Book burners: Twitter silences dissent, locks out President Trump’s COVID adviser

A mask cultist rage mob demanded it, and Twitter complied.

Twitter has decided to lock the account belonging to Dr. Scott Atlas, the president’s top COVID-19 adviser, after a group of mask advocates demanded a virtual book burning of the renowned doctor’s views on masks/face coverings.

In a tweet posted Saturday morning, Dr. Atlas correctly noted that there is no particular evidence that masks work to stop the spread of COVID-19. In doing so, he cited longstanding literature on masks from the World Health Organization, the CDC, and Oxford University. He linked to a terrific article by the American Institute for Economic Research, which goes into great detail about how cloth face coverings and masks not only don’t work as advertised, but pose several additional risks both related and unrelated to the pandemic.

Martin Kulldorff @MartinKulldorff

Here is one of the tweets censored, where @SWAtlasHoover cites Oxford professor @carlheneghan, @WHO and @CDCgov.

Moreover, Rational Ground has done a great job charting how masks do not work to stop the spread of COVID-19. 

See their mask charts here: https://rationalground.com/mask-charts/

Dr. Atlas has been an essential voice for the push to return America to normal. He has helped the Trump Administration raise awareness about destructive COVID-19 reactionary policies such as lockdowns and school closures. He has often had to take on both the press and the government bureaucracy in driving home the evidence and statistics that support reopening.

Laura Ingraham @IngrahamAngle

Dr. Scott Atlas: These lockdowns are a luxury of the rich. The President understands that people need to work, the working-class need their jobs, children need to go to school, it's harmful to do otherwise. || #IngrahamAngle #Covid19

Daily Caller @DailyCaller

Dr. Atlas @SWAtlasHoover gets into a fiery exchange with NBC News' @PeterAlexander: ALEXANDER: "Americans hear one thing from the CDC Director and another thing from you. Who are we to believe?" ATLAS: "You're supposed to believe the science and I'm telling you the science."

Following the Atlas tweet, a group of enraged partisan mask cultists (who, by the way, never want to debate the efficacy of masks, because there are no facts on their side) demanded the removal of the tweet. 

Here’s a few examples of the true mask believers’ demands upon Twitter:

Sam Ghali, M.D. @EM_RESUS

Hi ER Doc here, @Twitter needs to flag this tweet as medical misinformation. This is political propaganda disguised as ‘science’. The best scientific evidence we have shows that masks prevent the spread of virus and SAVE LIVES. RT so people don’t believe this dangerous BS https://t.co/33ciakH67C

Dr. Angela Rasmussen @angie_rasmussen

@SWAtlasHoover @TwitterSafety this is false. Please take this down and monitor this account—it is misinformation and will get people killed.

Ashish K. Jha @ashishkjha

Scott Atlas -- the @WhiteHouse covid advisor -- spreading false information. The piece he links to is incoherent junk. But as a source of disinformation -- he is creating confusion and "debate" on issues where the data is pretty clear. Masks work https://t.co/AXVz1TBTDX

Twitter — which has advocated for massive restrictions, as shown by who it has labeled as a COVID-19 “expert,”— complied shortly thereafter. The social media giant not only deleted the tweet, but locked the account belonging to Dr. Atlas for an indefinite period of time.

Aaron Ginn @aginnt

Atlas’s account is locked. There is no consistency with @Twitter’s rules on COVID. @jack says “only authoritative sources”. @SWAtlasHoover is literally a COVID advisor to POTUS/ HHS. Twitter is confident they know more about COVID than definitional “authoritative sources”. https://t.co/qM3TpRakZb

Martin Kulldorff @MartinKulldorff

Twitter has censored two tweets by scientist and White House Coronavirus Task Force member @SWAtlasHoover. After 300 years, the Age of Enlightenment has ended. https://t.co/Q2lFKWnp6z

CNN wrote an article celebrating the removal of the Atlas tweet. The advocacy media network got in touch with a Twitter spokesperson, who told them that “the policy Atlas violated prohibits sharing false or misleading content related to Covid-19 that could lead to harm.” 

Twitter did not specify anything shared by Atlas related to COVID-19 that has been false or misleading. 

This entire debacle is a shameful partisan witch hunt. It has nothing to do with science. In fact, the silencing of dissent directly undermines the widely understood Western scientific processes of debate, observation, and experimentation. “The Science” has become a purity contest, and those who dissent from “The Science” must be removed from the conversation entirely, according to the book burners. The individuals and groups of deplatformers are not advancing science. Rather, they’ve become members of an evidence-free cult that uses the word “science” to advance their demands.