauci, who was not head of anything, but he
was there as the head of the infectious disease part
of the NIH Deborah Burkes, who was the head of
the White House Coronavirus medical side of the task force.
She was the official head. She was the White House
Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator. Redfield, Robert Redfield, was the head
(07:29):
of the CDC. He was at the table, and then
there were various other people at the table, and then
in the room around the table the perofy were another
dozen or so people. Then there was a spillover room
filled with people. Then there were people on video and telephones,
so there were a lot of people, but there was
this set of about eight people at the table, and
(07:51):
those meetings were irregularly held, but I was at those meetings,
and at those meetings. In the first meeting, I remember
there was some statements made. They were completely wrong about
the risk of children, and Vice President Penn said, well,
we all agree with this, right, because I hadn't said
(08:11):
anything at that point, and I was the newcomer, the outsider,
and he sort of saw the look on my face
that I probably probably didn't agree, and he said, well, Scott,
you're here because we want to hear what you.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Have to say.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
And I said, okay, I totally disagree. And that became
sort of a catchphrase that my friends in the White
House would say because I said it so often. I
totally disagree because these people were completely wrong, And the
sad part was they had no data. There were these
sophomoric charts tabulated by Deborah Burkes that a middle school
(08:47):
a student could put together with color coding arbitrary categories
of red, yellow, green, danger, risky, not a risk, but
they were just arbitrary the cutoffs for cases, for whatever
the criteria was. There was no real science or scientific
(09:08):
debate except when I was asked a question. I was
prepared with a dozen two dozen scientific papers, all the
data I had gone through, with the skepticism about the
study designs that you're supposed to have as a medical scientist,
and so when I was asked a question, I would
go through the data. And there was never a single meeting.
(09:29):
And this is sort of shocking to even keep reliving.
Not a single time were Deborah Berks or Anthony Fauci
or Robert Redfield brought scientific papers into the meeting. Not
a single time was anything I had ever refuted by
criticism of the data or our alternative numbers or other data.
(09:52):
Not a single time was there a criticism about a
study being designed, except from me when I would say,
of course, as a medical science for decades, the way
you look at a study as you look at the
study design first. If the study design is flawed, the
conclusions are not valid. Not a single time did I
ever hear Redfield, Berks or Fauci ever criticize a study design,
(10:16):
And even worse, not a single time did they disagree
with each other, which course is unheard of, implying that
they were just there was a group think going on,
not critical thinking. But the bottom line of not a
single time is not a single time did they disagree
with me on data. The only comment was Scott, you're
an outlier, which of course is not the thinking, not
(10:39):
a scientific argument, it's not a debate, it's not a
way to have a discussion you discuss the data. Instead,
it was ad hominem, you're fringe, you're an outlier. And
it's also the thinking of a bureaucrat, because it's not
the way any scientific conference I've ever attended was. It's
(11:00):
not the way we do discussions of scientific data. It's
just not it's not appropriate. So it's very it should
be very frightening everybody is watching this to even know
this that the people running and advising on the medical science,
advising the medical policy were not medical scientists. They were bureaucrats.
(11:22):
Vout She was in his position for thirty eight years.
Deborah Berks was a government employee for forty years. These
were bureaucrats. They didn't act like scientists, they didn't think
like scientists, they didn't.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
Know the data and when they.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Were wrong, because they were typically wrong everything they were saying,
and I was showing the data to show they were wrong.
They were frustrated rather than coming back and having the
engaged discussion.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Can you give examples of things that you brought to
the table, things that are so obvious? I'm assuming there
are things that we know today that are clearly obvious
that you brought to the table then and that they rejected.
And also why would they reject these things? Like why
were they so married to a certain perspective And we're
(12:11):
not open to hearing from somebody like you, or even
bringing in more people like you to the table so
that there is real scientific debate.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yeah, I'm going to answer the last part first because
I think this is this is a perfect illustration of
why they didn't want to bring in more people.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
I have two stories to relate that.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
One was Fauci called me up and he said, Scott,
we'd like to have a meeting of the doctors on
the task force and see what we have as common ground.
And I said, okay, that's great. I'd like to bring
in some of the epidemiologists who are doing the research.
I want to bring in medical scientists who are doing
(12:51):
the research on the pandemic, because of course Fauci Redfield
birks they're not doing research. And I said, that's great.
