The discussion about the degree of danger of coronavirus infection and the reliability of statistics on infection with COVID-19 has become scandalous in the United States. Two doctors from a private emergency clinic gave new impetus to the discussion.
On April 22, Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi from Accelerated Urgent Care in Bakersfield, California held a videoconference and shared the results of their 10,000 coronavirus tests. According to them, of the residents of California who have passed the test, 12% are infected. Extrapolating this to the entire population of the state, Erickson and Massihi estimated that 5 million Californians could be infected with the virus. By dividing that figure by the number of deaths from COVID-19 in the state (roughly 1,200), they calculated the death rate, which turned out to be 0.03% - similar to the average death rate from seasonal flu.
"Millions of cases, few deaths," Erickson emphasized during the videoconference. In his opinion, fears about the virus are exaggerated, which casts doubt on the need for widespread quarantine measures. Both doctors called for the abolition of social distancing and the restoration of the normal functioning of the economy.
This video gained 5 million views in a short time, but was then removed by the YouTube administration, which caused a scandal. The online edition OffGuardian again posted the full version of the briefing of the two doctors on YouTube, but now it was removed after 60 views, that is, almost instantly.
After that, Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi were invited to the Fox News channel. Doctors said that they were at hundreds of autopsies of those who died from hypertension, diabetes, stroke and other diseases, but they were forced to write the diagnosis “died from COVID-19”. Californian doctors were supported by Elon Musk, who noticed that all this time California hospitals were half empty. Musk tweeted that "to classify all deaths as from the 'crown', even if the 'crown' did not cause death, is simply a lie."
And that's where it started. The American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine disagreed with the conclusions of Erickson and Massihi. Representatives of these institutions stated that they “strongly condemn the recent views expressed by Drs. Daniel Erickson and Artin Massihi. These rash and unverified assumptions … do not match the evidence of modern epidemiological science regarding COVID-19."
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Carl Burgstrom, professor of biology at the University of Washington, did not agree with the statistics on coronavirus given by two Californian doctors. According to him, the death rate from COVID-19 is 0.14% of the number of those infected, that is, five times higher. He called the data of Erickson and Massikha implausible, and the topic of forcing doctors to write in all diagnoses the cause of death of the coronavirus, Burgstrom passed over in silence.
Pediatrician Richard Pan, who heads the California Legislative Health Committee, said Erickson and Massihi are pushing for self-promotion, so they should “push back on any media” that support them. Rob Davidson, a rural Michigan emergency physician and executive director of the Committee to Protect Medicare, called the analysis of California doctors "a ridiculous statistic note."
A new explosion of discussion was caused by the fact that the removal of Erickson and Massikha's videoconference from YouTube was done, according to a representative of this company, “for violating the principles of avoiding misinformation about COVID-19”; YouTube "is rapidly removing … content that challenges the effectiveness of local health guidelines on social distancing."
The American Conservative then posted a letter from a Wyoming doctor who resented the YouTube censorship. “I can't believe this is happening in the United States,” the doctor writes. - My blood went cold when I found out that YouTube removed this video today … This is contrary to the scientific method; it contradicts everything on which this country and Western civilization are based … We are entering a very slippery ground."
Most of the American media are silent on the topic of censorship and falsification of diagnoses. Attention is focused on the fact that the federal medical authorities refute the conclusions of Erickson and Massikha. The Daily Beast writes that "Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi are making wild claims about coronavirus deaths." CNN gave the floor to Andrew Neumer, Associate Professor of Public Health and Disease Prevention at the University of California, who said that adopting the Swedish strategy to fight the coronavirus would lead to a public health disaster: “If we did what Sweden does, we would have the worst results in the Western Hemisphere”.
Donald Trump supporters responded by launching an attack on YouTube. Popular Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson attacked the site, and radio host Alex Jones posted a video of Erickson and Massiha's briefing on his website and announced that YouTube "will ban any video content that contradicts the recommendations of the World Health Organization."
Basically, all the objections to the conclusions drawn by the two Californian doctors boil down to the fact that their tests were carried out in only one district of one state and that "real experts" do not support them. Only OffGuardian noted that "the results of the Californian doctors are in line with studies carried out at Stanford University in the United States and by Japanese scientists in China."
The discussion around the statements of Erickson and Massikha is politicized to the limit. Liberal media calls the results of the Californian doctors "Right Wing Lie". However, they were supported by the American Foundation for Economic Education, the website of which reports cases of pressure from hospital administrations and state authorities on doctors. “If you died for a completely different reason, but at the same time you had COVID, it is still recorded as death from COVID,” said Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Health.
VLADIMIR PROKHVATILOV