The White House publicly denies it. But Trump's own pandemic advisers now privately admit that he's pursuing a 'herd immunity' strategy which could result in the preventable deaths of many more hundreds of thousands of Americans.
From The Daily Beast:
Officials say that White House adviser Scott Atlas first started pushing herd immunity this past summer despite significant pushback from scientists, doctors and infectious disease experts that the concept was dangerous and would result in far more Americans getting sick and dying. Since then, various White House advisers have tried to play down the idea that the administration has implemented a strategy for COVID-19 based on herd immunity, which holds that if enough people contract a disease and become immune from it, then future spread among the broader population will be less likely. (…)
[Those] working on the government's COVID response say that the attempts by the White House and Atlas to steer clear from using the phrase "herd immunity" are merely a game of semantics. Privately,one of those sources said, the actual policy pursuits have been crafted around a plainly herd immunity approach; mainly, that the government should prioritize protecting the vulnerable while allowing "everyone else to get infected," that source said.
In a recent call with reporters, in which The Daily Beast participated, administration officials laid out a new emphasis in the president's coronavirus policy which underscored "protecting the vulnerable," key among them nursing home patients. One official said the coronavirus was "dangerous for a certain subset of the population" and that "most people do extraordinary well."
Read the rest at the Daily Beast: Trump's COVID Advisers: He's Now Pushing Herd Immunity
