The White House coronavirus task force is pleased with Twitter's decision to remove what it deems as a misleading tweet from Dr. Scott Atlas. The health care policy advisor to Donald Trump raised questions about the effectiveness of wearing masks to restrict the spread of the coronavirus and indirectly suggesting that wearing a mask will not help Americans to avoid contracting the deadly virus.

Some of the task force members, including Dr. Deborah Birx, were relieved after Twitter removed the tweet. Birx told this to her friends over the weekend, according to a source familiar with the conversation. Atlas is a neuroradiologist who was hand-picked by Trump as one of the White House's coronavirus advisers.

With his now-deleted tweet, Atlas tried to undermine the importance of wearing face masks and promoted misinformation about its ineffectiveness on Saturday. "Masks work? NO," he tweeted and offered a series of misrepresentations about the science behind the effectiveness of masks when it comes to restricting the spread of coronavirus.

The tweet and its immediate removal come amid a still-raging coronavirus pandemic. In stark contrast to the message Atlas tried to convey through his tweet, other members of the White House coronavirus task force have taken to airwaves to encourage Americans to adopt basic mitigation strategies such as social distancing and mask usage.

Birx recently complained to Vice President Mike Pence's office about Atlas, saying she does not trust him, nor is she convinced that he is giving Trump sound advice. She went on to request Pence to remove Atlas from the task force.

Birx told her friends that fighting coronavirus is hard enough without Atlas, sources told CNN. She said the task force is angry at Atlas' ability to find dubious information, label it as data, and show it to Trump as scientific evidence, describing it as an almost insuperable challenge.

Birx has also accused Trump of believing something if he likes the sound of it. Atlas has recently become a key influence on Trump as the task force and politics and competing interests have sidelined its top members.

Although task force officials haven't briefed reporters at the White House for quite some time now, the group hasn't stopped briefing governors and providing states with weekly reports and recommendations, which largely go unheeded by Trump as he is more focused on traveling across the nation and holding rallies ahead of the impending election. Twitter said Atlas' tweet violated its policy that restricts users from sharing false or misleading and potentially harmful content related to COVID-19.