The Daily Signal - Fauci Misled Americans on COVID; 'I Was Stunned at What I Saw,' Dr. Scott Atlas Says

Episode Date: December 13, 2021

Dr. Scott Atlas had a front-row seat at the White House as a member of President Donald Trump's Coronavirus Task Force. Now, he's telling all in a new book, "A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America." "The American people need to know the level of incompetence, the lack of rigor, the lack of critical thinking. I was stunned at what I saw," Atlas says of his time at the White House. "We had bureaucrats in charge of the policy and that policy was the restrictions and lockdowns. And it failed." Atlas blames three public health officials: Dr. Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator; Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; and Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to talk about his time on Trump's task force, President Joe Biden's failures, and a new academy he founded at Hillsdale College. Watch the full interview or read an abridged transcript at DailySignal.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, December 13th. I'm Rob Bluey. And I'm Virginia Allen. On today's show, Rob talks with Dr. Scott Atlas, a founding scholar at Hillsdale College's Academy for Freedom and Science, an author of the new book, A Plague Upon Our House, My Fight at the Trump White House to stop COVID from destroying America. Plus, we read your letters to the editor and share a good news story about a construction company that went the extra mile to help a couple keep their Christmas decorating tradition alive.

Before we get to today's show, Rob and I want to thank you for your support of the Daily Signal. Each day, The Daily Signal brings you the news that you can trust on the most important policy debates facing our country. We cut through the liberal media spin and provide honest, thorough, and responsible reporting on today's critical issues. But we can't do it without the help of patriots like you. Consider giving a tax-deductible contribution to the Daily Signal and help us build conservative momentum this year and beyond. Just visit DailySignal.com slash donate. With your help, we can build an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish. Now stay tuned for today's show. Coming up next. We are joined at the Daily Signal today by Dr. Scott Atlas. He's a founding scholar at Hillsdale

College's new Academy for Freedom and Science, an author of the brand new book, A Plague, upon our house, my fight at the Trump White House to stop COVID from destroying America. Dr. Atlas, welcome to the show. We're happy to be here. You are a former member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. You are a world-renowned radiologist and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. And now you have this new project with Hillsdale College. Tell us about this new academy.

Yes, well, we are just unveiling this. It's a very, very important big issue. one of many that was revealed, really exposed by the pandemic and the management of the pandemic, we have seen, I think everyone is aware that science itself has become contaminated with politics, has become really distorted from the actual scientific process itself, that the process of science and finding scientific truths depends upon the free exchange of ideas. And that obviously fundamental pathway to seeking and discovering very important things that all free societies depend upon, meaning facts and scientific solutions to health care and other crises that are undoubtedly coming our way. The process of discovering the answer is in allowing the information to be debated and using evidence and stating it freely without fear of

intimidation and censure, yet in this pandemic, particularly we have seen quite the opposite on our university campuses in scientific journals. And so I, Martin Koldorf, the very renowned epidemiologist and infectious disease scientist, and Jay Batacharya, who is also a medical scientist and renowned scholar are getting together and with the help and under the umbrella of Hillsdale College addressing these issues and exploring their solutions. Well, it's so well said at a time when so many Americans are looking for answers, particularly during the pandemic, they oftentimes I think were left confused and disoriented because of what was playing out in our society. Why do you think this particular pandemic caused everyone from scientists, doctors, the

media to behave this way? Yeah, I mean, again, I always say the answer to the question that begins with why is very difficult. But we know that, first of all, we're in a world that social media is sort of a new platform compared to previous pandemics, for instance. We also know that we were in an election season when this all sort of came upon us. And, you know, I don't want to ascribe any motives for people. I think everyone was interested in ending the pandemic. There's no doubt. But what I saw in my time in the White House revealed that we had somehow come to the

situation where government bureaucrats were in charge of the policy rather than scientists, researchers, and public health scholars who understood how to integrate the information and then advise the decision maker, the president. And that process was sort of commandeered by people who should have never been in charge. And I outlined that in my book, A Plague Upon Our House. From your vantage point, both in the White House when you were working on the task force and since then, what do you think are some of the most egregious examples or the most egregious example of where individual and academic freedom came under attack? Yeah, I mean, that's a good question because academic freedom, I mean, I experienced it myself and I'm certainly not the only one.

