Twitter on Sunday removed a tweet from White House coronavirus adviser, Dr. Scott Atlas, for downplaying the effectiveness of masks in controlling the spread of coronavirus.
Dr. Scott Atlas joined Trump’s team in August as a science adviser. It has become his trademark to go contrary to fact-based guidelines from public health institutions concerning the coronavirus pandemic that has killed over 215,000 Americans.
Dr. Atlas tweeted, “Masks work? No,” and went on to tweet other comments that questioned the effectiveness of masks in combating the virus.
He cited a situation whereby cases of the coronavirus surged in places like Los Angeles, Miami, Hawaii, Alabama, France, Philippines, United Kingdom, Spain, and Israel despite the various mandates in those cities and countries emphasizing the use of masks.
A spokesman for Twitter gave reasons why Dr. Atlas’ posts were taken down. He explained that the White House adviser’s tweets violated Twitter’s policy guidelines against putting up misleading misinformation on the coronavirus.
President Donald Trump and most members of his inner circle have often downplayed the effectiveness of masks in controlling the spread of the coronavirus. The president contracted the coronavirus in September, and the public expected that his stance on the wearing of masks would change. Instead, the president shocked observers by taking off his mask on the very day he arrived at the White House after days in the hospital.
Dr. Atlas has come out to say that he finds it hard to understand why Twitter would take down his tweets, accusing the micro-blogging platform of censorship.
“It’s a disaster,” Atlas said. “We’ve already seen the near obstruction of journalism. When you start censoring science, you are removing fact, removing the basic way that we decide what is truth and what is not. This has been done, I think historically in various countries, and you know, we are sort of teetering on the edge of what is done in third world countries – the countries we used to be proudly distinguished from.”
Dr. Atlas was a former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center and a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. He had no previous experience in public health or infectious diseases and has often criticized the lockdown measures embarked by federal and state governments. He has insisted on the reopening of businesses and economic activities and the resumption of schools and colleges. He has also promoted “herd immunity,” which a large section of the scientific community view as an erroneous and dangerous theory.
Twitter and Facebook have taken up a strong policy to limit the spread of unverifiable or misleading tweets on the coronavirus and US elections on their platform. Twitter especially has removed or blocked users from accessing tweets by President Trump that run afoul of its policy guidelines.
Last week, the tech giant took action against an article from the conservative-leaning New York Post newspaper. The article was about email exchanges between Hunter Biden, son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, and a Ukrainian businessman. The story was largely unverified by other reputable publications. Twitter prevented the article from being shared on its platform and suspended the newspaper’s account. There have been no new tweets from the newspaper ever since.
Source: politico.com