I'm going to have some of the world's top epidemiologists
and the infectious disease experts and virologists come in who
are doing the research on this pandemic, and we'll have
a discussion of the data. That was the end of
(13:12):
the discussion. Because they didn't want to do that. Fauci
dropped that. That was never brought up again because what
they instead wanted was Fauci Burke's Redfield in me only
with no witnesses as to what was going on. I
wanted to bring in the people doing the research and
let's have a real discussion.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
So that was that's one example.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
The second example, though, is more flagrant, and this is
my role as an advisor to the president was to
answer his questions and give them the best information that
was available. And I thought, okay, this is very important
to get the people doing the research in to answer
the President of the United States questions, not to get
him to be persuaded by me, to have him ask
(13:58):
his questions to the people doing the research. So I
arranged five people to come in and including myself and
answer questions, have a discussion with the president in the
Oval office. And we arranged that to occur in August
of twenty twenty, which is one of the first things
(14:18):
I did with the idea that Burkes would be able
to come, because we kept we arranged it and she
couldn't come because of her schedule, so we changed the
date so she could come. And this was all set up,
and I had doctor Martin Kohldorf, who was a professor
at Harvard Medical School. I had Jay Bodachari, a professor
at Stanford Medical School. I had Cody Meisner, professor at
(14:42):
Tuff's in preteratric infectious disease in Boston. I had Joe Ladoppo,
a professor in health policy at UCLA, and I had
myself and we all were organized and we were coming
in and this was all set to have Burke's attend also.
And then I was called into Jared Kushner's office less
than twenty four hours before the meeting and I was
(15:05):
told the meetings not on It's canceled. First of all,
some of these people are already flying to Washington, and
I said, what do you mean it's canceled, And they said, well,
Burke sent an email saying she's uncomfortable, she's not going
to come, And so I said, well, no, that's unacceptable.
I said, first of all, the meeting was set to
have her come. Second, well, if she doesn't know enough
(15:27):
or is so insecure about her knowledge that she can't come, okay,
Well that's too bad. That's an indication about her that
doesn't We canceled the meeting because of the optics of
how it would look to have a meeting without Deborah
Burke's there were there to answer the President's questions.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
And in fact, this is.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
One of the This is the only time where I
really thought I was going to quit, because if they
were to cancel that, I thought it was so outrageous.
People are dying. We need to stop people from dying.
The President of the United States says, questions. It's insane
not have the world's best scientists who are doing the
research on the pandemic come in and help because of
(16:07):
some optics to the public if Birks can't come, and
so to Jared's credit, he said, okay, we'll have the
meeting you're right, but it'll only be five minutes, and
it'll be a hello, meet and greet was the term
that it was told to me. And at first I
was like, oh my god, but I said, okay, I
(16:29):
mean that's let's see how it goes. It's better than nothing.
So we all went and right before the meeting in
the Oval Office where they originally were going to have
open press Q and a press release, because you know,
not just answering the president's questions is good. But obviously
the country was in a state of panic.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
The news media.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Was saying Trump doesn't listen to the science. You would
think people would want to have their fear allayed and
the press would want it publicize the actually great scientists
were talking to the president, but no, the people in
the PR side or whatever political consulting thought this was
(17:14):
a bad idea to have other scientists come in and
answer the president's questions. This is in August of twenty twenty.
So anyway, we come in and I was told five minutes.
People were tapping on. We're sitting at the Oval Office
right in front of the desk of the President, and
I was told, okay, Scott, you got five minutes so
(17:36):
the President said, okay, Scott, tell us what we're going
to do here. So I introduced everybody and I said,
we're here to answer your questions. And I had had
previously said to the doctors who I had come in,
we have no time here. Don't go off pontificating about
your favorite topic here. Just answer his questions and be
truthful whatever he asked. And so he started the questions,
(18:00):
and he went through and asked all the appropriate questions
about lockdowns, about school closures, about the risks of children,
about hydroxychloric went about Sweden, about what's happening with economical shutdown,
et cetera, on public health, and he went through and
asked point by point, all of the five of us
(18:21):
these questions. And it went on for forty five minutes,
and I kept being tapped on the shoulder saying, Scott,
you know, wrap it up. We have other things. And
I said, okay, but meantime, I'm not going to rupt
the President of the United States. That's obvious. Secondly, this
was important. Third he was asking great questions and in
fact called in his video maker and said he was
(18:47):
so happy to have what he called five geniuses here
that he brought in the video and I narrated a
small video and we introduced ourselves on the video. Of
course video has been suppressed. There was never a press release.