But what happened to me as sort of a representative of this was that I was asked to help the president in the biggest health care crisis in a century and as a health policy expert and a medical scientist for 25 years and more than the decade of full-time work in health policy, I said yes. And the answer to that is yes, no matter, it has nothing to do with politics or something wrong with you, frankly, if you would not say yes. I knew the president was despised by a significant proportion of the country, but that didn't matter. And when I got there, I was under attack by people who were really attacking me out of a political animus toward the president. That is, unfortunately, what happened at my own campus. Stanford University where a group of professors became enraged and, you know, misrepresented what I said, resorted to smears, distributed on emails, you know, coercive emails to younger people on the faculty to write op-eds about me.

And this was really, I sort of, I was stunned at it. I was naive to the politics. And the reason I know it was political was, first of all, they never criticized or refuted any of the data. They just simply accused me in a distorted way of saying these preposterous things. But mainly it's because the controlled experiment was done, as we say in science. There were three medical scientists at Stanford, all of whom said the exact same thing. Jay Badacharya, Johnny Anidis, and myself.

We said the same thing about risk, the same thing about a very low risk to children, the same thing about schools should open, the same thing about natural immunity conferred after recovery from infection. The same thing about masks, the same thing about lockdowns being super detrimental. Yet only one of us received this sort of nationally known censure. And that was sort of a despicable thing. But the second part of the equation was, and look at the voting record, Stanford is unique. It has its own zip code where people live who work at Stanford. And when you look at that analysis, you see that while the state of California was two to one Biden to Trump in the election,

Stanford zip code was 95% Biden, 3% Trump. So, I mean, this is an extreme group of people. They showed their, you know, they're a group of people that are clearly, you know, wearing their politics on their sleeve. And, you know, it's sort of sad to see it. Why is it sad? First of all, they're squandering and therefore now don't deserve the trust of the public as academicians in a so-called elite university.

but second of all, they're educating our children. And there's nothing more important than who we as parents entrust with our children, particularly at that age where the role of the university is, if nothing else, to teach critical thinking. And if you're not teaching critical thinking, which means the only way to get critical thinking to learn it is to hear views that you agree or disagree with and to look at the evidence. That's what critical thinkers do. That's what scientists do. So it was sort of stunning to see these people, you know, but, you know, they're, they're, you know, they're not important really in the grand scheme of things, but these kinds of things were just a part of the equation. YouTube pulled down videos of Governor DeSantis of Florida running a panel with me, Dr. Koldorf, Badachari, and Sinatra Gupta from Oxford on pandemic management in January, February, 2021, YouTube pulled it down. Of course, Governor DeSantis is fearless and called me up the next day and said, we're going to do another panel on how YouTube pulled it down. And, you know, this is what we need. We need leaders who understand the facts, who understand the importance of a free society and the exchange of free ideas. And thank God we have some leaders still who understand the importance of these things.

Well, we still do. And one of those leaders from higher ed is Hillsdale College. It's an institution that has long valued pursuing the truth and defending our liberty. What is the genesis of hosting this academy within Hillsdale? Well, as you mentioned, I mean, Hillsdale College stands out really as a real voice for truth and learning, you know, the classic knowledge that universities are supposed to teach in order to develop young people. into critical thinkers. I think, you know, as you know, and as I think most people would admit, the universities generally in the United States have sort of become dominated by a single voice. We knew that before the pandemic, but this really, like I say, about a lot of things these

days, people were exposed for who they are. Because when someone's under pressure, when someone's challenge, when someone doesn't get their way, that's when they're tested. that's when their true character comes forward. And we have seen this exposure, and it's not pretty to see it, most universities. Hillsdale, and I want to say specifically President Larry Arne, has been a real leader in freedom of thought, in learning and speaking the truth without regard to the consequences and looking at the data. And a couple of us were involved, for example, in helping Hillsdale put forward the case that they should have their graduation out.

because that graduation was being held under the rules of the state of Michigan, outdoors, with all the mitigation, but it was still under threat of being eliminated or stopped, and we helped them put forward the evidence for that. That's great. That's fantastic. You've spoken about your background. One of your colleagues at Hoover, Victor Davis Hansen, who's a columnist for us at the Daily Signal, describes you as one of the world's top neuro-radiologists. What sparked your interest in this field and why did you decide to go down this path in life? Okay, so about 15 plus years ago, I've been at Stanford for 22 years. 15 plus years ago, I decided that, okay, health care policy is a big issue.

