We'd like to look
at how we've responded as a nation, and why you responded.
Our first initial
response two months ago was a little bit of fear: [the
government] decided to shut down travel to and from China.
These are good ideas when you don't have any facts.
[Governments] decided to keep people at home and isolate
them.
Typically you
quarantine the sick. When someone has measles you quarantine
them. We've never seen where we quarantine the healthy.
So that's kind of how we started. We don't know what's going
on, we see this new virus. How should we respond? So we did
that initially, and over the last couple months we've gained
a lot of data typically.
We're going to go
over the numbers a little bit to kind of help you see how
widespread COVID is, and see how we should be responding to
it based on its prevalence throughout society - or the
existence of the cases that we already know about….
So if you look at California - these numbers are from
yesterday - we have 33,865 COVID cases, out of a total of
280,900 total tested. That's 12% of Californians were
positive for COVID. So we don't, the initial - as you guys
know, the initial models were woefully inaccurate.
They predicted
"millions" of cases of death - not of prevalence or
incidence - but death. That is not materializing. What is
materializing is, in the state of California is 12%
positives.
You have a 0.03
chance of dying from COVID in the state of California.
Does that
necessitate sheltering in place?
Does that
necessitate shutting down medical systems?
Does that
necessitate people being out of work?
96% of people in
California who get COVID would recover, with almost no
significant sequelae; or no significant continuing medical
problems.
Two months ago we
didn't know this. The more you test, the more positives you
get. The prevalence number goes up, and the death rate stays
the same. So [the death rate] gets smaller and smaller and
smaller.
And as we move
through this data - what I want you to see is - millions of
cases, small death. Millions of cases, small death.
We extrapolate data, we test people, and then we extrapolate
for the entire community based on the numbers. The initial
models were so inaccurate they're not even correct. And some
of them were based on social distancing and still predicted
hundreds of thousands of deaths, which has been inaccurate.
In New York the
ones they tested they found 39% positive. So if they tested
the whole state would we indeed have 7.5 million cases? We
don't know; we will never test the entire state.
So we extrapolate
out; we use the data we have because it's the most we have
versus a predictive model that has been nowhere in the
ballpark of accurate.
How many deaths
do they have? 19,410 out of 19 million people, which is a
0.1% chance of dying from COVID in the state of New York. If
you are indeed diagnosed with COVID-19, 92% of you will
recover.
We've tested over 4 million… which gives us a 19.6% positive
out of those who are tested for COVID-19. So if this is a
typical extrapolation 328 million people times 19.6 is 64
million.
That's a
significant amount of people with COVID; it's similar to the
flu. If you study the numbers in 2017 and 2018 we had 50 to
60 million with the flu.
And we had a
similar death rate in the deaths the United States were
43,545 - similar to the flu of 2017-2018. We always have
between 37,000 and 60,000 deaths in the United States, every
single year. No pandemic talk. No shelter-in-place.
No shutting down
businesses…
We do thousands of flu tests every year. We don't report
every one, because the flu is ubiquitous and to that note we
have a flu vaccine. How many people even get the flu
vaccine? The flu is dangerous, it kills people.
Just because you
have a vaccine doesn't mean it's going to be everywhere and
it doesn't mean everyone's going to take it…
I would say
probably 50% of the public doesn't even want it. Just
because you have a vaccine - unless you forced it on the
public - doesn't mean they're going to take it.
Norway has locked down; Sweden does not have lock down.
What happened
in those two countries?
Are they
vastly different?
Did Sweden
have a massive outbreak of cases?
Did Norway
have nothing?
Let's look at the
numbers.
Sweden has 15,322
cases of COVID - 21% of all those tested came out positive
for COVID. What's the population of Sweden? About 10.4
million. So if we extrapolate out the data about 2 million
cases of COVID in Sweden.
They did a little
bit of social distancing; they would wear masks and
separate; they went to schools; stores were open. They were
almost about their normal daily life with a little bit of
social distancing.
They had how many
deaths? 1,765.
California's had
1,220 with isolation. No isolation: 1,765. We have more
people.
Norway: its
next-door neighbor. These are two Scandinavian nations; we
can compare them as they are similar. 4.9% of all COVID
tests were positive in Norway.
Population of
Norway: 5.4 million. So if we extrapolate the data, as we've
been doing, which is the best we can do at this point, they
have about 1.3 million cases. Now their deaths as a total
number, were 182.
So you have a
0.003 chance of death as a citizen of Norway and a 97%
recovery. Their numbers are a little bit better.
Does it
necessitate shutdown, loss of jobs, destruction of the
oil company, furloughing doctors?
I wanted to talk
about the effects of COVID-19, the secondary effects.
COVID-19 is one
aspect of our health sector. What has it caused to have us
be involved in social isolation? What does it cause that we
are seeing the community respond to? Child molestation is
increasing at a severe rate.
We could go over
multiple cases of children who have been molested due to
angry family members who are intoxicated, who are home, who
have no paycheck.
