Today’s update features two California doctors, who assert that the state does not need the “shelter-in-place” orders.
Doctors Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi are co-owners of a chain of Accelerated Urgent Care facilities, in Bakersfield. They have evaluated the state reports and reviewed the data collecting after conducting more than 5,000 coronavirus tests themselves.
Both medical professionals have concluded that COVID-19 is no more dangerous than a typical seasonal flu, and quarantines are not making any difference in preventing its spread. Additionally, they challenge the accuracy of the models that have been used to develop social distancing policies.
Erickson said at a press conference last week that businesses should begin to re-open and people should begin to go back to work.He said coronavirus and 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 to still shelter in place? Our answer is emphatically no,” he said. “Do we need businesses to be shut down? Emphatically no. Do we need to test them and get them back to work? Absolutely.”
As Erickson notes, “What we are seeing is millions of cases and a small amount of death.”
They arrived at that conclusion by taking the infection rate (the number of cases positive out of the total number of tests done) and extrapolating it to the general population. Statewide, Erickson said, 12 percent of people tested for COVID-19 are positive. Assuming this is the rate of infection among the general population, he estimated as many as 5 million Californians have had the virus (5 million is 12 percent of the state’s population of 40 million).He then used the number of reported deaths in California — around 1,200 last week — to calculate that 1,200 deaths out of 5 million people who have likely had the virus works out to a .03 percent death rate, which is similar to the death rate for flu.
The doctors’ conclusions about the damage to our immune systems from lockdowns, and related costs (suicides, child and spouse abuse, depression, etc.) are well worth considering. The two men also challenge the idea that a vaccine will solve all the issues related to the spread of COVID-19.
I would have loved to have shared the video, which is nearly an hour long. However, the Thought Police at Youtube took it down because it “violated community guidelines.” *UPDATE: Found it at another site!
Meanwhile, enjoy this clip while it lasts. 23 ABC in Bakersfield posted it, which is an addendum to that teleconference.
Meanwhile, a Florida research team, the number of mild cases seems to be on par with the observation of the Bakersfield doctors.
Researchers at the University of Miami said this week that preliminary tests indicate as many as 221,000 residents of Miami-Dade County may have already been infected by the coronavirus, a rate 20 times greater than the current official tally of infections.Scientists from the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the university’s Miller School of Medicine revealed in a virtual meeting on Friday that a county-wide COVID-19 survey, which followed 1,400 participants over a two-week period, indicated that at least 4.4 percent, and as much as 7.9 percent of the county, could have already contracted the coronavirus.That is a substantially larger number than the official data set logged by the state of Florida, which on Saturday afternoon had recorded just over 11,000 infections in Miami-Dade County, far and away the most out of any county in the state.
The Germans are now looking for some reparations for the pandemic.
A top German newspaper says China kept the “world in the dark” about the coronavirus — and should fork over $165 billion in reparations to the Fatherland because of it.Bild ran the piece last week by editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt that questioned whether China “should pay for the massive economic damage the coronavirus is inflicting worldwide,” according to Fox News.“You [President Xi Jinping], your government and your scientists had to know long ago that coronavirus is highly infectious, but you left the world in the dark about it,” Reichelt wrote in the piece titled “What China owes us.”
Six of California’s Bay Area counties announced in a joint statement they’d be extending shelter-in-place orders through the end of May, despite data and common sense.
The extended orders affect Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties, as well as the City of Berkeley, which has its own public health department.Full details are expected to be released later this week, the health officers said, and “will include limited easing of specific restrictions for a small number of lower-risk activities.”The current shelter-in-place restrictions for the six Bay Area counties were set to expire on May 3, though California’s statewide stay-at-home order that was issued in March has no set expiration date.
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