The Atlantic

What Young, Healthy People Have to Fear From COVID-19

The White House’s new science adviser says: nothing. The science disagrees.
Source: Getty / The Atlantic

Updated at 11:03 a.m. ET on September 8, 2020.

A new philosophy of COVID-19 is circulating through the Republican Party and conservative media. If you look closely, you might notice that it resembles an early philosophy of COVID-19 that circulated through the Republican Party and conservative media: If young people get this disease, it won’t be so bad—and it might even be good.

Scott Atlas, the new White House science adviser and Trump-whisperer, seems to be the ringleader of this emergent corona-stoicism. A neuroradiologist and senior fellow at Stanford University’s conservative Hoover Institution, Atlas is not an expert in epidemiology or infectious diseases. As a Fox News regular, his relevant credentials seem to be more televisual than scientific.

“It doesn’t matter if younger, healthier people get infected,” Atlas said in a with San Diego’s KUSI news station. “I don’t know

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic5 min read
The Strangest Job in the World
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. The role of first lady couldn’t be stranger. You attain the position almost by accident, simply by virtue of being married to the president
The Atlantic6 min read
The Happy Way to Drop Your Grievances
Want to stay current with Arthur’s writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out. In 15th-century Germany, there was an expression for a chronic complainer: Greiner, Zanner, which can be translated as “whiner-grumbler.” It was no
The Atlantic6 min read
There’s Only One Way to Fix Air Pollution Now
It feels like a sin against the sanctitude of being alive to put a dollar value on one year of a human life. A year spent living instead of dead is obviously priceless, beyond the measure of something so unprofound as money. But it gets a price tag i

Related Books & Audiobooks