Spousal abuse: we
are seeing people coming in here with black eyes and cuts on
their face. It's an obvious abuse of case. These are things
that will affect them for a lifetime, not for a season.
Alcoholism, anxiety, depression, suicide.
Suicide is
spiking; education is dropped off; economic collapse.
Medical industry we're all suffering because our staff isn't
here and we have no volume. We have clinics from Fresno to
San Diego and these things are spiking in our community.
These things will
affect people for a lifetime, not for a season.
I'd like to go over some basic things about how the immune
system functions so people have a good understanding. The
immune system is built by exposure to antigens: viruses,
bacteria.
When you're a
little child crawling on the ground, putting stuff in your
mouth, viruses and bacteria come in.
You form an
antigen antibody complex. You form IgG IgM. This is how your
immune system is built. You don't take a small child put
them in bubble wrap in a room and say,
"go have a
healthy immune system."
This is
immunology, microbiology 101. This is the basis of what
we've known for years.
When you take
human beings and you say,
"go into your
house, clean all your counters - Lysol them down you're
gonna kill 99% of viruses and bacteria; wear a mask;
don't go outside," what does it do to our immune system?
Our immune system
is used to touching. We share bacteria. Staphylococcus,
streptococcal, bacteria, viruses.
Sheltering in place decreases your immune system. And then
as we all come out of shelter in place with a lower immune
system and start trading viruses, bacteria - what do you
think is going to happen?
Disease is going
to spike. And then you've got diseases spike - amongst a
hospital system with furloughed doctors and nurses. This is
not the combination we want to set up for a healthy society.
It doesn't make
any sense.
…Did we respond appropriately? Initially the response, fine
shut it down, but as the data comes across - and we say now,
wait a second, we've never, ever responded like this in the
history of the country why are we doing this now?
Any time you have
something new in the community medical community it sparks
fear - and I would have done what Dr. Fauci did - so we both
would have initially.
Because the first
thing you do is, you want to make sure you limit liability -
and deaths - and I think what they did was brilliant,
initially. But you know, looking at theories and models -
which is what these folks use - is very different than the
way the actual virus presents itself throughout
communities….
Nobody talks about the fact that coronavirus lives on
plastics for three days and we're all sheltering in place.
Where'd you
get your water bottles from? Costco.
Where did you
get that plastic shovel from? Home Depot.
If I swab things
in your home I would likely find COVID-19. And so you think
you're protected.
Do you see
the lack of consistency here?
Do you think
you're protected from COVID when you wear gloves that
transfer disease everywhere?
Those gloves
have bacteria all over them. We wear masks in an acute
setting to protect us. We're not wearing masks.
Why is that?
Because we
understand microbiology; we understand immunology; and
we want strong immune systems. I don't want to hide in
my home, develop a weak immune system, and then come out
and get disease.
When someone dies
in this country right now they're not talking about the high
blood pressure, the diabetes, the stroke.
They say they
died from COVID. We've been to hundreds of autopsies. You
don't talk about one thing, you talk about comorbidities.
COVID was part of it, it is not the reason they died folks.
When I'm writing
up my death report I'm being pressured to add COVID.
Why is that?
Why are we
being pressured to add COVID?
To maybe increase
the numbers, and make it look a little bit worse than it is.
We're being
pressured in-house to add COVID to the diagnostic list when
we think it has nothing to do with the actual cause of
death. The actual cause of death was not COVID, but it's
being reported as one of the disease processes and being
added to the death list.
COVID didn't kill
them, 25 years of tobacco use killed.
There's two ways to get rid of virus: either burns itself
out or herd immunity. For hundreds of years we relied on
herd immunity. Viruses kill people, end of story. The flu
kills people. COVID kills people. But for the rest of us we
develop herd immunity.
We developed the
ability to take this virus in and defeat it and for the vast
majority 95% of those around the globe.
Do you want your
immune system built or do you want it not built? The
building blocks of your immune system is a virus and
bacteria.
There's normal
bacteria in normal flora that we have to be exposed to
bacteria and viruses that are not virulent are our friends.
They protect us against bad bacteria and bad viruses.
Right now, if you look at Dr. Erikson's skin or my skin we
have strep, we have stuff - they protect us against
opportunistic infections. That's why for the first three to
six months [babies are] extremely vulnerable to
opportunistic infection.
Which is why,
when we see a little baby in the ER with fever who is one
month old, you do a spinal tap, you do a chest x-ray, you do
blood cultures, you do urine cultures.
But if you had a
fever I wouldn't do that for you. Why? Because that baby
does not have the normal bacteria and flora from the
community, whereas you do. I guarantee when we reopen
there's going to be a huge, huge amount of illness that's
going to be rampant because our immune systems have
weakened.
That's just
basic immunology...
Do we need to
still shelter in place? Our answer is emphatically
no.
Do we need
businesses to be shut down? Emphatically no.
Do we need to
have it, do we need to test them, and get them back to
work? Yes, we do.
The the secondary
effects that we went over - the child abuse, alcoholism,
loss of revenue - all these are, in our opinion, a
significantly more detrimental thing to society than a virus
that has proven similar in nature to the seasonal flu we
have every year.
