White House Adviser Scott Atlas Says CDC Director Misstated COVID-19 Data

Member of the White House's coronavirus task force Dr. Scott Atlas speaks to the press as President Donald Trump looks on during a news conference at the White House in Washington, on Sept. 16, 2020. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Trump adviser Scott Atlas recently accused U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield of misstating CCP virus data during a news conference on Wednesday.

According to Atlas, Redfield had not been referring to the most recent CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus data when making his testimony.

“I think that Dr. Redfield misstated something there,” Atlas said. “The data on susceptible that he was talking about was his surveillance data that showed that roughly nine percent of the country has antibodies. But when you look at the CDC data state by state, much of that data is old, some of it goes back to March or April, before many of these states have the cases.”

Furthermore, Atlas claimed that Redfield had based his data and information solely on the population of people with antibodies. Atlas introduced the idea of T cells—part of the immune system that deals with foreign particles that enter the body—playing a critical role in immunity, although the part it plays is different than that of an antibody.

Moreover, there are various scientific papers out there that indicate that there are other ways that an individual can have immunity.

“The immunity to the infection is not solely determined by the percent of people who have antibodies. If you look at the research, and there’s been 24 papers, at least, on the immunity from T-cell, that’s the different type of immunity than antibodies,” Atlas said. “The reality is that according to the papers from Sweden, Singapore, and elsewhere, there is cross-immunity highly likely from other infections, and there is also T-cell immunity. And the combination of those makes the antibodies a small fraction of the people that have immunity.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the CDC but has not received a response to a request for comment.

According to Redfield, who spoke at the CCP virus Senate Testimony on Wednesday, the preliminary results from the antibody testing indicated that the majority of the population in the United States, as much as 90 percent, remains susceptible to the CCP virus, meaning that roughly 10 percent of the people in the United States have been infected by the CCP virus.

Redfield also noted during his testimony that the numbers of infected are different in various different parts of the country.

“It varies in different geographic parts from states that have less than one percent with evidence of previous infection, to some that have more than 15, 20, and one as high as 24 percent. We’ll have that finalized and probably published in the next week or so, but it does show that a majority of Americans are still susceptible to this virus,” Redfield said.