Doctor Dispels Coronavirus Fears: ‘99.8 Percent of People Get Through this with Little to No Progressive or Significant Disease’
Dr. Dan Erickson, owner of Accelerated Urgent Care, spoke at Monday’s “White Coat Summit” on Capitol Hill as part of a greater effort to extinguish fears surrounding the Chinese coronavirus and reminded the public that “99.8 percent of people get through this with little to no progressive or significant disease.”
Erickson addressed the dominant narrative of rising cases of the virus within the U.S. and pointed out that it is causing undue fear.
“A case is a person, healthy, that tested positive. The vast majority. But the public hears cases and thinks, ‘Oh my goodness. These are sick people!’ No the vast majority — 99.8 percent of people get through this with little to no progressive or significant disease,” Erickson said.
The focus should not center on cases, he continued. Rather, the narrative should focus on hospitalizations and deaths that “are appropriately coded on a death certificate,” he said, stressing “appropriately coded.”
“This is the first time I’ve seen quarantining healthy,” he continued. “I don’t know if you guys think that’s normal. I find that very strange.”
While he said it was good that the U.S. prepared for the worse, Erickson said we must be “realistic with the response.”
“Who showed up? Most of the patients that were showing up for me were very mild illness,” he said, adding that he wanted to come out and “give reality to the situation on the ground and sort of help dispel some fear that people have had.”
Erickson also addressed the mass lockdowns across the country, explaining that they were “very successful,” but in all the wrong metrics:
"Was the lockdown successful? I say yes very successful. Successful in things like this. Anxiety hotline calls up 1000 percent. Child abuse both sexual and non up.
"Financially, emotional distress, Suicide. Alcohol. 150,000 Americans a month not receiving cancer screening. It’s been effective alright, in all the wrong metrics — in all the areas we didn’t want it to be effective. Delay in medical care. We talked about that. Orthopedics, nonessential.
"Suicide calls up 600 percent. Suicide calls. We heard other doctors mention this. So was the lockdown effective? If that’s the effect you were going for, then yes but it was trying to flatten the curve but it had these secondary consequences that I think are devastating.
"People staying indoors. No exercising as you mentioned. No Vitamin D."
He continued: “I’m watching people in their Prius by themselves driving with a mask on. There’s no sense to it,” he added. “It’s fear.”