"The science" backs up Americans who are "anxious to get back to work and to send their children to school," contends Dr. Scott Atlas, a new special adviser to President Trump and a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
Atlas, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, wrote in an op-ed for The Hill on Thursday that it's clear from medical science, the data and common sense that the economy should reopen.
"While the lockdown may have been justified at the start, when little data was known, we know far more about the virus today," he said. "It's time we use all we have learned and all we have done to reopen our schools and our economy safely and get back to restoring America."
Atlas, former professor and chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center, emphasized that the true risk of the coronavirus is now known.
Dr. Scott Atlas (Video screenshot)
"Only 0.2 percent of U.S. deaths have been people younger than 25, and 80 percent have been in people over 65; the average fatality age is 78," he said.
Children can go back to school, Atlas asserted.
He cited a Journal of the American Medical Association study of North American pediatric hospitals stating "our data indicate that children are at far greater risk of critical illness from influenza than from COVID-19."
More cases may result as social interactions increase, he said, "but the overwhelming majority of cases are now occurring in younger, low-risk people — decades younger, on average, than seen in the spring."
"And the vast majority of these people deal with the infection without consequence; many don’t even know they have it."
He pointed out an analysis of CDC data shows that the case fatality rate has declined by approximately 85% from its peak.
That is partly because of improvements in protecting the most vulnerable, particularly senior citizens.
Nevertheless, the economy has yet to fully reopen, he said, with at least 16 states maintaining travel warnings and quarantines that are not consistent with CDC guidelines.
In most states, he noted, retail stores are limited to pick-up or reduced shopping capacity.
"Even in states where cases are low, restaurants are often take-out only, and 42 states and territories have seating capacity limited to 25 percent or 50 percent. Fitness centers and gyms have largely reopened, but at reduced capacity."
In addition, schools in many cities and states are opening on a delayed or limited basis.
The Department of Education's tracking says that of 5,425 major school districts -- about one-third of districts nationwide -- nearly half plan to operate on hybrid models and another 20% plan to operate online only.
"That not only harms children, it prevents many parents from working," he said.
Atlas said a "flawed" assumption driving these restrictions is that the number of cases is the most important metric to follow.
"Yet, whatever effect these restrictions may have on cases, they don’t eliminate the virus," he said. "And they impose harms on the country and its citizens, particularly when they require the isolation of large segments of the low-risk and healthy, working populations."
Instead, he said, the administration is focused on a "three-pronged, data-driven strategy that is saving lives while safely reopening the economy and society, averting the disastrous calamities of continued lockdown."
First is protecting the high-risk group, providing resources to assist nursing homes and elderly individuals living in in-home care and senior centers. Second is monitoring hospitals and ICUs to prevent overcrowding. And third is guiding businesses and schools with common-sense mitigation measures.
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