We were talking as a country about reforming the health care system going toward Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act. And so I started working on that. And then for more than 10 years, I've been a full-time senior fellow. I was offered a position like that at Hoover Institution, so I quit the medical school. I have not been a radiologist for more than a decade. But I had 25 plus years of being a neuroradialologist. I was professor and chief of neuroradialysis. I was a medical scientist, a researcher, also involved in clinical care.

I am the editor of what many consider the main book on MRI, the brain and spine. I've been a visiting professor at almost all the best university any medical centers in the country. And more importantly, I understand what it takes to be a medical scientist because I've said this many times. You don't need to be a scientist to be a critical thinker, but you need to be a critical thinker to be a scientist. And so in that role, I've taught people, my role in neuro-radiology, frankly, was not to

teach people the traditional way of memorizing lists of diseases and lists of findings on an MRI scan, but to use deductive reasoning to, you know, go through referrals from doctors with patients of all walks of life, meaning with infectious diseases, with cancer, pediatric and adult, all kinds of complicated questions. And then we in radiology, and all radiologists know this, use our deductive reasoning, put together the diagnostic pathway, and then recommend. to the patient's doctor how to proceed. That's what you do.

You deduce the correct diagnosis and treatment pathway. And so that is a skill. That is a mindset, really, that is very helpful in complicated settings. But for the past 10 plus years, I've been full-time public health policy. And so in the spring, if I can go on, the early spring of 2020, I was working on a book on health care reform, system reform. And I saw that the country was off the rails. the wrong pathway was chosen.

There was an irrational pathway of locking down everybody rather than using the resources to protect the people we knew who were at risk. There was a segment of society who were the high risk. It made no sense whatsoever to lock down all the healthy, low-risk people to protect the high-risk people. It made a lot more sense. This is not even science here. This is simply logic to use our resources to do everything we can, to very diligently

increase the protection of those at high risk to die, which were the elderly or people with high number of comorbidities. And instead of doing that and not destroying healthy, low-risk people, and not sacrificing our children and not literally killing people with the lockdowns, but instead what was done were the Burke's Fauci lockdowns, the severe restrictions. This was implemented for six months before I got to. to Washington, August 2020, through the three and a half months that I was in Washington, and then after I left Washington for almost the entire country, the Berks-Fa-Fauchy lockdowns

were implemented widely with rare exception. And so if anybody thinks that unnecessary lives were lost from the federal policy guidance, they better call up doctors, Birx, and Fauci and ask them to explain their recommendations. Well, thank you, first of all, for stepping up. and in a moment when our country needed to hear your common sense solutions and have some critical thinking, we appreciate that. But I have to ask you about Dr. Fauci, who is now serving as President Biden's chief medical advisor. He recently attacked his critics by saying, quote, I represent science. You served alongside him on the task force when you were in the White House.

What do you make of his statement in this pushback that he seems so offended by? Well, I think, you know, every person with any common sense brain really has the same reaction to that kind of delusional statement that I would. So I won't go into my personal reaction to that statement, but I will say it this way. That's not what I saw when I was in the White House. What I saw when I was in the task force meetings were three doctors on the task force that control. the medical policy really, which were Dr. Fauci, who was the most visible face of the policy to the country, but not in charge of the task force. Dr. Deborah Birx, who was in charge of the medical side of the task force, she was the

official task force coordinator with capital letters. She had the role and personally wrote all of the written advice to every state. All of the governors received her advice as the federal policy guidelines. she flew to dozens of states. She personally visited all of these states public health officials doling out the federal guidance. And Dr. Redfield was the third doctor who was the head of the CDC. These people were bureaucrats. Doctors Fauci and Burks were 40-year bureaucrats.

I was very different. I had more than a decade of health policy expertise practicing. I had 25 plus years of medical science, clinical research, and educational. I brought in dozens of papers, the world's literature. When I was asked a question in the task force meeting by Vice President Pence, for instance, I gave the data. And what I mean by data is not the Deborah Burke's data, which was a simplistic table of cases per day per state.

This was stuff that was available, that. that kind of data is available on public websites. I was going through all the data, all the world's publications, all the scientific papers. I was critiquing the papers. If I look at a scientific paper and the methods, the study was done incorrectly or poorly, the conclusion is not valid. This is what medical science people do who are competent. I went through 12, 15, 20 papers when I was asked a question.

