Trump embraces idea behind 'herd immunity' as Fauci calls concept 'total nonsense' - ABC News

President Donald Trump has in recent weeks increasingly aligned himself with ideas espoused by scientists pushing "herd immunity" to combat the novel coronavirus, a concept lambasted by public health experts as "dangerous" and called "ridiculous" by the federal government's foremost infectious disease official, Dr.

Since Saturday, the president has repeatedly criticized "unscientific lockdowns" -- falsely portraying public health experts as supportive of harsh restrictions -- and argued against coronavirus-related limits on American society by repeating his months-old mantra, "The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself.".

While he has largely avoided using the phrase "herd immunity" to describe the policies he has furthered, the president's views reflect those of a small subset of scientists with a powerful ally in the White House, Dr.

Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist with no background in infectious diseases who has supplanted Fauci and other top federal public health officials as one of Trump's top medical advisers.

But a broad consensus of mainstream public health experts flatly rejects this idea, arguing it would lead to many millions of deaths and take an untold toll on an American populace rife with underlying medical conditions, like obesity, that make them more likely to suffer severe symptoms and die.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar met last week with Atlas and several researchers who have endorsed the ideas behind a "herd immunity" approach without labeling it as such.

The White House on Monday convened a conference call for reporters in part to draw attention to the Great Barrington Declaration, an online petition that argues in favor of achieving natural herd immunity while also using "focused protection" to safeguard the most vulnerable.

Fauci told ABC News on Thursday that the Great Barrington Declaration falsely portrayed prominent public health experts as supporting "lockdowns.".

In a statement provided by the White House, Atlas said "we emphatically deny that the White House, the president, the administration, or anyone advising the president has pursued or advocated for any strategy of achieving herd immunity by letting the coronavirus infection spread through the community." He said the Great Barrington Declaration authors "emphasized focused protection of the vulnerable and safely ending the shutdown of schools and society.".

But John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children's Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said the Great Barrington Declaration did, in fact, back the idea of letting the virus rip through the community -- as long as the vulnerable were protected