Coronavirus Comments Get A Couple Of Docs Kicked Off YouTube

What does it take yo get you kicked off YouTube? Animal cruelty, sexual violence, exploitation of children? No doubt.  What did a couple of California doctors say that got them booted after more than 5-million people watched their press conference?

The original video, some 51 minutes long, is gone but a story on Real Clear Politics captures the meat of the message - the numbers don't add up and it's time to open up the country and stop the economy killing mandates.  " Drs. Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi, co-owners of a chain of Accelerated Urgent Care facilities, say that after conducting more than 5,000 coronavirus tests they have come to the conclusion that COVID-19 is no more dangerous than a normal seasonal flu and quarantines are not making any difference in preventing its spread....the seasonal flu are "similar in their prevalence and death rates," and "now that we have the facts, it's time to get back to work....Do we need businesses to be shut down? Emphatically no. Do we need to test them and get them back to work? Absolutely." 

The message caught fire as the briefing made national media and was used to justify requests for governors to loosen restrictions in a number of states.  Then YouTube took it down leaving the much shorter and less emphatic Vriefing Pt. 2

Then the political and major medical machines noticed and launched into action as described in CalMatters.org.

"But public health experts were quick to debunk the doctors’ findings as misguided and riddled with statistical errors — and an example of the kind of misleading information they are forced to waste precious time disputing.....The doctors should never have assumed that the patients they tested — who came for walk-in COVID-19 tests or who sought urgent care for symptoms they experienced in the middle of a pandemic — are representative of the general population, said Dr. Carl Bergstrom, a University of Washington biologist who specializes in infectious disease modeling. He likened their extrapolations to “estimating the average height of Americans from the players on an NBA court.”“They’ve used methods that are ludicrous to get results that are completely implausible,”

So, are the docs just wanting to get their own clinics opened up for selfish reasons or are they really seeing something with real ramifications for the rest of the county?  Again, how are we supposed to know for sure?  Would these guys go on record over greed and expose themselves to such scrutiny if they didn't believe their analysis and conclusions?   Who do you trust?

The American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine are NOT on board with the boys from Bakersfield saying they, "emphatically condemn the recent opinions released by Dr. Daniel Erickson and Dr. Artin Messihi. These reckless and untested musings do not speak for medical societies and are inconsistent with current science and epidemiology regarding COVID-19. As owners of local urgent care clinics, it appears these two individuals are releasing biased, non-peer reviewed data to advance their personal financial interests without regard for the public’s health.”

Once again we all stand at the crossroads of  "They Said - We Said " and both sides are wearing white lab coats, so again - who do you believe?

Where do anti-Trump political motivations factor in?

There is fear and anxiety, frustration and impatience and uncertainty...and the one thing we know for sure about the Coronavirus is that we don't know very much for sure about the Coronavirus..