And when I did that, for instance, on an occasional, I was asked about the wrist of children. I went through all the data very quickly, but I had all the papers in my briefcase. I was met with silence from doctors Birx and Fauci, with an accusation, I'm an outlier. Okay. And at the end of that discussion,

which there was none refuting anything I said, there was no critique of anything I said by data. There was no scientific criticism. I was the only one who ever brought a publication to the table in the task force of the meetings I went. went to. The only comment at the end of that when Dr. Redfield was asked about his comment was, well, let's say the jury's still out. And I wrote this in my book, A Plague Upon Our House, because the American people need to know the level of incompetence, the lack of rigor,

the lack of critical thinking. I was stunned at what I saw. We had bureaucrats in charge of the policy, and that policy was the restrictions in lockdown. And it failed. It failed. It failed. It failed by the data to stop the spread of the infection. It failed to protect the elderly and stop them from dying. And it destroyed millions and millions of families, including the children who were sacrificed. And I'm talking about particularly low-income families. This was an egregious, immoral application of public health.

Because when you're a public health leader, you are not supposed to say, I'm going to stop this one infection at all costs without regard for all of public health. These people, the advice that was done was directed solely at stopping these cases. And it failed, by the way. But it also inflicted massive harm because you have to remember, we shut down a lot of medical care. It wasn't just cosmetic surgery or something like that that was shut down. We had 650,000 people with cancer on chemotherapy.

Half of them skipped their chemo just during the spring of 2020 out of fear. Okay, we had 85% of living organ transplants did not get done compared to the previous year. We had two-thirds of cancer screenings did not get done. These people still have cancer. They're going to come back with widespread what's called metastatic disease. A lot of them are going to die. We had massive increases in drug abuse, in spousal abuse, in child abuse. 300,000 cases of child abuse were not detected during the spring of 2020 because why schools were closed.

And schools are the number one agency where child abuse occurs. So this was a massive harm. And the harm, again, all the losses, we're almost on the verge of destroying a younger generation, by the way, have a massive rise in anxiety disorder, in depressive disorder. one out of four college students in June 2020 in the United States thought of killing himself. We had tripling of medical visits to doctors by teenagers for self-harm in the United States compared to the previous year. What does that mean? That means these are kids putting out cigarettes on their skin, slashing their wrists out of the isolation.

It's the lockdowns that did this. It's the isolation. It's not the virus. The isolation was caused by the grossly wrong. public health advice, and this is going to take decades to solve. Now, thank you for outlining all of that. It's all documented, as you say, in your book. It's called a plague upon our house.

We'll leave a link for our listeners to click and purchase it if they like in the show notes and the transcript on DailySignal.com. You've taken us behind the scenes what it was like. Two questions. Number one, are the public health bureaucrats, these three, doctors you cite so powerful that President Trump felt he had no choice but to go along with their guidance? And at what point did you see him change his mind and decide enough was enough? Okay, well, you know, it's sort of a complicated question. The president was speaking about

ending the lockdowns and opening schools from even, you know, in spring before I came. Right. The problem was that he was saying that he understood. Okay, from my conversations, he understood the common sense reason why lockdowns are so destructive. And by the way, it's a false economy to say that if you're up for opening up, you're choosing money over lives. Because that's a lie. Okay, there's decades of literature in the economics literature that shows, proves that severe economic downturns cost lives. So it's lives versus lives. And in fact, the equations, the data shows that the lockdowns destroy cost more life years than the virus.

That's factually true. It's all over the literature. You won't hear people say that. So when you speak about this, the president understood and said it multiple times before I got there and while I was there, that we need to open up and increase the protection of the elderly, the targeted protection, so-called focus protection, meaning increase the protection. And we did get some of that done while I was there. Increased testing in the nursing homes where all the cases came in from the staff.

They were only testing once a week when I got there. That had to be done three times a week, five times a week to the staff. We got increased tests to senior centers, for instance, where non-residential seniors live. These are high-risk people. We sent more tests to historically black colleges and universities while I was there, and I was involved in getting that done. These are higher-risk faculty members because they have more risk factors. So the president understood this.