It was viewed as harmful that it was held without Burks.
But Burkes backed out of it and in fact tried
(19:09):
to sabotage it, I believe, but luckily we were there.
So this is an example, to get back to your question,
people that are advising the president, why are they afraid
to have expert scientists come in. They're just protecting themselves.
(19:31):
This is the mentality of an insecure bureaucrat doing the
CYA for their own position. And in fact this was validated.
This opinion of mine was validated later because Burkes in
early twenty twenty one admitted, although I didn't know it
at the time, during twenty twenty when I was there
(19:51):
for the three and a half months I was there,
Burkes admitted that they had a pact Burkes, Fauci, and
Redfield that if any of them were fight by Trump,
they would all quit immediately. Now, first of all, to me,
that strikes me as people not caring if people are dying.
They care about their own position. Okay, But second of all,
(20:12):
this is the mark of people who were extremely insecurity
at different motivations. My motivation was very simple. People were dying,
It's my country, I'm going to help. And I was
really appalled at the perverse motivations that I saw. Akay, Admittedly,
(20:32):
I'm naive. I'm not a political person, but I was shocked,
and I think people should be shocked and appalled at
what happened.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I'm very curious about the motivation of this political medical
group that seems to be running DC policy and shutting
the doors of those who actually understand what's happening out
there on the ground. And I want to get into it.
But before we get into the motive, I just want
to know the truth, doctor, I really really do. I mean,
(21:01):
I have three kids. I know that many people who
are listening, we want to know the truth. Given that
the truth has been censored. What were things that you
knew back then and you still know today that we
should know. I have a list of these things about
Corona COVID. First of all, Corona SARS COVID to us,
(21:23):
it was projected as if it's a completely brand new
beast and nobody knew how to handle it, and it
was just this like overwhelming environment where you know, the
scientists can't really do science because it's completely new.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Is it really?
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Was it really that new for you guys? Were you
so lost that you didn't even know where to start
when it came to COVID? How new was it?
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Well, the answer is no, it was not so lost
and new and new information. No information was known. This
is one of the many lies. And I don't want
to use the word missing because it's such an overused word.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
But.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
There were several false beliefs put forward to the public.
And when I say false, I'm talking about things that
we knew in spring of twenty twenty, not learned, not
learned in twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three,
we knew?
Speaker 4 (22:22):
What did we know? Okay?
Speaker 3 (22:23):
What were the false statements? Number one, everybody's at risk
to die? That's just false. From the earliest data of
the cruise ship, the Japanese cruise ship, we knew that
this was a virus that, thank god, was essentially spared
younger people and the high risk population were elderly people
(22:47):
with a lot of comor abilities. But you know, one
of the false everyone's at risk to die. The fatality
rate was extraordinarily high three point four percent by the
World Health Organization.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
That was false. We knew it at the time.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Anybody with five minutes of time who's a medical scientist
would have known that that's a fraction. And then it's
the number of people who died divided by the number
of people were infected. And the bottom number in the
who calculation was only considering the people who were so
sick that they went to see a doctor. But as
(23:20):
we know from other viral respiratory infections, including coronaviruses, which
this is one of the members of the family of coronaviruses,
four or five of which are already circulating in our
in our civilization, the bottom number should have been everybody
who's infected, because many, maybe half, are totally asymptomatic, maybe
(23:42):
even more have such minimal symptoms. So the infection fatality
it was grossly overstated. That was known, there was no
protection from this virus, that it was totally new.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
No, it wasn't.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
It was not completely new in that it's a member
of a virus family coronaviruses, that other that parts of
the world had a lot of protection from and this
is probably one of the reasons why some of the
countries in Asia had lower infection fatality rates from this virus,
because they had more experience with sars I, for instance.
(24:14):
And there already was data in the summer of twenty
twenty that showed that there's immunological reaction of old blood
samples from sars IE. We're talking about many, many years beforehand,
so therefore we're never exposed to stars to when you
put the SARS two virus in, it elicited an immunological response. Okay,
(24:38):
that implies an overlapping biological protection because a member of
the same family. Okay, the other lies everyone has the
same risk. I already said that's false. Everyone spreads equally.
