Dr. Scott Atlas says science and logic must guide the reopening of America
You can't make policy based on fear and catastrophic projections, Hoover Institution senior fellow Dr. Scott Atlas tells Martha MacCallum on 'The Story.'
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Hoover Institution senior fellow Dr. Scott Atlas dismissed a new model from the University of Washington's Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) that projects more than 134,000 Americans will die of COVID-19 by Aug. 4 as states begin to reopen their economies.
"We should look at the evidence. We don't need to rely on hypothetical projections," Atlas, a former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center, told Martha MacCallum on "The Story" Monday night. "We have a ton of evidence. And the evidence is consistent all over the world that we know the fatality rate is much lower than what the models were based on originally.
"We know that ... the curves have been flattened and the curves to note are not the numbers of cases. The only curves that count are the deaths per day and the hospitalizations per day."
The doctor also called for schools to reopen, saying young people have little to worry about in regard to the virus.
"We know it's factually true and proven all over the world that people under 18 have very little, if any, risk of a serious illness and essentially no risk of dying," Atlas said. "There is no reason to separate people in the age groups 0 to 18, six feet apart. It's just that there's no scientific evidence, really, to do that. There's no evidence really whatsoever to continue to have these schools closed."
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Atlas added that Americans know how to protect the elderly and those most at risk from the virus and claimed those measures shouldn't impact school.
"We understand they [children] interact with elderly people. We understand, though, how to protect the elderly relatives that they interact with," Atlas said. "There is no evidence to think that people in schools K through 12 have to be six feet apart. That's just not correct."