The video, which had racked up over 5 million views, featured Dr. Dan Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi, co-owners of Accelerated Urgent Care in Bakersfield, Calif. In the clip, Erickson asserts that there is only a “0.03 chance of dying from COVID in the state of California,” prompting him to ask, “Does that necessitate sheltering in place? Does that necessitate shutting down medical systems? Does that necessitate people being out of work?”
Erickson also asked why fatalities were being counted as COVID-19 deaths when other ailments were actually more to blame. “When someone dies in this country right now, they’re not talking about the high blood pressure, the diabetes, the stroke. They’re saying ‘Did they die from COVID?'” Erickson said.
“We’ve been to hundreds of autopsies. You don’t talk about one thing, you talk about comorbidities. ER doctors now [say] ‘It’s interesting when I’m writing about my death report, I’m being pressured to add COVID. Why is that?” The video was deleted late last night for “violating YouTube’s terms of service.”
Earlier this month, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki told CNN that the company would ban any video content that contradicted World Health Organization recommendations. However, Wojcicki suggested that this would mainly be focused on banning information about fake cures, not questioning of government policy. The video platform has also set about banning any content that claims 5G cell towers are linked to the coronavirus outbreak.
During an appearance on Fox News last night, Dr. Erickson pointed to Sweden, which didn’t impose any drastic lockdown measures, but now has achieved herd immunity against coronavirus. “And if you look at their numbers: 200 deaths per million compared to ours, [which is] about the same. Italy’s [is] about 400 per million and Spain is about 400 per million, so we are looking at this going, ‘OK, they took a completely different approach and their results are basically the same,'” said Erickson.
Another version of the original video that YouTube deleted appears below.