That's just not true. That was not true from the
data in Europe that everyone.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
Can I ask you about that.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
So one of the things that we were told was
that asymptomatic people would spread the virus and that's why
children who were not symptomatic were very dangerous because they
would possibly carry it and kill the elderly without knowing it.
Did you guys know, first of all, is that even true.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Yeah, there's two parts to the answer. Part one is
that it was known from schools open in studies were
done in Sweden and Finland and elsewhere. Early on in
spring summer twenty twenty, it was known that open schools
do not have a higher rate of infection than close schools.
(25:43):
They do not increase the infection rate of the teachers,
They do not increase the infection rate of the community.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
There was zero harm.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
It was known that schools should be open. That whole
thing was a lie. The second sub bullet point sort
of under that, is that in the United States, teachers
did not have a higher risk and in fact, teachers
are a low risk population. The median age of a
K through twelfth teacher in the United States is forty one. Okay,
(26:10):
so half the people are under forty This is a
low risk group. Ninety two percent of teachers are under
sixty in the United States. Remember the high risk group
as people who are very old. And are there any
high risk teachers? Of course there are. There are immuno
compromise teachers are immuno compromised students. Okay, we could protect them,
they don't have to even go in. So but teachers
(26:31):
were not high risk. But the second part is, and
there was also several studies. There were about a dozen
studies in the early twenty twenty literature from Sweden, the Netherlands, France,
South Korea, the UK, Spain, Italy, Finland, Denmark that children
(26:55):
were not significant spreaders. Okay, so that was proven. Children
were not significant spreaders of this virus and children were not,
of course at high risk. In fact, healthy children had
a minuscule risk. This was known early on, and in
fact even on retrospective analysis of the Nation of Germany's
(27:20):
data during twenty twenty pre vaccine and the most lethal
form of the virus, zero healthy children died in Germany. Zero,
not zero percent. Zero. The numbers of children that died
in the United States are extremely low. Were their children
(27:40):
that died, Yes, there were children that died, almost all
of them, and perhaps all of them it's not clear
had underlying comorbidities. Healthy children had minuscule risk, This was known.
This was known early on. In fact, people under twenty,
the survival rate is ninety nine point nine nine seven
(28:01):
percent of people under twenty. The data now, by the way,
shows in retrospect not now, but the data from the
most lethal form of the virus, two thirds of deaths
were in people that were over the age of life expectancy.
It's not minimizing that people died, but two thirds of
(28:22):
deaths were in people that had six or more comorbidities.
So if you're old and you have hypertension or high
blood pressure that's treated, you're not necessarily at high risk.
It's old people who had six comorbidities or more. Okay,
you have to be elderly and frail. So there was
(28:44):
a gross overstatement as to who had risk. There was
a distortion, and there was not significant risk really from
children specifically. It was nothing special about them. And then
the last part of your question is asymptomatic spread. And
Fauci said he was all over the map on many
different things, but early on he said something correct, which
(29:04):
is that asymptomatic people are not the drivers of viral
respiratory epidemics. And that's true in this one. Okay, most
of the infection was not driven by asymptomatic people. Could
asymptomatic people spread, Yes, No, one's saying that that never happened.
That isn't the point. Similarly, Interestingly, almost all cases, or
(29:27):
the vast majority of cases, were spread indoors, so of
course the lockdowns, recommending people stay indoors and pulling people
off the beaches, forbidding them from being in the parks,
taking boats out to arrest people surfing out off the
coast of San Diego. I mean, this was completely antithetical,
opposite to what was known. So so many things were
(29:49):
known by the way. I do want to get to
one other thing that was a lie that was perpetrated
on the public, which was that there's no protection other
than a vaccine. Okay, this this doesn't just erase decades
of immunology literature that we get a recovery from a
virus infection. You have biological protection that is long lasting
(30:11):
against the serious illness or death. That was known not
just for decades, not just for hundreds of years, but
as my friend Martin Koldorff said, for thousands of years.
I mean, this recovery from a virus generating long lasting
biological protection was known, yet it was overtly explicitly denied
(30:34):
by people in the task force, by the media, and
by many medical scientists.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
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(31:00):
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(31:24):
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(31:47):
we take all the credit for ourselves. God bless the
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man like Leonard Skinnard told you, and God bless America. Finally,
if you know a veteran suffering from PTSD, call Camp
Hope at eight seven seven seven one seven PTSD and
(32:12):
a combat veteran will answer the phone to provide free counseling.
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