Publisher’s Note: Thanks to our colleagues at VtDigger for the latest weekly “coronavirus” numbers and new interview with Vermont health commissioner Dr. Mark Levine, in which he calls for continued “coronavirus containment” based on emerging strategic COVID testing capacities. And below we juxtapose two of the most interestng “coronavirus” news stories from this past week – one minute on a “hot mic” in the White House press briefing room, and one hour with two California ER doctors on the front lines of treating “coronavirus” discussing their data, their questions, and their recommendations, urging US to “open up society now” because “the lockdown is weakening our immune systems.” Food for thought, and censored by YouTube and condemned by Dr. Orgs. Finally, NEWSWEEK’s new Op/Ed on the future of US health care is provocative. Read it here.

First, the DC “hot take”–>

COVID “HOT TAKE” on a HOT MIC: Thanks to Fox News‘ “Chief White House Correspondent” John Roberts for giving US the single most important “news” minute of this entire “coronavirus global pandemic,” by MISTAKE. We’re waiting for this story to appear on the FRONT PAGE and HOME SCREEN of every US MSM news outlet in the country. Seems important. To be clear, this is not about FOX news, or Trump, or “vaccines,” or “hoaxes.” Don’t “bury the lead” here.

What IS this about? Some potentially GOOD news re: COVID and #TeamHuman’s antibody response, to wit: new CALIFORNIA antibody DATA is revealing that it looks like 1) COVID appeared WEEKS earlier in the US than originally stated: 2) COVID is weakening as it moves through the US population and we develop antibodies / “herd immunity” to this “novel” virus just like we always do as #TeamHuman; 3) Predicted catastrophic COVID death numbers are (once again) DRAMATICALLY overinflated as they were in the original Imperial College London algorithmic models WHO’happy policymakers used to put most of the Western world on “Lockdown” and detonate the US economy for small businesses and wage-earning working class people of all creeds and colors almost overnight; 4) COVID may be trending at the same rate as seasonal flu (0.1 to 0.3, as Roberts announces as he walks in to the press room”); 5) This SEEMS TO BE GOOD news, which runs counter to the “corona fear porn” being pumped into US MSM “news” by most ALL channels – FOX, MSNBC, CNN, WashPo, NYT, etc – 24/7. 

Ironically and tragic-omically, because most TeeVee news is now pure tribalized ideological “theater,” the honesty and clarity of a “hot mic” moment like this one may be more trustworthy than any prepared “talking point” statement emerging from a “scripted” news “program” / “show.” And FOX made their Chief White House Correspondent John Roberts publicly apologize and “reframe” the whole HOT MIC MINUTE as a “joke” – which itself is revealing, as any discerning human with a modicum of emotional intelligence can readily hear and see in listening closely to their exchange. 

More about the CALI Antibody DATA from indy journalist Sharyl Attkinson and NATURE.

And here are our two California ER doctors in public discussion – both long and short versions:

Here are transcript highlights from their remarks::

… 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… …

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. …

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. …

And:

ACEP-AAEM Joint Statement on Physician Misinformation

The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine (AAEM) jointly and 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.

COVID-19 misinformation is widespread and dangerous. Members of ACEP and AAEM are first-hand witnesses to the human toll that COVID-19 is taking on our communities. ACEP and AAEM strongly advise against using any statements of Drs. Erickson and Messihi as a basis for policy and decision making.