Two Bakersfield doctors viral on suspicious COVID test conclusions

They dressed in scrubs. They sounded scientific. And the messages from the two doctors in Bakersfield were exactly what many impatient Americans wanted to hear. COVID-19 is as good as influenza and has a low mortality rate and requires everyone to return to work or school.

Dr. Dan Ericsson and Artin Massig, who own emergency treatment centers in the region, held a press conference this month to announce the conclusions about the results of 5,213 COVID-19 trials conducted at their centers and at the test site. did. They claimed that the virus was less dangerous as it spread further and was not detected in the area.

However, public health professionals misunderstand the doctor’s findings, quickly reveal that they are plagued by statistical errors, and lead to the kind of misunderstanding that forces them to waste valuable time controversy. An example of the information is given.

Physicians assume that the patients they tested (those who came for the walk-in COVID-19 test or who sought urgent care for the symptoms they experienced during the pandemic) were representative of the general population. No, says Dr. Carlbergstrom. , A biologist at the University of Washington specializing in infectious disease modeling. He likened their extrapolation to “estimating the average height of Americans from NBA court players.” And, in fact, the most authoritative study on COVID-19 mortality is much higher than what doctors have offered.

“They have been using humorous methods to get totally incredible results,” said Bergstrom.

Still, early media coverage was widespread. A local TV report on the Bakersfield doctor’s press conference had more than 4.3 million views on YouTube. Wanting to reopen Fremont’s manufacturing plant last week, Tesla founder Elon Musk praised the doctor for his more than 33 million Twitter followers. Last week, doctors also appeared on the Lauren Graham show with a conservative national audience for their views on Fox News.

In a rare statement at the end of Monday last week, the American School of Emergency Medicine and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine declared, “I strongly condemn the recent opinion published by Dr. Daniel Ericsson and Dr. Altin Messich.” These reckless and unverified meditations are not representative of the medical community and are inconsistent with the current science and epidemiology of COVID-19. As owners of a local emergency medical clinic, these two individuals appear to release prejudiced, non-peer reviewed data in order to enhance the individual’s economic interests regardless of public health. “

Doctors set up the only walk-in COVID-19 test site in Bakersfield and did about half of all testing done in the area. They did not respond to Cal Matters’ request for comment on Monday.

False alarms flourish in a pandemic, and public health officials in California and elsewhere can’t keep up.

“This pandemic is so severely politicized in this country that no matter how poor it is, the evidence is greatly amplified if it benefits one or the other,” Twitter’s doctor’s study said. Bergstrom, one of the first experts to criticize, said. “We were always hoping this crisis wouldn’t happen, but if that happened, we were all in it together. We as epidemiology of infectious diseases For everyone, it was a big surprise, and it’s amazing to have to deal with this misinformation that is widespread for political purposes and ways to prevent proper public health response. ”

Senator Richard Pan of the Democratic State of California, a pediatrician who chairs the Senate Health Commission, said members in favor of the state’s resumption have not yet been cited as justifications for Bakersfield’s doctors’ conclusions. It was But if they do, they are “vulnerable,” he said.

Doctors “basically advertised a lot of data and weren’t transparent about how to do it, and did the fact that they were doctors. I think they’re pretty dishonest. Pan said. “Then we have to push back any media that promotes this information. They are doing this as a way to fish for attention.”

A Khan county public health spokeswoman told reporters that authorities did not support the doctor’s call to reopen the area. Other epidemiologists repeated that feeling.

But already Bakersfield’s doctors have advertised President Donald Trump’s support and refused to wear masks in public, becoming a hero on social platforms and conservative media, with some comments It was called “Brave”. Others, who favor continued evacuation on the spot, described doctors as self-facilitators whose chains of emergency centers benefited from the resumption. Non-COVID medical visits have plummeted during the pandemic, jeopardizing the practice of many physicians.

“As a struggling business owner, I understand their financial frustration, but it can’t be mistaken for science. Rob Davidson, a doctor in the Michigan emergency room, wrote on Twitter. “If you ask Fox viewers to ignore recommendations from real experts, many believe it … reject these scientifically proven recommendations in exchange for these false ideas The impact of this will overwhelm the healthcare system and costs: restarting the economy may be good for emergency care centers (textually), but not for killing health care professionals at the front line. Let’s. “

Other well-publicized studies of antibody test results by Stanford and USC researchers have similarly been criticized for sampling bias and the unreliability of the tests it used. Researchers have suggested that the true spread of COVID-19 in the community is much higher than expected and the resulting mortality rate is low. But again, soon the politicians and media backing the reopening nation cited it as evidence to support them.

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