- On this Wednesday Checkup, I want to talk about
the two urgent care doctors that are making headlines
for their controversial statements regarding COVID-19.
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This all started on April 22 when two doctors Dan Erickson
and Artin Massihi called a press conference
to discuss their thoughts on COVID-19
and the re-opening of America
based on the five thousand patients they tested
in their Urgent Care centers.
The main takeaways from the press conference are as follows:
One, the government is horribly mishandling this situation
by ignoring the science and only focusing
on controlling the public.
Two, way more people are sick with COVID-19
than is currently reported.
Three, the fatality rate of COVID-19 is much lower
than currently being reported and it's similar to the flu.
And finally four, that America should re-open now
because the harms of keeping it closed
much outweigh the benefits.
In the days following their press conference,
they received nationwide attention.
Mostly because their recommendations and opinions were
in stark contrast with the medical community and the CDC.
Also the video of the press conference
became increasingly popular on social media
where it picked up over five million views on YouTube.
And it received retweets from popular figures
like Elon Musk who supported the doctors.
Fast Forward to April 27th and YouTube has now taken
the video down stating
that it's broken community guidelines,
basically saying there's a lot of misinformation in it.
And there's been a joint statement released
by the American College of Emergency Physicians
and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine.
Let me read that statement.
The AACP and AAEM jointly and emphatically condemn
the recent opinions released by Dr Erickson and Dr Massihi.
"These reckless and untested musings do not speak
"for medical society 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."
I completely agree with these statements
because these individuals presented
so much misinformation that it's further gonna confuse
the general public.
Let me explain why the information these doctors presented
is just not scientifically accurate.
Look, the fact that they tested 5,000 patients
in their Urgent Care centers and 6%
of them tested positive for COVID-19 makes a lot of sense.
And it's actually probably accurate.
But what's not accurate and what doesn't make sense is
to then take 6%, that number and assume that if you test
all of New York State and all of California,
then 6% of those people will also test positive.
That's just not how statistics work.
The people that go to an Urgent Care center
are more likely to test positive
because they're showing symptoms,
because they likely had exposure to COVID-19,
that's why they're there.
In general when you're testing a preselected population
like that, you're gonna have higher numbers.
It's like assuming that if you go to Southern California
and gather the weather data, you can then extrapolate it
and assume that the weather is the same in New York.
And then with the incorrect assumption that 6%
of the general public must be COVID positive,
they go on to calculate a fatality rate
that's similar to the flu.
Let me go ahead and explain to you how we calculate
a death rate so it all makes sense.
First we take all the people who've died with COVID-19
and we divide that number by all the people
who've been infected by COVID-19.
Let's run an example here.
If 10 people have died of COVID-19
and 1000 have been infected,
you divide 10 by 1000 and you get 1%.
It makes a 1% death rate.
Now if you incorrectly assume that way more people
have had COVID-19 than is true,
you can artificially lower this death rate.
My second issue is let's go ahead
and assume there calculations are correct.
They're not.
It doesn't change the fact that COVID-19 is still
much more dangerous than the flu.
Reason being that COVID-19 spreads at a two to three times
faster rate than the flu.
Which means that it can overwhelm our hospital systems
in the blink of an eye.
In fact, that's what the purpose
of all these lock downs were.
To ease the strain on our hospital systems
so we can continue taking care of patients
that are not only suffering with COVID,
but with all the other medical ailments out there.
If you have been in a car accident,
there would have been no one to help you.
If you call for a heart attack,
there would have been no one to help you.
We must also remember that for the flu, we have a vaccine.
We have an FDA approved treatment.
So by maintaining the lockdown for slightly longer period
of time, we're buying time in order to get there.
To get the vaccine and to get the treatments authorized.
These are all the reasons why I've been consistently saying
on my YouTube channel, to my patients, on television,
that while COVID-19 looks similar to the flu, it's a virus,
upper respiratory symptoms, they are not the same.
They're fundamentally different in that COVID-19 spreads
so quickly and puts such a tremendous strain
on our health care system, that it can break it.
In fact, I'd love for these emergency medicine physicians
who are no longer working in emergency rooms
to come to New York City and talk to the ER doctors
that are working on the front lines to see how overwhelmed
they were with this apparently mild virus during it's peak.
Let's move on to the topic of re-opening America.
These individuals are adamant
about re-opening America, right now.
Because they're talking about the negative consequences
that are happening as a result of this lockdown.
Social issues, like domestic violence and child abuse.
Patients not being able to get care
because they are worried about getting sick with COVID.
Routine procedures being re-scheduled.
Economic harms.
All of these negative consequences are very true.
And we need to take them into consideration
when we're weighing the benefits versus harms of a lockdown.
The last thing we want to do is to rush
to re-open America haphazardly
and see a spike in the resurgence of COVID-19 cases.
Possibly destroying our health care system,
potentially putting thousands if not millions of lives
at risk because they might not be able
to get care at a hospital.
Look we absolutely need to start taking steps
in re-opening America.
If we continue this for much longer,
it is gonna be limited benefits
and more harms being added on.
But the way we do this is strategically.
We open certain areas first,
and we continuously gather information to see
what impact we're having on COVID-19 numbers.
And then use that data to gradually re-open
the country slowly, carefully, and most importantly, safely.
At the end of the day, no one benefits
from keeping America closed.
In fact this whole theory of politicians
keeping America closed just to keep control
over the general public is nonsensical.
They're getting hurt by this too,
and so are their families.
If you're gonna be a public facing medical professional
that goes on to talk about COVID-19 and say
that you're talking about science.
At least do it accurately, and keep the politics out of it.
These doctors aren't the first
to be spreading misinformation about COVID-19.
So are politicians and so is the media.
Click here for those videos
and as always stay happy and healthy.
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