We also need to put measures in place so economic shutdown
like this does not happen again. We want to make sure we
understand that quarantining the sick is what we do, not
quarantine the healthy.
We need to make
sure if you're going to dance on someone's constitutional
rights you better have a good reason. You better have a
really good scientific reason, and not just theory.
One of the most important things is we need our hospitals
back up. We need our furloughed doctors back. We need our
nurses back. Because when we lift this thing, we're going to
need all hands on deck. I know the local hospitals have
closed two floors.
Folks, that's not
the situation you want. We're essentially setting ourselves
up to have minimal staff, and we're going to have
significant disease.
That's the
wrong combination...
I've talked to our local head of the Health Department and
he's waiting… for the powers that be to lift. Because the
data is showing it's time to lift.
I would start
slowly [open up schools sporting events] I think we need to
open up the schools start getting kids back to the immune
system you know and the major events the sporting events
these are non-essential let's get back to those slowly let's
start with schools let's start with cafe Rio and the pizza
place here…
Does that make
sense to you guys and I think I can go into Costco and I can
shop with people and there's probably a couple hundred
people but I can't go in Cafe Rio so big businesses are open
little businesses are not….
Eventually we treat this like we treat flu. Which is if you
have the flu and you're feeling fever and body aches you
just stay home if you have coughing or shortness of breath -
COVID is more of a respiratory thing - you stay home.
You don't get
tested, even when people come with flu a lot of times we
don't test them.
We go,
"you have
flu. Here's a medication."
You have COVID,
go home, let it resolve and come back negative.
If you have no symptoms you should be able to return to
work. Are you an asymptomatic viral spreader? Maybe, but we
can't test all of humanity. Sure we're going to miss cases
of coronavirus, just like we miss cases of the flu.
It would be nice
to capture every coronavirus patient,
but is that
realistic?
Are we going
to keep the economy shut down for two years and
vaccinate everybody?
That's an
unrealistic expectation.
You're going to
cause financial ruin, domestic violence, suicide, rape,
violence and what are you going to get out of it? You're
still going to miss a lot of cases.
So we need to
treat this like the flu, which is familiar, and
eventually this will mutate and become less and less
virulent…
I don't need a double-blind clinically controlled trial to
tell me if sheltering in place is appropriate, that is a
college-level understanding of microbiology. A lot of times
in medicine you have to make you have to make educated
decisions with the data that you have.
I can sit up in
the 47th-floor in the penthouse and say we should
do this, this, and this, but I haven't seen a patient for 20
years - that's not realistic.
If you're healthy and you don't have significant
comorbidities and you know you're not immunodeficient and
you're not elderly you should be able to go out without any
gloves and without a mask.
If you are those
things you should either shelter in place or wear a mask and
gloves.
I don't think
everybody needs to wear the masks and gloves
because it 'reduces' your bacterial flora… and your
bacterial flora and your viruses your friends that protect
you from other diseases [if they] end up going away and now
you're more likely to get opportunistic infections
infections that are hoping you don't have your good bugs
fighting for you.
I particularly appreciated Dr. Erickson's discussion of the
real suffering he has observed.
The one part of
Dr. Erickson's discussion I would quibble with is the extent
that we can extrapolate societal infection and recovery
rates based on already conducted tests.
I am quite sure
he would also agree with the following.
Estimating
societal wide infection and recovery rates would require
(and researchers are doing such studies now) getting a
representative sample of different people in society rather
than those who have been tested to date (often those who
show up to the hospital because they have symptoms), and
looking at how many people,
-
currently
have Covid-19
-
have
recovered from Covid-19
-
have not
had Covid-19...
Serology blood
tests involve looking at blood to see if individuals have
Covid-19 antibodies in their blood, i.e. that a person had
contact with Covid-19 and fought it off.
In a study released April 14, Stanford University
epidemiologist John Iannodis conducted serology tests on
3,330 residents of Santa Clara County meant to be a,
"representative sample of the county by demographic and
geographic characteristics",
...and found that
the number of people who had gotten and recovered from
Covid-19 was more than 50 times higher than previously
thought.
On April 23, Governor Cuomo reported a study that found 21
percent of New York City residents tested already had and
fought of Covid-19.
Now here too, one
can debate whether the researchers who identified random
people at grocery stores have a truly representative sample
of society. But it indicates that the number of unidentified
cases is much higher than we previously thought.
And as time goes
on more and more people will have caught and recovered from
the virus.
Dr. Daniel Murphy, Chairman of the Department of
Emergency Medicine at Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx states,
"As of today
[April 27], over 43 percent of those tested are positive
in The Bronx."
So although I
think we should wait for better data before we extrapolate
societal numbers based on previously conducted tests, I
think the thrust of Dr. Erickson's argument about society
having many more unidentified cases than we previously
thought is correct.
Most importantly, I think we must pay careful attention to
the health costs of complete lockdown and all of the
negative impacts on our medical system.