The problem was while he was saying that, the task force said something very different. The task force was on its own. The task force was speaking forward to the states and to the American people, 24-7 really, a totally different message. So they were on their own and they were direct. They, the task force doctors, Dr. Burks and to the people, Dr. Fauci, were. espousing a completely different policy, not consistent with what the president wanted, but more importantly, the wrong policy. So while he may have realized it, they were allowed to continue, and that continued throughout

the year. And in fact, it still continues today under the current administration. It continues today, but I have to ask because unlike President Trump, who I think had the common sense, perhaps not to go along with all of the recommendations that he was hearing from Dr. Burks and Dr. Dr. Fauci. It seems that President Biden will do whatever they say. How would you assess his performance of the first year and how he has responded with vaccine mandates and other measures that seem to infringe upon our freedom? Well, the performance is a failure. And it's a failure because

there's been a continuation of the disconnect from fact. Okay. First of all, you know, there's this bizarre notion that restricting people indoors or, you know, whatever restrictions you want to impose on people or these mask mandates or anything else, stop the spread of the infection or eliminate the virus. That's proven wrong. We knew it a year ago, a year and a half ago. It's still going on. There's a sort of a bizarre lack of understanding of fact.

There's a denial of fact about a vaccine mandate. dates. And why do I say that? Because there is very good protection in people who have recovered from the infection. That's natural immunity. It would have been a shock if that didn't occur. This goes back centuries, by the way, but it certainly goes back decades in the medical literature. And it's proven with this specific virus that people who recover from the infection have very good protection. In fact, the protection in people who have recovered. from the infection is superior to the protection of vaccinated people who have never had the infection.

That's factually true. It's inarguable. And to not acknowledge that is almost inexplicable, really, except if you're just motivated to just be blind to the truth or to hide the truth in the American people. Now, other countries, by the way, don't hide the truth. In Europe, most countries recognize people who have recovered from COVID as having protected status, meaning immune protection, they can enter, for instance, in most countries, you know, restaurants are just like people who've been vaccinated.

We are the only country that I know that is just completely basically behaving like a flat earth country. You know, the American public health leaders are the flat earthers of today. They're denying basic immunology that you learn in medical school in first year. It's not esoteric. it's actually well-proven and documented, even with this virus. The people who have had the infection have very good protection once they recover. That's factually true.

It's amazing that they just deny that natural immunity. We've had other guests on this program and hosted panels here at Heritage on that very topic. You mentioned the role that Dr. Burks would play with the states. As you look out, who's doing it well, which states would you see as least? leaders that others should emulate and who's doing it poorly? Yeah. And again, just to reiterate, the only thing that mattered was what the states did in this medical policy.

There is no federal imposition, at least under the Trump administration, of sort of behavioral mandates to the states. That's the terrain of governors. The governors listened to the policy from doctors, Berks and Fauci. That's what they did. That's what was implemented. And it failed. Now, the states, we have an internal control here.

We have the control state of Florida. In fact, Governor DeSantis was the only governor who asked me to visit while I was in Washington. I visited one state. Dr. Burke visited dozens of states. There's only one state that we have that's a very good example of the opposite policy from lockdowns because Florida is a large state. it's a diverse state in terms of demographics. It's a diverse state urban rural.

And it has a very sort of a similar profile to California, which is a good comparison state. Because California was one of the stringest states for COVID restrictions. Florida was wide open for all the schools were open in September 2020 in Florida. The governor of Florida, Governor DeSantis, first of all, he knew the data. I spoke to him many times. He understood the data. he would say to me, what do you think about this? Am I right? And of course, he always was right. He knew the world's data. But also, Governor DeSantis's state did not do these business shutdowns like,

and he opened up. And he did very interesting things of targeted protection. He set up COVID-only nursing homes. He didn't do what some of the other governors did when they ordered COVID-positive patients back into nursing homes, which killed people. Governor DeSantis restricted people who are positive for the virus and set up separate facilities for just one example. He also did not listen to the CDC guidance of who should get the vaccines first. Instead, he said, we're giving it to the older high-risk people first, period. And that, of course, is common sense and that that undoubtedly saved lives. But the difference between California and Florida, besides the fact that California did

severe stringent restrictions in Florida did the opposite, California is one of the youngest states in the country. Florida is one of the oldest states. Why is that relevant? Because this disease kills the old people. Okay. So Florida, by definition, is far higher at risk. And what we see from the data right now is that the burden of proof, by the way, to save lives is on the states who did the lockdowns. It's not on Florida. Because Florida didn't do those lockdowns that caused a tremendous amount of collateral damage, that destroyed families, that destroyed jobs of low-income people. And that sacrifice the children and created a massive burden from the isolation on the children. Florida did not do that.

