Dr. Jerome Adams Was Right. They Wanted Them Infected. That’s a Fact.

We expected more cases with more social mingling… But the fact is the overwhelming majority of these cases are in younger healthier people. These people do not have a significant problem. They do not have the serious complications. They do not die. And so it’s fantastic news that we have a lot of cases, but we don’t see deaths going up, and what that means is A: we’re are doing a better job of protecting the vulnerable, B: We’re in good shape here.

We like the fact that there’s a lot of cases in low- risk populations, because that’s exactly how we’re going to get herd immunity, population immunity, when low-risk people, with no significant problem handling this virus, which is basically 99% of people get this, they become immunity and they block the pathway of connectivity of contagiousness for older sicker people…Children have virtually zero risk of getting a serious complication, virtually a zero risk of dying…Children only rarely if ever transmit the disease.

During another Fox News interview from July 2020, Dr. Atlas said:

When younger, healthier people get the disease, they don’t have a problem with the disease. I’m not sure why that’s so difficult for everyone to acknowledge. These people getting the infection is not really a problem, and in fact, as we said months ago, when you isolate everyone, including all the healthy people, you’re prolonging the problem because you’re preventing population immunity. Low-risk groups getting the infection is not a problem.

During another interview from July 2020, Dr. Atlas said:

It doesn’t matter if younger, healthier people get infected. I don’t know how often that has to be said. They have nearly zero risk of a problem from this. When younger, healthier people get infected, that’s a good thing because that’s exactly the way that population immunity develops.

A Twitter account compiled several videos of Dr. Atlas making (and later denying) many similar statements. In one clip, Dr. Atlas said:

There’s a positive to having low-risk groups get infection.  What’s the positive?  This is how you develop population based immunity.  When I said this months ago, as did others, if we isolate every human being from social interaction, we are prolonging the problem, we are preventing population immunity from developing.  But we isolated, and this is what we called for, isolating and protecting the high-risk groups, once we do that successfully, we don’t care if younger, healthier people get the infection.

It’s true that Dr. Atlas also wrote articles discussing the potential harms of remote learning in 2020, though he used this as an opportunity to minimize pediatric COVID.  For example, he wrote that “only ten” children died of COVID in NYC during the first wave, though this was a large number of children to die in a short time in one city with the strictest mitigation measures in place.

However, Dr. Atlas’ belief that it was “positive”, “a good thing”, and “fantastic news” when young people contracted COVID explains why he didn’t just want children in school, he wanted them there unvaccinated, unmasked, and untested. Indeed, Dr. Atlas, who supposedly was only concerned about students losing “the massive benefit of education”, had nothing to say, as far as I know, when overwhelming COVID outbreaks shuttered schools or led to record-high absentee rates.

Dr. Atlas viewed schools as an opportunity to build “natural herd immunity” in children. He wanted them infected.

Of course, Drs. Prasad and Bhattacharya should not be surprised by these quotes from Dr. Atlas. They too were leaders of the movement to infect unvaccinated children with SARS-CoV-2 to theoretically protect more vulnerable adults. It’s worth remembering their words as well.

In an article titled, Should We Let Children Catch Omicron, Dr. Prasad said:

When it comes to infectious disease, normality means a world where they are routinely exposed to, and overcome, viral illness. For children, getting sick and recovering is part of a natural and healthy life… Shielding kids from exposure only increases their future risk. This is partly why the UK does not vaccinate against chickenpox. Serious complications from the disease are rare among children, and the circulating virus allows adults to be naturally boosted against reactivation-driven shingles. By rebuilding population immunity among the least at-risk, moreover, we help buffer risk for those most vulnerable.

He favorably quoted computational biologist Dr. Francois Balloux who said:

I’m not sure how to convey this message in a half-acceptable way. But, if the objective were to send SARCoV2 into endemicity, then healthy kids have to be exposed to the virus, ideally earlier than later. This is not ‘eugenism’; it is bog-standard infection disease epidemiology.

Dr. Prasad urged his readers to accept pediatric COVID fatalities “as a matter of course”, writing:

While the death of any child is a tragedy, Covid-19 is less deadly to children than many other risks we accept as a matter of course,

“Immunity is built through illness,” Dr. Prasad concluded, though of course immunity can also be built through vaccines.

Dr. Bhattacharya, meanwhile, co-authored the influential Great Barrington Declaration (GBD), whose entire premise was that the mass infection of unvaccinated youth would lead to herd immunity. It said:

The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk.

In the Frequently Asked Questions section, the GBD claimed that herd immunity would arrive in 3 to 6 months if only 250 million unvaccinated, “not vulnerable” Americans were willing to simultaneously “build up immunity to the virus through natural infection”. It said:

For how long must high-risk individuals be careful and/or self-isolate?

When herd immunity is reached, they can live normally again with minimal risks. How long that takes depends on the strategy used. If age-wide lockdown measures are used to try and suppress the disease, it could take a year or two or three, making it very difficult for older people to protect themselves for that long. If focused protection is used, it will likely only take 3 to 6 months.

Like Dr. Atlas, Drs. Prasad and Bhattacharya have spread blatant misinformation, always minimizing COVID’s risk to children. They too have been tireless crusaders against vaccines, masks, COVID tests, and anything else that might limit COVID infections in children. They too were silent when COVID outbreaks closed schools.

They also wanted them infected.

The broader lesson here is that it’s crucial to remember the words doctors said, the policies they pushed, and the real-world consequences that resulted. This is especially the case now that they seek to rewrite history, denying they were ever part of a disastrous movement to infect tens of millions of unvaccinated children to achieve the mythical grail of herd immunity.

Dr. Adams ended his Twitter thread by saying:

My intent isn’t to attack Atlas or anyone else. It’s to remind us the context at the time for these policy debates, and the tradeoffs people don’t acknowledge or forget about in hindsight. Many were fine with exposing kids (and school workers) to a deadly virus, with no vaccine or treatment, in the name of herd immunity. That’s a fact.

He’s right. They wanted them infected. That’s a fact.