California did. They inflicted a tremendous amount of harm on its citizens. And what we see is there's no significant difference between the deaths from COVID in Florida, and age-adjusted deaths in Florida versus California. So Florida avoided the collateral damage, and they did just as well, if not better. We'll see what happens now as we. evolve because any cross-section in time. Florida just had their wave. California has sort of finished with it, but not quite. We'll see what happens. But Florida outperformed the country in

whole and age-adjusted mortality from COVID. Florida did better than most of the states that did the significant lockdowns. And Florida, California, destroyed people and they did not outperform Florida. So, you know, who did it better? It's obvious. And this is also seen internationally, by the way, and we don't have time to go through the data on Sweden, but suffice it to say that Sweden's not in the headlines anymore, and why is that? Because there's not much going on in Sweden while the rest of the Europe is panicking about their explosion of cases. In Sweden, the last I saw, beat something like 24 out of 32 countries in COVID mortality per capita, age-adjusted compared to their European counterparts. And Sweden did not interfere

with people's lives. Sweden did not inflict the massive collateral damage. And Sweden, by the way, had schools open throughout the pandemic, no mask, no social distancing, 1.8 million children, this was written about in the New England Journal. And that there were no childhood dust. There was no increased risk to teachers. That's proven. It's a fallacy that teachers are somehow at risk and somehow all the kids need to be vaccinated. That's a lie. That's anti-science. That's really sort of a misconception perpetrated by people who don't either don't know what they're talking about or don't want to admit the truth. So we see the controlled studies, the controlled experiments were done, and I refer people

to my book again to look through at least a detailed discussion of Florida's data. That's great. Thank you for presenting us with that contrast. I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about Amacron, this new variant. Two weeks ago, I think it was just about two weeks ago, we had the media high type this as this next wave. We've seen President Biden come out and warn Americans and push vaccines yet again. As you look at the data and you do your analysis, what do you want our listeners to know about

this? Yeah. Okay. So there's a couple of things. I'll start off by saying anyone who changes policy due to this new variant is irrational and not a critical thinker and automatically to me disqualifies himself from leadership of the public. And the reason I say that is very simple.

everybody who's competent in medical science who has any understanding whatsoever of viruses in a pandemic, and this is medical school level, this is not some kind of ascetic knowledge, knows that as a pandemic evolves, the viruses mutate. Mutation means a variant, basically. And the variants that generally arise as these viruses mutate, because the mutant viruses survive, the protection prevents the normal virus from being perpetually infecting people. The mutants survive, and the mutants are generally less lethal.

This is what is expected. We expect this. In fact, we see this happen as a pandemic evolves to an endemic situation, which is basically a low-level, you know, sort of a series of oscillations of infections without a lot of deaths. And that's what we're seeing. And so, okay, we're concerned because we don't know everything yet, but this virus is doing as what is expected, which is we see infections, it's contagious, but there's not a lot of people dying, if any.

There's very few hospitalizations in most countries, none. And, okay, the story needs to be written, but this is absolutely not something unexpected, let alone a cause for panic. And, you know, what we're going to see here likely is this evolution of new mutants, new variants, odd infinitum. Okay, that does not mean we need a new vaccine to cover the new variant. If the new variant does not make people seriously ill, why in the world would you inject yourself with a drug for it?

I don't understand. This is common sense. Again, you don't have to be a scientist to draw this conclusion. But the problem here that we have is there's a tremendous loss of trust in America's public health leadership and science leadership and university academic scientists. And that's deserved. The loss of trust is deserved because of their erratic statements, their politicized statements, their complete denial of obvious science. And people need to know who to trust.

So there's two types of things to do, if I can go on. One is people need to look at who's saying consistent things. People need to speak to each other, but also listen to the people who are speaking about the facts or presenting the case very logically, calm. and with the data. And they also, now there's a new burden. The way I look at it, there's a burden on us as thinking people. Okay, we cannot just trust people with credentials, blindly trust people. We need to be involved.

We need to be thinking adults. Okay, this has been going on for almost two years. Fear is not an excuse anymore in my mind. We need to make decisions for ourselves and what's best for our own families. Because if we don't, we're going to be injecting ourselves with experimental drugs forever. People say to me, when will the CDC say the pandemic's over? When will Dr. Fauci say we're finished? And my answer is never.

There's never going to be a time. And so we know this. This is predictable. And so it was predictable. There was a new variant. It was predictable there would be panic. It was predictable. There would be irrational statements about the need for new boosters, new vaccines, new restrictions.

Okay. That's not what the fact show. You have to become a thinking adult. It's more difficult than to just defer and rely. and other people, but I think we're at that stage now. And so this is one of the reasons we're doing the Institute, the Academy for Science and Freedom with the Hillsdale, is because we need to get the dialogue back.

We need to get people to be able to hear the free exchange of ideas. You cannot make a decision without hearing the information. And if the information is suppressed, if people are self-censoring scientists because they're afraid to step forward, That's very harmful to the American people. So the people, the university leaders that have failed to stop this censorship, this intimidation, they've really harmed the public. The people who are in leadership positions are complete failures in the United States in a broad array of institutions.

And this needs to stop because it's really creating a tremendous amount of harm on regular citizens. It certainly is. And I appreciate your advice there. and I hope our listeners do take that to heart. One final question for you. You've just had the launch of Hillsdale's new Academy for Freedom and Science. How can people follow your work there, what Hillsdale is doing? What's the best way for them to get involved and support it if they would like to do so?

Sure. Well, we've just unveiled this new initiative. And I can say we are just going forward now in the first quarter of this year. we will start having everything very visible, meaning we'll have websites, we'll do events that will be disseminated. We will be writing papers. We will have visiting scholars come and participate. We feel very confident that there are a lot of people who see this the same way that we

want to foster what we used to have in this country, which is, like I say, a free exchange of ideas to arrive at these truths that we really desperately need and relying. And in fact, the whole world depends. You know, I hate to say it this way because it sounds sort of exaggerating, but the world depends on the United States for these things. There's no question that the public health leadership that was such a failure in the United States was also causing the failure in other countries. There's no doubt about that. We are very as a country influential. And so here, I think we want people to, you know, stay tuned. We'll have a lot of digital things going on through Hillsdale, also through social media.

And my colleagues, Dr. Skuldorf and Baudichari will be disseminating a lot of the work. And we think we're going to ramp this up quite quickly in the first quarter of this year. Well, that's fantastic. We'll make sure that we provide those links in the transcript on DailySignal.com. Again, Dr. Scott Atlas, author of the brand new book, A Plague Upon Our House. my fight at the Trump White House to stop COVID from destroying America. Thank you so much for spending time with the Daily Signal today. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

The Biden administration has been in power for almost a year. And the radical left has been imposing its dangerous ideology on America. Not only do they want to expand government control and promote cancel culture, but they also want to rewrite our nation's history. indoctrinate American students in our public school system, attack our traditional values of honor, liberty, and justice for all, and implement a Marxist agenda that unleashes socialism throughout our country. Here at the Heritage Foundation, we need your help to finish the year strong

and prepare for the battles that lie ahead in 2022. By making a tax-deductible year-end gift right now, you'll help advance your principles. free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense at a time when our nation needs these principles most. Visit heritage.org slash year-end to make your tax-deductible donation today. Thanks for sending us your letters to the editor. Each Monday we feature our favorites on this show.

Virginia, who's up first? In response to Nicole Russell's commentary, transgender swimmer sweeps Ivy League races against female rivals. How is that fair? Terry Marks writes, Dear Daily Signal, male and female sporting events have been separate from the beginning

because of the obvious differences between the male and female body. A female athlete at the top of her sport can't compete against a male athlete at the top of his sport. My daughter is a D3 cross-country runner, finishing second this year at Nationals. Her time this year at D3 Nationals,

third fastest ever at the race would not even place her in the top 200 male college athletes in the nation. Male and females are different. Title IX leveled the funding for sporting events and allowed for women's sports to gain an equal footing with men's sporting events and allow for women to compete at varying skill levels. Now women are having to compete with men who can't succeed in the male arena and now dominate in the female venues. This is not fair to female athletes. And in response to Eve Deborah's commentary, homeschooling is on the rise. Here are four tips to effectively homeschool your children. S. Russ writes to us, I really liked the article about homeschooling. It was well written and made me envious that I had not been able to homeschool my own child.

In those days, however, we did not have a choice. I became a public school teacher because I loved kids and I loved teaching. During the time I was a teacher, I learned a lot about education, its benefits, and its shortcomings. I do recommend homeschooling for all the same reasons that this article states and more. The parents usually know what is best for their children and those who have to use public schools are in a hard place. I would encourage those who are successful in homeschooling to open themselves up to help other kids too. Your letter could be featured on next week's show. So send us an email at Letters at dailysignal.com. Virginia Allen here, I want to tell you all about one of my favorite podcasts. Heritage Explains is a weekly podcast that breaks down all the policy issues

we hear about in the news at a 101 level. Hosts Michelle Cordero and Tim Desher mix in news clips and music to tell a story, but also bring in heritage experts to help break down complex issues. Heritage explains offers quick 10 to 50 minute explainers that bring you up to speed in an entertaining way. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcast. We even put the full episode on YouTube. Virginia, you have a good news story to share with us today. Over to you. Thank you so much, Rob. Well, Christmas, hard to believe, is just 12 days away. And as the holidays draw closer, I know many of us. are finishing our Christmas shopping and putting up our Christmas decorations. One, of course,

of our favorite traditions all over the country is for people to pile the whole family into the car and drive around and look at beautiful Christmas lights and Christmas displays at homes. And for those living in Des Moines, Iowa, the Beaverdale neighborhood is famous for their beautifully decorated homes. The neighborhood draws visitors from all over the state at Christmas time. Long lines of cars slowly move through the neighborhood on December nights to look at the bright decorations. For years, husband and wife, Julie and Dale Marks have gone all out with lights and decorations with the rest of their Beaverdale community. In 2020, the couple even ran their own food drive from their driveway during the holiday, collecting canned goods and donations as cars drove by.

Julie told KCCI ate news that she and her husband wanted to include a food drive as part of their light display to ensure that no one in Iowa went hungry during the holidays. I, you know, at one time didn't have a lot. And I've been blessed and greatly blessed. So I believe that that's what we're supposed to do as help other people as much as we can. The couple managed to collect 1,500 pounds of food for the Food Bank in Iowa in 2020. But this year, the couple didn't think that it would be possible for them to decorate their home as or host the food drive because of Dale's health. After becoming very sick with COVID-19 in

September, Dale suffered two strokes and a heart attack. Now Dale uses oxygen to breathe and can really only walk for short periods of time in his home before needing to sit down and rest. His wife, Julie, told Fox News, it just didn't look like it was going to be possible to decorate their home as usual, and she certainly wasn't able to put out all the decorations on her own. So, enter Bob Coffey, a man who owns his own construction company in Iowa called Bob the Builder LLC. Bob caught wind of the couple's story and decided to step in and help Julie and Mark decorate. Bob and four of his construction workers spent three hours at the couple's home, putting up about 10,000 lights and lots of decorations. Even though Bob did not know Julian Dale before, he says it meant a lot

to him to be able to help the couple this crew. Christmas season. And because the lights are up, Julie and Dale are once again running the food drive and taking donations to bless the Iowa Food Bank. Dale told KCCI-8 News that he is thrilled. The tradition at his home is continuing because if you have one last breath, you can do something for someone. Well, for Jeannie, it's so nice to see neighbors helping neighbors, and I know how much work goes into decorating a home for Christmas. For Bob, Coffee to do that for Julie and Dale. It just, I think, speaks to how we as Americans can come together and help each other out.

And hopefully during this Christmas season, we have a little extra attention to our neighbors and lend that helping hand. And kudos to them for continuing to do that food drive and helping even more people in their community. I know, I know. It's really like this chain event of Bob Coffee helped them, and now they can continue to bless others with that food. So great to see, especially this time of year. Well, a good story to close out today's show. We're going to leave it there for today. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on the Rurkishay Audio Network.

All of our shows are available at daily signal.com slash podcasts. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or your favorite podcast app. And be sure to listen every weekday by adding the Daily Signal podcast as part of your Alexa Flash briefing. If you like what you hear, please leave us a review and a five-star rating. It means a lot to us and helps to spread the word to other lives. listeners. And be sure to follow us on Twitter at DailySignal and Facebook.com slash the DailySignal News. Have a great week. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Rob Blewey and Virginia Allen,

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